Object Record
Images
Additional Images [2]
Metadata
Object Name |
Doll |
Caption |
22" doll |
Description |
22" doll from about 1912. Original long hair, calfskin body with cloth legs, porcelain head with blue eyes that open and close, open mouth with four teeth. Porcelain head is marked "Dep.10.195". Labels on chest read "Celebrate", "Germany", "Cork Stuffed". Doll is wearing an original lace trimmed dress, slip & bloomers, but newer bootie type shoes, and has a single ribbon in her hair. Belonged to donor's mother-in-law Mildred Jerabek Robertson (b.1907). Donor notes: The doll was purchased by Jan J. Jerabek, the owner of the general store in Silver Lake, MN, for the Christmas season. The doll didn't sell and so after much cajoling Mildred's father John S. Jerabek, son of John J. Jerabek, gave in to the pleas of his five year old daughter, and let her keep it. It would have been a toy for a prosperous family at the time and that's probably why it didn't sell in Silver Lake. John S. Jerabek (b.1865) immigrated from Moravia and came to Silver Lake with his father Jan J. Jerabek in 1874. John S. married Julia Bren in 1893. Mildred Jerabek Robertson was his sixth child and she became a public school music teacher. The John S. Jerabeks were a remarkable immigrant family. They lived most of their lives in Silver Lake, with the exception of 1911-1916, when they resided in Hutchinson in order to provide their children with a high school education. Of ten children, all but one got college degrees and three of them earned PhDs, two taught at universities, one was an architect, two were engineers, one a journalist, one a teacher and one a legal secretary. Remarkable considering that they never had much money growing up. Those Czechs were hard workers. Esther Jerabek was the second child of John S. Jerabek and Julia Bren. Esther worked at the Minnesota Historical Society both before and after she got her PhD. She did a lot of writing about the Czechs in Silver Lake. She had to learn Czech all over again to do her research, including learning the cyrillic alphabet, because as soon as the Jerabek children went to school all they wanted to speak was English, even though their parents continued to speak Czech at home. |
Catalog Number |
2016-0062-001 |
Search Terms |
Dolls Jerabek Family |
Subjects |
Dolls |
People |
Jerabek, Mildred Robertson, Mildred Jerabek |