Somewhere in Time~ Lori Roberts: How A Doll Was Created From a Tragedy

This week, I finished a simulation with my 8th grade United States History Classes. We spent 3 weeks in various wagon trains traveling along the Oregon Trail in the year 1845. The classes had to pack a wagon, become part of a wagon train, and make decisions that affected the lives of them and their families.
It was interesting to see the deliberations at wagon train meetings. Many lost children to cholera, dysentery, and fevers. Others were injured in mishaps along the trail, taken from real life scenarios.
While it was fun and games for the students to take a break from the textbook to learn about the pioneers who ventured west for a better life, it was also sobering for them to realize how hard these pioneers had it. No modern medicine to cure even the simplest of ailments. We discussed the lack of modern medicines, immunizations, and antibiotics.
It is hard to imagine that childhood illnesses that were once deadly have become a thing of the past thanks to immunizations given at birth through pre-teenage years. That is, until recently. While I am not going to cast blame on parents who chose not to immunize their children, I will say that many of the diseases we didn't see for years are making a comeback. That brings me to the jest of this post.
When I was a small child, my parents bought me Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls. I had dolls that were my 'baby' dolls, but these were always in my bed at night. I usually kept them beside me, as it took me awhile to fall asleep.
I never knew the story behind them, only that there were books about them and they seemed to fall out of popularity as I grew older. My mother bought my granddaughter one for her first Christmas, and that prompted me to get mine out of storage and display them.
It was just this week that I learned one of the legends behind the creation of these much-loved dolls. It will connect the earlier comments of immunizations. Bear with me! :

Raggedy Ann is a character created by American writer Johnny Gruelle (1880–1938) in a series of books he wrote and illustrated for young children. Raggedy Ann is a rag doll with red yarn for hair and has a triangle nose. Johnny Gruelle received US Patent D47789 for his Raggedy Ann doll on September 7, 1915. The character was created in 1915 as a doll, and was introduced to the public in the 1918 book Raggedy Ann Stories. When a doll was marketed with the book, the concept had great success. A sequel, Raggedy Andy Stories (1920) introduced the character of her brother, Raggedy Andy, dressed in sailor suit and hat. Gruelle created Raggedy Ann for his daughter, Marcella, when she brought him an old hand-made rag doll and he drew a face on it. From his bookshelf, he pulled a book of poems by James Whitcomb Riley, and combined the names of two poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie." He said, "Why don't we call her Raggedy Ann?"[1]

Marcella died at age 13, shortly after being vaccinated at school for smallpox without her parents' consent. Authorities blamed a heart defect, but her parents blamed the vaccination. Gruelle became an opponent of vaccination, and the Raggedy Ann doll was used as a symbol by the anti-vaccination movement.[2]

Raggedy Ann dolls were originally handmade. Later, PF Volland, a Gruelle book publisher, made the dolls. In 1935 Volland ceased operation and Ann and Andy were made under Gruelle's permission by Exposition Dolls.

This is an original Raggedy Ann from 1915.