47 Lancaster farm irtg Saturday Vpl 2b 1976 Susannah Wright is a special creation of Mrs Newcomer for a Bicentennial doll contest Shirley Newcomer lives a little girl's paradise By SALLY BAIR Feature Writer It is a little girl’s paradise. Holly Hobbie, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Betsy Ross, and Benjamin Franklin live side by side with newborn dolls, double dolls, Bicentennial dolls, and just plain lovable dolls. Where could this paradise be? It is not a toy store; it is the basement of Mrs. Charles Newcomers’ Mountville Home at 100 Central Manor Road. It is in this basement that eacn doll is lovingly stitched, sturfed, and dressed. And, it is quickly evident that each one takes on a personality of its own in the process. Shirley Newcomer says she began making dolls about 25 years ago, even though she had three sons. She had moved here from Louisiana and didn’t know many people. She said, “I was new in the neighborhood and had plenty of time on my hands before my first son was bom. I made his whole layette.” As her family grew she began sewing in earnest for her boys, and also found some tune for needlepoint and embroidery. Because she had plenty of time, she said, “My mother sent me a book of gifts to make. There were dolls and bean bag patterns which I used.” Gradually she began collecting doll patterns, and turning them into the real thing. She said she makes dolls “out of almost anything, and some of them can get pretty intricate.” Many of her patterns have come from women’s magazines, and she said she feels many women don’t undertake these dolls because they must enlarge patterns from grids. She said, “It’s really easy after you’ve done it once.” Ob viously, from her collection, there’s not a doll pattern which escapes her notice. There is a lot of hand sewmg in constructing the dolls and putting heads and arms on bodies, but sometimes even the clothes require hand work. Mrs. Newcomer said, “Some of the clothing is too little to get under the sewing machine needle.” She said she saves up the hand sewmg and does it m the evening while she watches television. Her dolls are dressed completely including pan ties, petticoats, slippers and other accoutrements. But she said it was a shock for her to discover that ap parently colonial ladies did not wear panties. So, because she likes her dolls to be correct, she does not add panties to her colonial dolls. She has a set of “Little Women” dolls, made of cloth to resemble those dolls which were once made of kid. The dresses have lace and ribbons, and the pet ticoats feature tucks which serve as stiffening to make the dresses stand out. They also wear felt slippers and separate spats. Despite the delicate ap pearance of some of her dolls, Mrs. Newcomer said she makes them so they can be played with, and actually has a built-in tester m her granddaughter. She stuffs the dolls with polyster fill and says the dolls are washable and dryable. That Polls, dolls more dolls Homestead isn’t the case, of course, for the several dolls which have been topped off with real hair inkead of the yam variety. She does not always follow patterns, and shows a real touch of creativity in several of the dolls she has made. One is made to resemble a real state trooper with a uniform authentic in every detail. This will be an heirloom for her grand daughter since it is pat terned after her daughter-in law’s father also has created a doll which resembles those often pic tured on card shop paper bags. Most of the doll faces are embroidered, and in may cases they proved too small for a standard embroidery hoop. Mrs. Newcomer solved that problem by cutting out the top of an empty margarine tub and cutting the center out of the lid. When you place fabric between the two pieces it serves nicely as a miniature embroidery hoop. The Bicentennial year has been an inspiration to Mrs. Newcomer, and she dressed a wide variety of dolls for the occasion. She helped the Mountville Fire Comapny Auxiliary, of which she is a merpber, make door stop dolls to resemble Betsy Ross and Benjamin Franklin. They are authentic to the detail of having tiny scissors m Betsy’s sewing basket and spectacles on Benjamin’s face. She also dressed “Barbie” dolls as a colonial family and she made many stuffed dolls in colonial costumes. She made two well-dressed and Notes colonial dolls, one of which features a fur-lined cape and red velvet muff. Two mat ching dolls are a boy dressed in typical colonial garb and a country girl. The country girl is carrying her knitting in her apron - the knitting has been done with tooth picks. To complete her colonial doll grouping she has a newborn in a basket bed and a colonial toy doll puppet constructed as pioneer children might have made it with scraps from their mother’s sewing basket. As her real Bicentennial project, Mrs. Newcomer decided to respond to a newspaper announcement of a doll contest being coor dinated partly through the William Penn Museum in Harrisburg. The contest rules said the dolls had to be dressed as an historical Pennsylvania figure. After some thought and research, Mrs. Newcomer narrowed the wide field of possibilities to Harriet Lane, niece of Pennsylavnia’s only president, James Buchanan, and Susannah Wright, daughter of the operator of Wright’s Ferry. Mrs. Newcomer finally selected Susannah Wright because of her interesting history, although there was no pic ture available. Susannah’s father, who hailed from Lancashire, England, played a role in the naming of Lancaster, and was commissioned by the Crown to experiment with hemp. After being educated in Europe, Susannah came to this country and became the first person in America to raise silkworms. The fabric Mrs. Newcomer holds Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross, door stop dolls made and sold by members of the Mountville Fire Company Auxiliary. was spun in England, and then Susannah herself made homemade dyes to color the skilk, some of which she presented to the queen. She was interested in herbs and plants and compounded medicines. She and Ben jamin Franklin were friends, and it is said that he wrote ■the “Ode to Hospitality” "with her m mind. Yet only a few things are known about her person. She was “not pretty,” was =• small woman, rid was a Quaker c the age of 79, a.it . ... this age that Mrs. Newcomer chose to depict her. Susannah, the contest doll, is dressed as a Quaker, with an inside bonnet of white, and an outside bonnet of grey, and a grey dress. And, according to legend about the colonials, Susannah, the proper Quaker, is dressed without panties, but with silk stockings. She is wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, and Mrs. Newcomer achieved a very effective wrinkled face by stitching through the face at intervals. Despite the careful study, Susannah was not a winner in the contest. Organizers expected 50 dolls and got well over 200. There were two winners selected from the total. But Mrs. Newcomer enjoyed carrying out her Bicentennial project and seeing the other dolls entered in the contest. Mrs. Newcomer makes dolls occasionally for friends and for their friends, but she said she is really not in terested in taking orders for her little people because then “it ceases to be a hobby,” then. > in She is a member of Columbia Hospital A and gave them several doj for their Christmas baza<. many years ago. Con' sequently, she has workf with them on making othei dolls for the annual bazaar She is not l-monstratin( her work -lie Lancastei Town F.jr s she did la? year a " . a request by thi She said it is toi ..rncult to have dolls to sel and to resist people wh( want to order them. And sh< repeals again her reluctanct to go into any kind of doll making business. She does enjoy talkini about her work and in th» process of preparing foi talks she has done a little study of the background' dolls. She said dolls hav< heed' discovered int* prehistoric times, but the.' were not toys then. Rathei they were fashioned in tin image of ancestors and pu\ in graves. Since people dir not know where they wen going when they died, the; tried to put the good at tributes of their ancestors • these dolls, hoping to xnakt the way smoother. Eventually, M fS Newcomer said, dolls wen put on top of graves, bigger and bigger sizes) Eventually they were mad( full-sized and of wax in thi image of the person in th( grave. This, she said, is tin way wax museums wen begun. Mrs. Newcomer was i medical technician heron her marriage and said sh( has no formal sewmi training - except high «:hoo) sewing, “which I hated. (Continued on Page 43)
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers