Nell Brantley, Doll Collector and Girl Hero, 1914

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

On 23 November 1914, The Atlanta Georgian ran a huge photograph of Nell Brantley and her doll. She had won the doll in one of the newspaper's contests, but that is not why they were featured in the article.  The previous May, Nell's house at 152 Forrest Ave. in Atlanta caught on fire, and she was the first person in the household to realize they were in danger. Some accounts claim that she ran to her mother and reported the fire. Then she ran to a bedroom where her convalescing sister was and began carrying her nephews out of the house and laying them in the yard one by one. Another account claims she had one child climb on her back and grabbed the other two and took them all out at the same time, which would have been a staggering feat for a ten-year-old. In reality, she rescued two nephews and a niece all under the age of five or six. Then she returned to help rescue her mother and sister. Her older brother Emmet and a passerby named Clarence Williams were also involved in helping the adults get out of the burning house. Realizing that her little dog was still in the house, Nell returned for him and grabbed her six dolls, which were in a box under the bed. One account has her staggering out of the house with just the dog and returning for an arm full of dolls while another has her bringing the dog and box of dolls out at the same time. In both accounts, she battles through choking smoke to go back upstairs for them. An account, that was published just after the fire, related that she then turned back to reenter the house and rescue the canaries, but a fireman grabbed her and stopped her.

My mother pointed out that houses burned more slowly then, so Nell would have had plenty of time to rescue her family, dolls, and dog. Houses were made of wood and most of the windows were open all the time. Children were trained to hang their clothes with the hooks going over the rod so that they could grab their meager wardrobes on the way out.  

While the details of the event vary from account to account, the one constant is that Nell received a gold medal from the Ralston Hero Commission of St. Louis for saving the lives of her two nephews and niece. 

So far, I have only been able to locate one article from the time of the fire. 

This article was picked up from an Atlanta paper that originally published the account on May 23, 1914, which would place the fire on May 22.

Other papers later published a photograph of Nell and her little dog Togo. This one is from The Detroit Times of 3 June 1914. 

Nell's full name was Vera Nell Brantley. She was the daughter of Joseph and Mary Oma (Davis) Brantley. By 1910, her father was deceased. Most of the older children had moved out by the time fire. However, her older sister Johnnie Louise (Brantley) Sullivan and her three children were also living in the household. 

Nell had won her doll from The Atlanta Georgian newspaper, which ran a contest for boys and girls to win Christmas toys in 1913, specifically dolls and teddy bears for girls and tricycles, trains, and rocking horses for boys.  

Nell's name appears in the lists of children who were competing for prizes, evidently, she won one of the dolls. Given its large size, perhaps 30" or more, I think it would have been one of the more expensive dolls.

However, this was not Nell's first contest. The Atlanta Georgian frequently ran contests that involved getting "votes" that were tied to subscriptions and "votes" or points varied based on whether they came from existing subscribers or subscribers. 

One list of entrants reveals that little Nell Brantley was a "newsie" or newspaper carrier. 

In this contest from the spring of 1913, children were competing to win a Shetland pony and outfit, which seems to have varied from a pony cart to a saddle. Vera Nell Brantley appears in District No. 1 throughout the lists that were published as the contest unfolded. One list places her address as 31 Alexander, which is different from the address at 152 Forrest Ave, where the family was found a year later when their house burned. 

The Brantleys don't seem to have lived at 31 Alexander for long. 

The seven room house was for rent in December of 1912, and occupied a month later.

It is not hard to imagine an enterprising widow swapping her sewing skills for music lessons for her children. I believe that the occupants were Oma Brantley and family. 

For most of the Pony Outfit Contest, Nell Brantley's name appears as one of the top contenders in District one. Then about the time her name is dropped from the list this advertisement appeared.

I am not sure exactly how the Brantleys figured out this vote exchange would work to their advantage, but someone did the math and calculated that Nell would probably not be able to win in the newsie category, but that if they exchanged their votes, one of her siblings could win as a school child. This seems to have been within the rules. Shortly afterward, Nell's sister Helen Brantley appears on the contest list for District one, and she won. Of the dozen Shetland ponies to be given away, she would have the sixth choice.

Remember the prize was a Shetland pony and outfit. This was a much more complicated prize than a large doll. The pony would have had to be stabled and fed at great expense to a family that appeared to be struggling. So, why did they work so hard to win it, even going to the trouble and expense of placing an ad so that they could exchange votes?

It appears that the Brantleys never intended to keep the pony. It was put up for sale almost as soon as they gained possession of it.

By December of 1913, Nell was competing in District No. 4 in The Atlanta Georgian's Christmas toy contest. I think this is an indication that the family had moved, probably to the house on Forrest Ave. that burned later. 

