A pair of 19th-century male and female black dolls

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Title

A pair of 19th-century male and female black dolls

Provenance Information

4529.1 (male doll) & 4529.2 (female doll)

Date Created

n.d.

Format

dolls made of composition, textile, and kidskin

REDC Region

Notes

This pair of 19th-century male and female black dolls are made of painted composition with wooden arms and legs and a kidskin-covered body, dressed in handsewn clothing with some machine-sewn restorations. The female doll is dressed in a set of knitted wool bloomers, black check silk skirt with decorative
silk banding around the hem and a printed cotton floral jacket. The male doll is dressed in black check wool trousers, a green velveteen coat with a satin partial
lining, collar and cuffs, a vest made from a peach colored silk as a cream-colored silk shirt and a decorative bowtie/caveat made from a strip red and cream plaid silk cloth. These dolls are associated with historically marginalized communities in their representation of Black figures and their association with Minnie Knapp, an African American ward-servant raised at Cherry Hill.

These dolls are significant both as rare 19th-century Black dolls and for their history of ownership and use in a New York household. The dolls strongly resemble German-made papier mâché “Milliners Model” dolls from the 1830s (which include a few Black examples), yet they appear to be composition dolls, a technique first developed in Germany in the 1850s. We believe that the dolls were used by children in the Cherry Hill household in the late 1850s and early 1860s, which would make these early examples.

The dolls are significant to the story of the representation of Black people (a historically marginalized community) and notably embody a respectful depiction of middle-class figures, rather than racist caricatures. This fact is all the more interesting in light of the dolls’ likely association of use and ownership with Harriet Maria “Minnie” Knapp, an African American child who was raised as a ward and servant at Cherry Hill after her mother’s death—by Harriet Maria Elmendorf, Van Rensselaer descendant and 3rd-generation mistress of Cherry Hill. Minnie Knapp called Harriet Maria Elmendorf “ma” throughout her life and occupied a pseudo-family status, particularly during childhood. Daguerreotypes and tintypes of Minnie as a child and a young women—accessorized and dressed in impeccably tailored clothing, represent a refined, middle-class appearance, interestingly mirroring the sort of identity represented by the dolls. The dolls are significant in their own right, but all the more so in their Cherry Hill context.

Citation

“A pair of 19th-century male and female black dolls,” Flipping The Narrative, accessed February 10, 2025, https://flippingthenarrative.omeka.net/items/show/7.