Meet Cordelia… Isn’t she sweet?!

If you’ve been playing along with the history challenge, I’m very curious to hear your honest guesses. What era do you think she comes from? Please leave a comment below.

If you’re not familiar with my history challenge, please click here to read about the challenge and download the free PDF to join us.

When I first saw Cordelia, I suspected that she was made in the 1700’s, based entirely on her headgear. I remembered that Martha Washington wore a similar shower-cap-style of hat, so I suspected this little doll was from that era.

A closer look at her dress made me move that date up to the 1800’s because the style of the dress reminded me of dresses worn by women during the Westward Expansion, when people followed the Oregon trail to the wild, wild west.

Neither of these guesses turned out to be true. Cordelia was donated to the DAR Museum by a woman named Mrs. Ida A. Pineo (Milton), and as the story goes, the doll was “Purchased at a bazaar and given to the donor” (1). Furthermore, it was donated without the dress or hat.

Cordelia’s clothes were actually made at a much later date. “Current costume made by Free State Doll Club in 1977. Made by the Sisters of Mercy (or Charity) of Sanford, Maine.” Take another look at Cordelia’s dress in the image above. Would you have guessed that dress was made in 1977? No? Neither would I!

But costume isn’t always the best indication of a doll’s age, even though it’s exactly how I put a date on the little Pen Wiper doll that I posted about on August 20th! Click here to read that older blog post.

But the experts at the DAR Museum have put a pretty specific date on little Cordelia. Their museum page for this doll suggests a date of 1907 to 1908. How did they come up with that? Well, they’re pretty sure it was made after 1890 because, the experts believe “The doll might have been made from an 1890 Butterick pattern.” But there are other features that help us date antique dolls as well.

According to Doll Reference, one of my favorite online sites for doll collectors, “The material a doll is made of gives its history and can help date a doll”(2). Manufactured dolls often come with a date or trademark on the back of the head, back of the neck, bottom of the foot, or the doll’s lower back, just at the top of the buttocks.

However, as you might have guessed, handmade dolls can be a little tricky to date. The type of stuffing used can help date them. We can guess, for example, that a doll that’s stuffed with straw pre-dates the invention of polyester fiberfill. But when did fiberfill come along?

According to the Wm. T. Burnett & Company website, although polyester was invented in 1941, it wasn’t until the mid-1960’s that it was used by their company as fiberfill. “In 1964, synthetic fiber was introduced to the Statesville plant, which had previously only converted cotton. Starting in 1965, polyester was used to form filling batt”(3). Wm. T. Burnett & Company was a cotton company from the late Industrial Age, but it is still in business, producing nonwoven fabrics today.

You may be able to find a manufacturer’s stamp or label sewn into a cloth doll’s body, but according to DollReference.com, “Many dolls are unmarked as they originally had a hang tag with the company and probably the [doll’s] name. If these are missing, a bit of research will be needed to rediscover your dolls [identity].”

This page on the Doll Reference website offers a fairly comprehensive list of cloth dolls that were known to have been marketed by their manufacturers. It describes what’s unique about each maker’s dolls.

Today’s doll, Cordelia, is housed at the DAR Museum.

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.

1. Artist unknown. “Doll.” [Medium: cloth]. 1907 to 1908. DAR Museum, Washington DC. Image used with permission. Information accessed 18 Aug. 2024.
2. “Doll Reference – We help you identify your Dolls.” DollReference.com, 2024. Web. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.
3. “Our History: a History of Innovation.” Wm. T. Burnett & Co., 2024. Web. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.