In 2003, the year our youngest daughter married, my husband made both
of our girls cedar chests for Christmas. He started with rough cut lumber,
planed it himself, painstakingly cut each piece, then glued the boards together
before actually constructing the chest. He finished the surfaces, fitted the
hardware, and attached commemorative plaques to the inside lids. My
donation to the project was an antique china head doll for each of them,
purchased on eBay. To better personalize my contribution, I wrote a story
to go with each doll. The following tale, MY JOURNEY UP TILL NOW, which
I'm posting in two parts, was written to go with the doll given to our youngest
daughter, Kimberly, who in 2007, became a mother herself! I hope you enjoy
the story and welcome your comments! (If you missed Part I, see February's
posts.)
My Travels Up Till Now PART TWO
by Hildegard (the well-traveled doll)
Life with the Hills was much different from life with the Emersons.
Zeke and his sister lived together in an impossibly tiny, three-room
house that would have fit (with room to spare) in the middle of Wren’s
well-appointed nursery. Despite this, there was a feeling of great
warmth within the small abode.
Louella’s charming 7-year-old twins’, Phillip and Peter, doted on
Meredith, keeping her from underfoot while the adults went about
their work each day. The pair taught her to throw a rag ball and to
shoot marbles, chiding her when she refused to put me down so she
might take more care with her aim.
“Mama wants to watch me,” she’d explain.
“Set her there by the fence,” Phillip suggested. “She can see better
that-away.”
“A snake might bite her foot,” Meredith countered.
“It’s November. Ain’t no snakes out,” Peter explained. “They don’t
come out when the weather’s cool.”
“Mama wants me right close by. She’ll get nervous if I set her
down.”
The boys’ guarded Meredith, who was prone to wander off, as closely
as Zeke did. Meredith ached to travel to nearby Jackson, which was five
miles from their home, half a day’s journey by wagon.
“Can’t we go to Jackson?” the 3-year-old would whine. “I want to
buy some candy.” There was always a penny or two or three in her
pocket for several elderly neighbors with whom the family attended
church loved nothing better than to spoil her!
Neither Zeke nor Louella saw fit to take a new spouse though
Louella, who was but twenty-three, had a steady stream of suitors.
Zeke only had eyes for his daughter, in spite of the fact he was fancied
by several young women; one even sent him a long, impassioned letter
of proposal! All of these he kindly rebuffed.
Zeke and Louella relied heavily upon each other. Louella
mothered Meredith, much better than I could, I might add, and Zeke
was a splendid father to Phillip and Peter. Zeke was a farmer and
a carpenter while Louella washed and mended clothes for the carpet-
baggers that had been streaming into nearby Pearl, Mississippi since
the end of the war. Together they made a good living, hiding their
money in a tin can they hid inside an old churn. The pair had a plan,
one they whispered about when the children were sleeping. They
wanted to leave Mississippi. Out west, was where they talked about
going, but I had no notion of what that meant.
I was Meredith’s constant companion and confidante until she
started to school in the fall of 1868. In the evenings, she would sit poised
over her slate, learning to write her name which she complained was
entirely too long. “I wish my name was Ann. That’s an easy name.
Meredith is the hardest name in the whole school.”
~~~
By the spring of 1869, Zeke and Louella had amassed enough money
to make the move out west. They first talked of traveling by train,
but the cost, while within their budget, seemed frivolous.
“We’re young and strong,” Louella rational-ized. “We can save half
or more by making the journey in a prairie schooner.”
They traveled to St. Joseph, Missouri by train where they bought
their “outfit”, a team of eight healthy oxen, four saddle horses, a canvas
tent, bedding, and a well-outfitted covered wagon.
The Oregon Trail was said to be tame by 1869, with Indian skirmishes
but a memory. Their party was large, 91 persons including a physician
and two experienced guides. Still, there were dangers and it wasn’t long
before Zeke and Louella were lamenting their decision to make the trip
by overland trail. Three weeks into the trip, five of their eight oxen died
within two days time. These were replaced at Fort Kearney and all
seemed to be well for a time. Then, as they neared the Snake River,
the bottom fell out, so to speak. Phillip and Peter, now aged 11 years,
became lost one evening as they trailed a rabbit. Following footprints
that were not their own, the twins were lost for three nights before
Zeke, exhausted from searching, heard their piteous cries for help.
By then, Zeke and Louella were on their own. On the second night,
they’d been forced to make a life or death decision: leave the boys’
behind or be left behind themselves.
