Courtney is my newest doll and I'm having so much fun with her. I couldn't resist posing her like the covers of the early Pleasant Company catalogs, with girls reading to their dolls. My Courtney has Kirsten until we obtain a mini Molly.
I just moved into a new place so the dolls have all been boxed up for awhile, but now I'm slowly starting to get them all set up! First up is Addy! Originally I was planning on getting contact paper for the walls and the floors, but I kind of like how this looks!
With fingers benumbed by the cold February air, Louisa (Wilhelmina Louisa Augusta Munzenmaier, if you really want to know) clutches the bundle of blankets and clothing Mutti has given her as they make their way off the Athena.
It was a cold crossing, sailing from Bremen in late January 1867, but Mutti, Louisa, Freidrich, and August have finally made it to New York to join Papa, and Louisa's older brothers, Carl and Wilhelm. Papa and the boys have been working in New York, earning money to buy a farm in Texas before bringing the rest of the family across the ocean. Soon they will all be together again!
To keep warm, Louisa is wearing two petticoats under her outer skirt, one cotton and one wool. Her white blouse only reaches the elbow, in keeping with traditional clothing, so she wears knitted forearm warmers to cut down on the chill. Her blue shawl and plaid kerchief are warm and cozy, as does her black woolen vest buried beneath the shawl.
I've been doing some genealogical research into one side of my family, and found a great-grandmother who came from Germany with her mother and little brothers when she was seven, joining her father and older brothers in the US, so I have roughly based Louisa's story on hers. I've changed some of the names, ages and dates of crossing, but all are taken from family records.