Archival Anecdotes: The reign of paper dolls

Dolls have made wonderful companions for millenia. They aren't difficult to make. All it takes is a little material, like a sock, a rag, an old piece of leather, a bundle of sticks, wood, etc. The most important part is imagination.

Eddy County Museum has a dozen or so dolls. Some of them are more presentable than others. Celestia Kellington and Elsie Kerr both donated several from their late 19th century childhoods. A bride and groom doll each reside in the Stavanger Church as part of our wedding display. They are made of canvas and are sharply dressed. A likeness of an elderly couple are on display in the domestic exhibit in the Brantford Depot. Several dolls are in storage, awaiting cleaning of their delicate features and attire.

Other doll-based artifacts are obviously handmade. There are a couple of ceramic doll heads, which would have been purchased with the mind to attach it to a doll body. The last three-dimensional doll on my archival list is a slim knit doll. It is black, brown and red and filled with sawdust. This unique doll was made by the wife of Sgt. Morris, Civil War veteran, and then gifted to the young Agnes Lorig. This doll is kept in a discreet location at the Hulbert Schoolhouse.

I have to be honest, I have never come into physical contact with this hand knit doll. I blame my allergy to sawdust, but it is probably the form that makes me uncomfortable. It is both human-like and also not.

Between the 1890s and the 1990s dolls transformed delicate display items or ragged play things to highly commercial humanoid companions. The dolls I grew up with were attempts at being realistic. Barbie and her little sister skipper set the standard. Their friend Ken left me confused until many years later. The Cabbage Patch Dolls recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. By 1985 "Kid Sister" and "My Buddy" hit the market. I digress into my Xennial perspective. Sometimes though, there is room for digressions, especially if they bridge their way to larger conversations and perspectives.

For more than a century, paper dolls provided a consistent image of the doll. Paper wasn't readily available to rural folks of the 19th century, but advertising was. Intricate paper dolls were born out of the flourishing industry of print media. Coffee companies such as McLaughlin would print paper dolls as part of the packaging. These dolls were then folded in half and kept as keepsakes or play things. Thanks to Elsie Kerr, we have a large collection of these artifacts from the 1880s. Elsie arrived in New Rockford around 1910, when she was more than 30 years old. When she packed her traveling trunk for North Dakota, she included her beloved paper dolls.

Paper dolls reached their height in popularity from the 1930s to the 1950s. It was a time before televisions had made it into everyone's home and paper was quite affordable. In the 1960s, the imagery of paper dolls took on a look that reflected the imagery displayed in popular media such as magazines and television.

In the summer of 2021, Sharon Indegaard Laxdahl donated an extensive collection of dolls from this era. One is likely to find these caricature forms familiar, even if the names remain unknown. There is no doubt Sharon spent endless hours with her collection. She even made her own clothing designs for her dolls.

If you want to see this portion of the collection, you'll have to stop in at the Eddy County Museum. Now open Sundays from 1pm-4pm (and also Memorial Day.) The museum grounds are located on the 1100 block of 1st Ave North in New Rockford, just across from the Lutheran Home of the Good Shepherd.