In July, we did a quick study of some of the oldest dolls on earth, but did you know there was also a contest running? All you had to do was leave a comment on the “History of Dolls” blog posts in July, and your name was automatically entered in a drawing for one of three free copies of Doll Castle News.

To read the blog post announcing the contest, click here.

Today I’m announcing the winners in the drawing from July! (Drumroll please…)

And the three winners are…

• Marco
• Judy Jones
• Suzanne Bennett

Please get in touch with me by sending me your name and mailing address, so I can send you a free physical copy of Doll Castle News! A good way to get in touch with me is by using my Contact Form. (Note: it will say “submit a question,” but you can just contact me with that form. You don’t have to ask any questions.)

If you already own a copy of Doll Castle News, let me know which one or ones you have, so I don’t send you a copy that you already own.

This month, I’m not going to do a contest. Instead, this will be more of a challenge, and it will be ongoing through September and part of October too.

See the image at the top of today’s blog post? If you want to join the challenge, you can print that image of these antique dolls using this link.

Cut out the images of the dolls and arrange them on your sewing room table in a timeline. Which ones are the oldest? Which ones are the most recently made dolls?

(You could also just write a guess on your paper about when you think each doll was made.) In the next 10 blog posts on The History of Dolls topic, I’ll tell you a few facts about each of these ten dolls, including what we know about its date of origin. With each of these blog posts, check your answers.

At the end of the ten blog posts, let me know how many of your guesses were right by leaving a comment. Good luck, everyone!

Today’s images and much of the information provided come from the DAR Museum online. Please click on the links provided to learn more about the DAR Museum. The address of the museum is 1776 D Street NW Washington, DC 20006, so if you plan to visit our nation’s capital, you might think about going to see the DAR Museum in person.

I’m a museum liaison for my local (Twin Falls, Idaho) chapter of the DAR, which means that I sometimes do museum research for our local club.

The letters, DAR, stand for Daughters of the American Revolution. What does this mean? It means I have an ancestor who was in the American Revolutionary War. I’m very proud of the fact that my ancestor served in the Revolution for American Independence from Great Britain, and as such, helped establish the United States of America as an independent nation.

The DAR is a club that offers its members an opportunity to serve our nation by doing organized volunteer work. In particular, this year I have been sewing drawstring bags for a public school to use as storage in one of the teachers’ classrooms. Last year I made doll clothes to give as Christmas presents to a.) the families of United States military service members and b.) a homeless shelter in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Although the doll clothes I made for these purposes was featured in some of my articles here on ChellyWood.com, the volunteer work I do for the DAR is separate from the work I do to maintain this website. They are not affiliated with one another in any way. ChellyWood LLC is recognized by the state of Idaho as a for-profit business, whereas the DAR is a nonprofit organization.

Some members of the DAR serve as volunteers at local voting locations, soup kitchens, food banks and so much more. If you’d like to contact your local DAR to request volunteers to act in service capacities in your neighborhood, or if you’d like to learn whether or not you could qualify to join the DAR (you must do genealogy research to find out whether or not you are a descendent of a person who served in the American Revolutionary War), feel free to contact members of the Daughters of the American Revolution on their website, by using one of the links I’ve provided here.

REFERENCES:

Please note: images were used, with permission, and they come from the DAR Museum website. Click on the link provided to visit the DAR Museum website for yourself, to see a higher-resolution image and to learn more details about each of the dolls featured.