Sarah Hooker Leavitt created this mourning picture to honor her grandfather Ezra Stiles, a Congregationalist minister and president of Yale College from 1778 until his death in 1795. Although some mourning embroideries from this period were created in the immediate aftermath of a family member’s death, most, like Leavitt’s, were embroidered years after the fact as decoration or to serve as a family record. Leavitt attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts during the spring and summer terms of 1808 and 1809. She may have done this embroidery there under the supervision of Jerusha Williams, the academy’s preceptress from 1806 to 1812. The white church depicted to the left of the funerary monument has traditionally been identified as the Second Congregational Church in Newport, Rhode Island, where Stiles was minister, while the small brick buildings on the right have been interpreted as part of Yale’s campus. Leavitt finished her embroidery sometime before the end of 1810: the back of the piece bears a label from the framing firm of Smith and Norton in Northampton, Massachusetts, who were in partnership only from July to December of that year.