According to our present ideas, playthings for children in colonial time were few in number, save the various ones they manufactured for themselves. They played more games, and had fewer toys than modern children. In 1712, on the list of rich goods brought into Boston by a privateersman and sold there, were "Boxes of Toys." In 1743 the Boston News Letter advertised "Dutch and English Toys for Children," and Mr. Ernst says Boston had a flourishing toy shop at that date. Other towns did not, as we know from many shipping orders.
An Old Doll
The Toy Shop or Sentimental Preceptor, one of Newbery's books, gives a list of toys which the young English scholar sought; they are a looking-glass, a "spying glass," a "fluffed dog," a pocket-book, a mask, a drum, a doll, a watch, a pair of scales. Few of these articles named would really be termed toys. Some of the games already alluded to, such as top-spinning, hoop-rolling, and the various games of ball, required toys to carry them on; but they seemed to fall into classification more naturally in the chapter on games than in this one.
An Old Doll
I have often been asked whether the first childish girl emigrants to this solemn new world had the comfort of dolls. They certainly had something in the semblance of a doll, though far removed from the radiant doll creatures of this day; little puppets, crude and shapeless, yet ever beloved symbols of maternity, have been known to children in all countries and all ages; dolls are as old as the world and human life. In the tombs of Attica are found classic dolls, of ivory and terra-cotta, with jointed legs and arms. Sad little toys are these; for their human guardians are scattered dust. Dolls were called puppets in olden times, and babies. In the Gentleman's Magazine, London, September, 1751, is an early use of the word doll, "Several dolls with different dresses made in St. James Street have been sent to the Czarina to show the manner of dressing at present in fashion among English ladies." This circulation of dressed dolls as fashion transmitters was a universal custom. Fashion-plates are scarce more than a century old in use. Dolls were sent from house to house, from town to town, from country to country, and even to a new continent.