Parting with a prized possession

New home for century-old doll in Alberton Museum

A McAlduff family keepsake is taking up a new residence at the Alberton Museum.

Museum manager Arlene Morrison visited siblings Frances and Alvah McAlduff recently to accept a doll that had been in the Prince Edward Island family since 1899.

Ethel Carter was five years old when, while attending the St. Simon and St. Jude Parish Picnic in Tignish, a priest won the doll and turned it over to her.

“You can imagine the excitement of your mother getting a doll,” marvelled Morrison, who said she’s found a special place in a toy case to display the heirloom. The doll, with its porcelain face and hands and body made of kidskin and cloth was so special that Carter kept it tucked away in a trunk. It travelled with her when she married and moved to Alberton in 1919.

Her daughter, Frances McAlduff, knew about the doll in the trunk but was instructed not to touch it.

“You have your own doll,” she was told. The doll eventually became hers and stayed tucked away until the 1990s. By then, its silk dress had disintegrated. Local seamstress Bessie Pridham made her a replacement dress, matching bonnet and felt boots.

McAlduff decided the century-old doll was too precious to hide away so she kept it on display, thinking she would eventually entrust it to the museum. “We’re getting old,” she said in explaining her decision to part with it now.

“It’s not to play with,” she added, acknowledging it will be on display but out of reach.

“There’s no better place for it than to have somebody view it.” Will she miss it?

“It’s got sentimental (value),” she replied.