Rare dolls exhibited at Perkins House

COLFAX - Perkins House Volunteer Jill Gfeller was fighting a bad case of COVID-19 when she came across a rare set of historical dolls on eBay.

Gfeller explained that the dolls were created by four sisters from Independence, Missouri, who had an uncle named William Webbe, the first illustrator for the author Charles Dickens, inspiring "The Original Dickens Dolls," handmade in the 1940s and 1950s.

Gfeller said the dolls were hard to come by, but she pulled up eBay and found as many as possible.

"A third of my dolls or more came from a young man and his mother who had just cleaned out his grandma...