This doll collection is unique and so is the museum that it’s housed in, for the Wenham Museum bills itself as a social history museum. What makes it different from other local museums is that its exhibits concentrate on objects possessed by those who lived, worked and played along Boston's North Shore since the 17^th Century. Through exhibits focusing on local life, including ice tools used in the mid-19th-century Wenham ice industry, it explores the lives of everyday people. And its vast doll collection shows how children, especially little girls, played.

Horton was the daughter of the Richards family who owned and occupied the Claflin-Richards House from the early 1800s until 1921, when it was purchased by the Wenham Village Improvement Society. Her home in Boston was a popular meeting place for neighborhood children, and she kept a group of her childhood toys and dolls available to entertain them. One day the children asked for the loan of these dolls to display at a fair being held for the School for Crippled Children. With an admission fee of five cents, the doll exhibit added $5 to the fair proceeds. There and then an idea was born. From then on, Horton used her collection of over 800 dolls to raise money for children's charities.

The Museum's doll collection reflects the aesthetics of dolls–the costumes and cultures of native and foreign peoples and the history of the international doll industry. The dolls offer insights into the values, manners and mores of past generations and amaze visitors with the exceedingly high quality of their manufacture and attention to detail and craftsmanship. The doll collection has expanded to include over 5,000 dolls, ranging from Egyptian burial figures from 1500 BC to 19th-Century porcelain play dolls, even "Whimsies." It also includes period dolls of from France, Germany, and England, as well as an important group of American cloth dolls and rare 19th century Native American and Inuit dolls.

What’s unique about this collection is the way Horton added to it. Being a school teacher, she had made many contacts around the world through her travels and correspondence. Horton would plan an itinerary a year in advance, pack her dolls and ship them off to be exhibited as a charitable fundraising event. Over the years, in an effort to expand her collection and give it some notoriety, Horton wrote to officials, celebrities and the crown heads of Europe to request donations to her collection. Many personalities of note responded, sending dolls dressed in the appropriate costumes of their respective cultures. The collection contains dolls from Queen Victoria, the Emperor and Empress of Japan, Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, Admiral Byrd and Cecil Rhodes, among others. It’s estimated that this energetic, imaginative and talented woman raised approximately $100,000, and press clippings from the period indicate the public's clear admiration and appreciation.

"Younger mothers with small children go for the 20^th Century dolls–the hard plastics from the 1950s, the Hollywood celebrity dolls," said Leiberman. "Older visitors, who are more interested in antiques, appreciate the dolls from the 19^th Century."

Society members worked painstakingly to save about 800 dolls from the collection, and in 1952, the dream of the Society, to build a fireproof structure to house the collection, was realized. Today, that same building has been expanded to include not only the late 17-Century Claflin-Richards House, but also over 10,000 pieces of clothing, ccessories and textiles from the Victorian Era onward, exhibited both in the house and in the museum’s galleries. In addition to objects, the museum also has a substantial photographic collection, including albums of tintypes and such from Wenham families.

"The doll, itself, was a commercially produced cloth painted doll made by the Adams Sisters, of Oswego Center, New York," said Leiberman. "Emma Adams made the dolls and her sister, Marietta, made the clothes and was the business person. They were making a popular doll at the time, which they exhibited at the Columbia Exposition in 1893 in Chicago, at which the doll received a Diploma of Merit, so they named her Columbia and sold them through all the major retail stores and catalogs."

According to Leiberman, Horton decided to pick one doll to represent her collection and she chose this Columbia doll. "She ordered one from the Adams Sisters, who made extra clothes for her," added Leiberman, "and there was a lot of hype sending off this doll on the Adams Express Train."

Miss Columbia received a lot of publicity throughout the world, circumnavigating the globe in the care of mostly teachers, but not always. She went to the Philippines and spent a couple of years there with a teacher who was sent there on a troop ship during the U.S. occupation.

Leiberman noted that Horton’s choice of an oil-painted cloth doll was no accident. "Women made cloth dolls in the 19^th Century," she said. "During that time, women, like Martha Chase of Rhode Island, had an agenda. Chase headed a group of progressives that felt that childhood needed to have nurturing dolls and not the over-precious, breakable French dolls, with skirts that were too short and outfits too elaborate. The emphasis was all on show, extravagance, and expense, and the group felt that these dolls didn’t reflect what America people and parents were about and wanted for their children."

According to Leiberman, the group wanted dolls that were slightly yielding, which cloth was, that could be loved and played with and not just kept on the shelf. So a lot of cloth doll-making women developed businesses in their homes and became quite successful. "Mrs. Horton chose to have a cloth doll represent America on this around-the-world journey because it represented a middle to upper-middle class, sensible, Republican and Protestant, and probably Congregational, child," she added. "They wanted American values to be represented abroad."

"Mrs. Horton arranged the itinerary from her end," said Leiberman. "There was always someone throughout the world to take care of the doll through Horton’s numerous contacts, who were mostly teachers."

Miss Columbia left Boston on the Adams Express Train in April, 1900, traveling west and making stops in various places before stopping in California and traveling the West Coast before boarding a troop ship for the Philippines.

In her diary, Miss Columbia wrote on her departure, "One little girl asked me if I were not afraid to go by myself on the long long journey & seemed to feel very sorry for me until I told her I was glad to go knowing I should meet with kind people everywhere who would send me where they thought best all over the United States perhaps & then across the ocean."

Miss Columbia journeyed across the continent and then boarded a ship to circle the world. Her mission was to continue Horton's charitable work for needy children, and in the process to create a history for herself. Columbia's appearances on her trip would be free to anyone who requested her presence. The only stipulation attached was that at each of her stopping places a tag was to be placed on her dress telling the circumstances of her exhibition and how much money she had raised.