She was the youngest in the family of three brothers and two much older sisters, already away at school when she was born, and her dolls were a second family. She kept them under the bed..a Bye-lo doll and the one male doll, named Woodrow Wilson.

Then came the night when the farm house burned down. It was a cold winter night, the fire was burning too high, against the Tennessee mountain winds. Not before she pulled out her dolls did she scurry to safety.

They lived with her in the temporary house on the farm, and later went with her to the city where she studied business, and later became part of her famly when she married. But there were no children to inherit the dolls, so she gave them to a niece, and she never saw them again.

Now she has a great-great niece....and together they share a new set of dolls. There is Madeline, Molly and Leslie, American Girl dolls, and "Big Baby" the great-great niece's first doll, just the size whe was when she was born. And somehow, ghosts of dolls is the Bye-lo doll and Woodrow Wilson....remembered as members of this extended multigenerational doll family.