Abigail Doll: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Portia Sperry designed, produced, and sold this cloth doll with the help of a network of local farmwomen in her rural Indiana community in the early 1930s. The Abigail doll was dressed in the print dress, apron, and sunbonnet of a pioneer woman and was the first of two dolls the women created. A resourceful entrepreneur, Sperry persuaded the Marshall Field department store in Chicago, IL to sell the dolls and the Quaker Oat company to donate boxes for shipping them. Her efforts brought thousands of dollars to the women of Brown County, Indiana during the Great Depression.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1930-1939
• maker: Sperry, Portia Howe
• Object Name: doll
• Measurements: overall: 20 in x 9 in; 50.8 cm x 22.86 cm
• place made: United States: Indiana, Brown
• ID Number: 2014.0262.01
• catalog number: 2014.0262.01
• accession number: 2014.0262
• Credit Line: Gift of Susan Popp
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.