A Clothespin Doll for Clara

Willow Creek, Idaho—James A. Smith and his wife, Annie Sellars Smith, left their home in Utah and settled in Willow Creek, about twelve miles northeast of Idaho Falls, in 1886. Their eight-year-old daughter, Mamie, took a special interest in her younger sister, Clara, and the two played together endlessly. Mamie was heartbroken this Christmas to think that little Clara would not get a doll. The little family was snowbound and their Christmas celebration would consist of homemade candy, apples, a cheerful fire and music.

Christmas morning found a little doll, neatly and beautifully dressed, in her little sister's stocking. Mamie had taken a long clothespin from her mother's peg sack and had spent hours in hemming, folding, dyeing, tying, painting and padding a doll for Clara so her Christmas cry in the morning would be one of gladness, not of disappointment. Clara Smith DeMott always cherished the memory of her first doll and of the happiness it brought and the never-to-be-forgotten loving sister who made her first doll from a clothespin.

Deon Smith Seedall, Treasures of Pioneer History, 4:201–2