All little girls love dolls and why do they love them so? Some carry their love for dolls on into adulthood and even make a career out of dolls and the doll business. Marsha Riley and her mother Miriam Ann Martin are doll lovers. Miriam Ann Martin loves the porcelain and baby dolls which she has collected from babyhood, but her daughter Marsha Riley has taken a little different path in her affection for dolls.

Marsha is most infatuated with dolls made from whatever people had such as old quilts, scraps of cloth, wire, nails, etc., in other words not store bought and prettied up dolls! Marsha calls them “primitive” dolls. Marsha will be the speaker at the Saluda County Historical Society meeting on April 27 and discuss how she got into “primitive dolls”. Primitives are new but made to look “old”. There are farmer dolls, scarecrow dolls, Revolutionary War dolls, all kinds. One has horse shoe nails sticking out of her head for hair. Monday morning, a few weeks ago, I was the first one to walk into the Historical Society Museum and one of Marsha’s dolls, the one with the nails sticking out of her head, had fallen out of her chair and lay on the floor; now how did this happen during the night?

Please come and hear Marsha discuss her dolls and marvel at their variety, on April 27, 2010 at 7:30 pm at the Saluda County Historical Society Museum, 105 Law Range, Saluda, SC, on the Court House Square. All are welcome and we serve tasty refreshments after the meeting.