In December of 1913, Helen Brantley also won The Atlanta Georgian's Great Want Ad Contest, which was a two-person tour to California. The Brantleys must have liked what they saw in California because the family eventually relocated there. 

In late May 1914, the house on Alexander St. was available to rent again, and I wonder if the Brantleys moved back there after the Forrest Ave. house fire.

Vera Nell  Brantley went on to have a brief career in California as a silent film actress in the early 1920s. 

Her films included, Darwin Was Right, Fast Fightin', Cyclone Saddle, and White Thunder. She was then married briefly to John Hugh White, and they had one son Jay Hugh White. I don't know if Nell was widowed or divorced.

Her next husband was "Buddy" Jackler. They were married for decades and lived in Palm Springs, California. Nell played golf often, and she and Buddy were occasionally photographed for the society pages. In the picture below, from 1978, Nell (Brantley) Jackler is the second from the left. 

Won't You Dress This Doll?

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

In the early 1900s, dolls mostly appeared in newspapers as line drawings rendered for store advertisements at Christmas time. They tend to be blurry and lacking in detail. 

A photograph of a doll in a newspaper was extremely rare. However, The Atlanta Georgian enthusiastically published photographs of dolls in connection with their pet project: The Empty Stocking Fund. The purpose of the fund was to raise money to buy toys for the underprivileged children of Atlanta. Dolls figured prominently in that effort. They were used in articles about fundraising endeavors, they were dressed and sold at auction, and they were given to poor children. The actual fundraising efforts ran the gamut from youth theater productions to what appears to have something bordering on burlesque shows to concerts to bazaars where doll clothes were sold. There seem to have been a couple of activities each week during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Fund purchased new unclothed dolls in bulk, which would have saved a substantial amount of money, and then prevailed upon the girls and women of Atlanta to donate their fabrics and time to make clothes for the dolls. This doll seems to have come with stockings and shoes, which would have made her a little pricier than a barefoot doll. 

This appeal to the women of Atlanta to rush to the newspaper to pick up a doll to dress was published in The Atlanta Georgian on 3 December 1914 and written from the doll's point of view. Its depiction of the dolls' possible fate is a bit drastic, but the call to dress the doll pulls at the heartstrings. 

Won't You Dress This Doll and Brighten Some Little Girl's Christmas?

Told To The Christmas Editor.

I am a doll--as yet undressed and unadorned. I am doomed to be forever the chattel and bond slave of some child. No thoughts of suffrage or equal rights ever come to me, for my lot is foreordained, and I accept it.

But I am content. I would not swap my fate to be Queen of the Carnival. For I was created that a child might be happy.

I will grow old early. My hair will disappear--not in single strands, one by one, but at one fell swoop, like the scalp of an Indian's victim. I expect that my nose will be cracked before long, and my eyes punched in.

But it will not be through neglect. No. I will be loved as tenderly as ever, in spite of my mishaps and mutiliation. I will be all in all to some little girl, who will hug me with a fierce devotion as long as there is a scrap of sawdust left to be hugged. I am glad.

I am the spirit of Christmas. I am happiness incarnate. And because I have been selected as a gift to one of the children of Atlanta's poor, I am likewise a symbol of charity. And again I am glad.

But it is not well that I go to my little mistress unclothed. It may be that I am destined for a home whose children themselves are cold for lack of clothing, and in which there is little brightness and attractiveness. Will you not clothe me?

Won't you please put a bit of ribbon at my throat and my waist, and make for me a little dress, perhaps with a scrap of lace here and there, so that I may go forth gloriously to my mistress on 
Christmas Day and make her doubly happy?

It will be indeed the finest charity if you will dress me and my sisters who are at The Georgian office. I do ot ask it through vanity, but I ask it because by making me more beautiful you lighten the gloom that has settled about the heart of the little girl to whom I am going, and that may taint her spirit forever. A little child is so sensitive, so impressionable. I who am only a doll know that. I know that when the soul and the heart of a child are concerned you must be more careful than you would with my fragile body.

Even as I am now, unclothed and ashamed of it, the little girl to whom I am going will be glad to have me. But dressed as the practiced hands of girls and women can dress me, I will transport my little mistress into a heaven of happiness, where she will remain for many blissful days and weeks, forgetting the poverty and misery about her, and thinking the wholesome, wonderful, fairy thoughts that all little girls should think.

So, won't you dress me?

I am at the office of The Atlanta Georgian, No. 20 East Alabama street, together with a great many other dolls that the Empty Stocking Fund is buying. Think of it, and if you are interested, send your check to the Christmas Editor.