Their joy over the safe return of Phillip and Peter was short-lived.
The pair’s savings had disappeared, undoubtedly stolen by one of the
volunteers who stayed with Meredith while a search party assisted
Zeke and Louella late into the first night.
On their own, the family started west anew when disaster struck
again. One of the wagon axles broke in two and only a smithy could
repair it. Now they were truly stranded.
Meredith carried me as she and Louella passed the time chasing
dragonflies and picking colorful wildflowers they laced in each others
hair. Louella assured her niece their journey, however difficult, would
soon be but a memory.
“Are we going to starve like the Donner party?” Meredith worried.
“Someone will be along in a day or two. We have food enough to last
many weeks and fresh water from the stream. A few days rest will do
us all good.”
It was eight days before another company came along, affording their
rescue. The leader expressed a willingness to transport them, but he
would only agree to parcel them out amongst the other wagons rather
than wasting a half a day or more while the company’s blacksmith made
repairs.
“We’re three weeks and a little more behind schedule,” he told Zeke.
“I want to help you folks out, but not at the expense of more lost time.
If we keep movin’, we’ll make it before the first snow…if we’re lucky.”
Taking only what they could carry, Zeke and Louella left behind
nearly the entirety of their belongings including the trunk where Louella
carefully stored me.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “I pray whoever finds
you treats you well.”
~~~
A lone horseman visited before the sun had set. He opened the trunk
and rifled through it carelessly. Finding nothing that fancied him, he left
the trunk in the middle of the trail with the lid open.
It was a forlorn feeling, unlike any other, laying there exposed to the
elements from which I’d always been protected. The wind was ceaseless
in the bright expanse where nothing, not even the imagination, could slow
it’s progress. Rain, when it came, would severely damage me. If I laid
exposed long enough, the snow would be my doom.
Alas, I was to suffer the effects of neither. I was rescued in the nick of
time by Miss Olive Watkins, an unmarried woman, aged 19 years, who
pronounced me “as pretty as a picture”. She rescued the entire trunk
which contained the quilt Analise Hoffmeister had wrapped me in for
my journey to America almost nine years before, and dear Wren’s
beautiful white night-gown and calico dress. A quilt made for me by
Louella was tucked in the bottom of the trunk. Wrapped inside were
sewing notions she used to do mending.
I was hopeful the young woman’s party might overtake the one in
which the Hills were traveling, but it was not to be for Miss Watkins and
her father, Mr. Royal Watkins, and his new wife, Agnes, were journeying
in the opposite direction. They’d left their comfortable home in San
Francisco, California for northern Nebraska where Olive would be
teaching in a one-room prairie schoolhouse. Mr. Watkins was a silver-
smith by trade, but he stayed busier pulling teeth!
My life with Miss Watkins, as I still think of her, was sublime. She took
me to school and I was much admired there, so much so that primer
pupils were given the luxury of holding me for a few moments when
their schoolwork was deemed outstanding. One pupil, Nettie Willis,
aged 7 years, was particularly fond of me, but though she struggled
to read, understanding mostly escaped her.
So she abducted me.
I was accustomed to the practice by then, and felt a great deal of pity
and tenderness for her when she was found out. Miss Watkins spent hours
tutoring the girl until one morning, the sprite jumped up and threw her
arms around her teacher’s neck.
“I can read!” she exclaimed. And read she did, voraciously over the years,
publishing several short novels Miss Watkins proudly displayed on a shelf
in the schoolhouse until her reluctant retirement in 1912.
~~~
Forty-three years Miss Watkins taught in the little prairie schoolhouse
with me at her side. We withstood blizzards, bullies, a raging prairie
fire, drought, diphtheria, a plague of locusts, a rabid skunk, and an angry
mob who once demanded Miss Watkins turn away a behemoth of a 20-
year-old, the son of Norwegian immigrants, who desperately wanted to
learn how to read and write English. She refused to knuckle under to
them, even when her job was threatened, shaming the mob so thoroughly,
they hung their heads to a man and turned away.
Hundreds of youngsters learned and matured under our watchful eyes.
When Miss Watkins was honored for her years of dedication, I was an
esteemed guest and was given a standing ovation!
~~~
I lived with Miss Watkins until her death in 1934, and was afterwards
installed in a beautiful glass display case in the local museum. I languished
there until 1944 when the museum closed due to lack of funding.
