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Sacred Nine Project: The Mending Sampler 250
Wednesday, 21 October 2026, 6:00 PM, Person Hall, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tuesday, 27 October, 6:30 PM, the National Humanities Center, Durham, NC
Since its inception in 2018, Sacred Nine Project has been a kind of misfit, intersecting with theatre, history, religious studies, hymnody, sociology, gender studies, Africana studies, and the list goes on. Most at home in music...but not quite. On the road to different venues with a different focus each time; securing local singers rather than a fixed group; offering site-specific music explorations for which there is no clear category. Is this a concert? Cantata? Oratorio? Musical? Opera? Lecture recital? Yes!
And while giddily immersing myself in planning the next project and the next, the most wonderful thing happened; having performed The Mending Sampler at UNC in 2023, Miguel La Serna, a mere three years later, contacted me about this momentous week of American 250 at Carolina events. Being invited back is confirmation that I am on the right track...that Sacred Nine with all its quirks is having real impact! I will forever be grateful.
In early fall 2022, I saw The Sewing Girl’s Tale on the new releases shelf at a local bookstore. Upon reading the inside dust jacket, I knew right away that there was music in this story, and by the time I turned the final page, my brain was teeming with ideas, inspired by the book’s thoughtful and artful depictions by John Wood Sweet, who writes:
“As a young woman, Lanah Sawyer had a rare kind of courage. Only seventeen, a stepchild in a working family, she was easy to dismiss as a mere “sewing girl.” Yet, when an affluent gentleman showed an interest in her, she dared to image that he might really be interested in her. Violently, he dashed that dream—leaving her disoriented, distressed, and unmoored. Then, she gathered her courage and did what no one else in the nation’s biggest city had done in half a century: she charged a gentleman with rape. Then, as now, most survivors of sexual assaults by acquaintances don’t make any official complaint—and for good reason. But Lanah Sawyer refused to be shamed. She refused to be silenced. What followed was a harrowing ordeal—and a remarkable vindication. THE SEWING GIRL’S TALE is the story of this remarkable young woman’s search for justice, her determination to move beyond what had been done to her, to rebuild her life—to live with the courage of her conviction that she, too, was someone who mattered.”
When my return to UNC was established, John then made introductions to the National Humanities Center, so that in a two-week span, The Mending Sampler will be heard in two illustrious institutions!
Beyond the details of her attempt to obtain legal recourse, we do not know much about Lanah Sawyer. The Mending Sampler aims to offer snapshots of her life, based on several texts and tunes from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. What was her education? How was she socialized regarding gender? Was there a model for her own dreams of a romantic partner? How favorable could her odds have been, a young woman from the 18th century accusing a man of higher station of sexual assault? How can she speak to us in the 21st century? How much did her courage cost her? How much does it cost us all? —C. Leonard Raybon
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