More than a year ago, Deb Gepfer was at a family picnic when her phone rang. The caller was Susan Heydt, a fellow needlework aficionado, and she had exciting news. A sampler - a small textile adorned with cross-stitch or embroidery made to showcase a young lady's sewing skills - was listed on an auction site, and the piece was attributed to a young girl from Maytown, dated to 1855.

"I screamed out and got all excited," Deb recalled. "It's not the most beautiful sampler, but it was made by a local girl when she was 11."

Deb was even more excited when she bid on the sampler and won it. While waiting for it to arrive by mail, she started doing research on the girl who stitched the piece, Ann Francis Breneman. From information provided by the auction house, she learned that the young stitcher, who went by Francis (sometimes spelled Frances), was born in 1844, married John E. Hunter around 1865, had at least three daughters, moved to Ohio by 1870 and died in 1926. She's buried along with her husband at Maytown Union Cemetery.

Along with fiber arts, another passion of Deb's is genealogy, so she began digging deeper on sites such as Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com.

"That's when I was able to connect Francis to someone in Maytown who I knew," she said. She found a descendant of Francis who held an important position in town and whose nephew is still a resident.

While doing her research, Deb also decided the sampler could be a nice fundraiser for the Maytown Historical Society, where she serves on the archive committee and as secretary.

Susan and her husband, Bruce, reproduce antique samplers for cross-stitchers and sell the charts through their business. Deb and Susan hoped to reproduce the sampler and sell the charts to raise money for an archives project at the historical society.

Deb has begun working on a model of the sampler, and the women hope to have the charts ready for sale at Mayfest, an annual celebration of Maytown that will be held this year on Saturday, May 3. At that time, they will also reveal the relative who is connected to Francis.

Proceeds from sales of the charts will be used to expand archival operations at the historical society.

"We are working on refurbishing the garage in the back of the museum property to become our new archives building," Deb shared. "It will be climate-controlled storage, which will be a much better situation for our artifacts to be in than what we have right now, which is two garages that are not climate controlled."

While Deb was researching the sampler's history, she learned more about a well-known needlework teacher who had a school in Maytown in the early 1800s. Samplers by students of Catherine Welshans Buchanan now hang in some very prestigious art galleries and museums and have sold at auctions for tens of thousands of dollars.

Deb couldn't find a connection between Francis' sampler and Catherine's school, and she paid significantly less to acquire the child's sampler than she might have for a piece by one of Catherine's students, but she's still hoping to discover more about the school and Francis' family.

"We're hoping to find people who have connections to the Breneman (also spelled Brennaman) or Hunter family or any of the daughters," she said. Other surnames associated with the family are Bower, Bowers, Willet, Bishop, Johnson and Blottenberger.

The sampler will be on display at Mayfest, along with the model Deb's making, and she hopes it will spark an interest from more people in Maytown's past.

"It would be really neat if someone read about this sampler and was able to tell us more about this family," she said. "I'd love to know as much as I can."

For more information on the Maytown Historical Society, search for the organization on Facebook. The society's museum is located at 4 W. High St., Maytown.