I was returned to the Watkins family where I was again stored in the
very trunk in which Miss Watkins had found me seventy-five years
before! Wren’s nightgown and frock looked as fresh as they had in 1862!
I thought of Wren, wondering where she was and what kind of life she’d
led. The cheerful little girl with the white blonde ringlets, if she was alive,
was likely a great-grandmother, aged 88 years!
Sometime in the early 1960’s, the trunk in which I was stored was
purchased in its entirety during an estate sale. The gentleman who
bought me, Mr. Lloyd Brooks, declared me to be the spitting image of
someone named “Melanie Wilkes”. Much to my displeasure, I was
often referred to as Melanie Wilkes. How I wish I could have shouted,
“My name is Hildegard!”, but it is a doll’s lot to suffer the insensitivities
of her master or mistress.
Mr. Brooks declared the contents of the trunk constituted “a valuable
collection of civil war era artifacts”. To be referred to with such detach-
ment only added insult to injury.
I was again stored away, but to my delight, Mr. Brook’s teenaged grand-
daughter loved nothing better than to sneak me out of the trunk. A care-
free spirit named Chloe, she wore tie-dyed t-shirts, bell-bottomed jeans,
and a pair of hemp sandals. Chloe declared herself a “flower child”, and
that “love was all one needed” according to an ear-shattering ballad she
played over and over.
My visits with Chloe were frustrating for her behavior was somewhat
unusual. She burned hoards of candles and sticks of mulberry incense,
and tied strips of leather and beads around her wrists and ankles, letting
the ends dangle as if she were an Indian. She loved to lace her pretty red
hair with daisies and baby’s breath, but the effect was ruined when she
donned rose-colored granny glasses and a peasant blouse that left little
to the imagination. She listened to the music of someone named Bob
Dylan, whose voice was so foul to the ear, I daresay could I have managed
a frown, I would have been the perfect picture of misery!
When Chloe’s grandfather caught her with me, I was stored once
again in the old trunk and stayed there until Chloe’s mother, Maggie,
cleaned it out following Mr. Brook’s death in 1976. She kept the “antique
little girl things” and myself, stuffing all into a paper bag, vowing she would
someday display me in her home. The trunk I’d been traveling in since
1869 went to her brother who lived “back east”.
I languished in the paper sack on a closet shelf for almost a quarter
of a century more until Maggie passed away necessitating another
estate sale. I was purchased by a seasoned antiquities dealer from
Concord, Ohio, whose only intention was to sell me to someone else.
“The dress is not original to the doll,” I recall him telling his assistant,
“but it is from the same era, 1860’s or so”.
“Almost 145-years-old,” the young woman calculated. “Remarkable!”
I found it remarkable myself that so much time had passed. I hoped to
find a new home where I wouldn’t spend years tucked away in a dark
closet. It seemed that I was beyond my prime as a child’s toy, and though
I longed to return to service as such, I knew the best I could hope for was
someone who would proudly display me.
My wish was granted when in 2002, a woman named Julie Rhodes
purchased the lot containing myself and the other items that had made
the long journey with me. Julie proudly displayed me in an antique baby
carriage and told friends I reminded her of a character from her favorite
novel, Little Women.
My happy tenure with Julie was, however, short-lived. A year after
purchasing me, she advertised me on Ebay along with the vintage clothing
and quilts that had long been my traveling companions. In need of funds for
her daughter’s upcoming wedding, Julie auctioned me off, hoping to fetch
a good price!
In a far away, southern state, a woman who was looking for a beautiful
antique doll like myself to give to her youngest daughter for Christmas,
bookmarked my auction, mulling the situation over a few days before
bidding and winning me. I was shipped post-haste, and once again
found myself residing south of the Mason Dixon line!
The kind woman who purchased me was quite pleased with me though,
to my great displeasure, she described me as a “Melanie Wilkes look-
alike”. “Who is this Melanie Wilkes,” I wanted to shout.
“My husband is making a beautiful cedar chest for our daughter for
Christmas and you will be tucked inside.” Though I was but a visitor
in the woman’s home, I very much enjoyed being admired and spoken
to again.
~~~
I pray my new mistress, whom I’ve yet to meet, will display me with
pride and appreciate how I have survived my many years of travel to
end up in her possession. Her mother chose me out of so many others,
certain we would be a good match. I look forward to residing in my new
home and I hope to someday delight another generation of children and
grandchildren, bringing enrichment to their lives as they will surely
bring to mine.
The End
Copyright 2003 Carma Walsh
May not be reproduced without permission of the author.
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