Three Generations of Dolls

I've put a new wig on my baby doll twice now-- she's over 50 and deserves to look nice. Her name is Betsy Lou and my parents gave her to me when I was two years old. I took her in to a doll hospital about 7 years ago because I had misplaced her original blue and white pinafore dress and I wanted to display her. The lady who owned the job, said she wasn't of value, but cleaned her up, put on new hair and outfitted her in a beautiful winter outfit.


A couple of years later I decided to restore my mother's and grandmother's dolls. Each doll was in pieces and looked like they were beyond repair. Again I was told the dolls were worthless and that I shouldn't bother to fix them up. When I finally had the money to repair them, the doll hospital had closed. A few years later I searched the Internet.




I found Debra's Dolls in New Jersey. She did an excellent job in restoring the dolls. I now have three generations of dolls to display. I wish I knew my mother's and grandmother's doll's names, but I never asked--and when mom and grandma were alive, the dolls were just doll pieces in a box.




Anyway, grandma Bessie (Ginkens) Bear's doll on the left is an Armand Marseille German Bisque Doll made in Thuringia, Germany, circa 1885-1905 (with original clothing); the doll on the right, Ila (Bear) Geyer's doll, is an Ernst Heubach #312 marked with sunburst and "Kapplesdorf, circa 1920." I'm sure glad that I found Debra.