Portia Sperry designed, produced, and sold this cloth doll with the help of a network of local farmwomen in her rural Indiana community in the early 1930s. The Abigail doll was dressed in the print dress, apron, and sunbonnet of a pioneer woman and was the first of two dolls the women created. A resourceful entrepreneur, Sperry persuaded the Marshall Field department store in Chicago, IL to sell the dolls and the Quaker Oat company to donate boxes for shipping them. Her efforts brought thousands of dollars to the women of Brown County, Indiana during the Great Depression.