'Eva' doll, Washington, D.C., ca. 1865
Margaret Olson, a nurse in a Washington, D.C., hospital during the Civil War, made this doll with the aid of several wounded soldiers. One soldier carved the hands from a soup bone and another gave money to purchase the China doll head. The clothes are made from hospital materials – gauze and muslin. A cobbler in the hospital made the shoes. The nurse and patients named the doll "Eva" after "Little Eva," a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The doll was passed on to Olson's daughter, Wilhelmina Olson Simonton of Falmouth.