An Antique Estate Sale in Kershaw, SC

During the summer of 2020 I enjoyed the excitement of by best antique doll find on an estate sale road trip to Kershaw, SC. Kershaw lies 30 minutes north of Camden on highway 601. The estate sale in Kershaw was kind of an excuse for me to take a road trip, visit family along the way, and do some site seeing.

Visiting Camden, SC near Kershaw

The historical character of the small town of Camden added to my motivation to attend an interesting antique estate tag sale in nearby Kershaw. I decided that after the sale in the morning, I could head back south toward Camden to eat lunch and walk around some of the town’s historic sites. Sometimes, the best part of road trip estate sales happens after the sale.

Camden, the county seat of Kershaw County, is the oldest inland town in South Carolina established back in 1732. I had a limited amount of time to site-see but I made sure I walked downtown to see some of the historic homes stopping last by the Revolutionary War Visitor Center.

Driving out of the city in the afternoon I briefly stopped to see the Camden battlefield site, which is better toured when it’s not so hot outside and you have time for hiking.

The Estate Sale in Kershaw

Ellie’s Attic organized and managed the estate sale in a home that once served as a doctor’s office for the Brewer family, whose historic family home sat next door. I found the ads for the sale from EstateSales.net. The organizers of the sale told me that the extended family brought things together for the estate sale.

What drew me to make the long drive lay in the photos of the antiques that waited for us when the door opened the morning of the sale. The photos online revealed antique toys and dolls that looked as if they got pulled out of attic storage boxes. Bisque head dolls of various sizes in old clothes lay on tables and sat in chairs.

Gas being much more affordable that summer, I didn’t blink twice at the thought of making the trip. Being new to antique dolls and having a desire to learn first hand, I really wanted the opportunity to obtain antique dolls that had probably never seen any modern doll doctor or had repair. The images of the sale projected the possibility of such a find.

Arriving Early to the Estate Sale

To have the chance to get the antique dolls, I had to get there early. So I packed my car with practicals for a road trip, called a friend and relative who live along the route, and filled up the gas tank to set out the day before the sale.

I arrived late at night and was the first in line until a neighbor came out with a flashlight shining in my face wanting to know what in the world I was doing. Unfortunately the estate sale organizer had not put out any signs to give the neighbors the heads up that a line of cars would eventually be lined up along their street. Except for the massive trucks riding straight through the middle of town in what looked like a residential neighborhood, Kershaw seemed like a very small kind of quiet southern town.

I decided to drive away and come back later, but unfortunately someone else came and put me second in line at the door. LOL. I should have stayed and not worried about that anxious flashlight waving neighbor. To estate sale enthusiast with a target in mind, it’s so much easier being first in line. Luckily the man who got to go in first was after the antique silverware on sale, not the dolls! Whew.

Antique Doll Prizes at the Estate Sale

Tons of folks stood in line that morning. The sun overhead struck us quite intensely, I remember, as we regretted no shade trees or porch shade for the wait. The longer I waited the more anxious I became that I might not find the dolls and lose them to a smarter sale attendee who knew how to navigate the house.

Believe or not, someone who had helped set up for the sale stood in line with me. She told me where the

dolls lay in the house and when they opened the door she started giving me directions. “Go left here and through the hall, now go back to the dining room because there are more in there.” I happened to scoop up every piece of bisque I could find and even had time to pick up a 1911 Horsman Campbell Soup Kid and an antique German papier mache Easter egg.

Overpaying for the Dolls

But when you rush through a sale to grab the items you forget to look at the price tags. No one has time to ponder the price tag when so many are walking in from behind you possibly looking for the same items.

I lay all the dolls I collected on the table to pay and asked for prices. Half the dolls had no price and I hated to relinquish them. The total made my stomach turn, but I paid. I kind of over paid, but the desire to learn about the dolls and have them in their attic storage condition drove me to dish it out.

After I paid for the dolls and got them into the car, I returned inside the house to enjoy browsing through the sale without anxiety. Found a rare collectible LIFE magazine with Audrey Hepburn that I sold on eBay to help pay for the gas cost of the road trip. While browsing I enjoyed overhearing two men negotiating with one another the buying and selling of an antique toy pistol. The first guy had arrived to get it and then the guy behind him offered to buy it from him for profit.  Evidently is was a bigger prize than any of the dolls I found.

Examining the Antique Dolls After the Estate Sale

After the sale I could relax, take my time, site-see, and find a place where I could look more closely at the dolls I had snatched up from the sale. I snapped several pictures of their faces and posted them in a Facebook doll group to get help identifying them.

Among the lot lay a German BSW doll with no heart around the BSW. A couple of small all bisque wire jointed dollhouse dolls landed in my basket along with a Norah Wellings doll, a couple of china head dolls, a few kid leather German shoulder head dolls, a small papier mache doll, and one doll with a bisque head in all her original clothes with a Sonneberg composition jointed body. Sonneberg is not a word I knew then, but now when I look back at the photos I recognize it with her elongated wooden thighs. Wish I had known it then. All of them had different marks and one tiny kid leather body doll had a shoulder head with a full dome. I had a hunch she might be special and wish now I had held onto her.

Antique Item with Kershaw Family Provenance

Yet, despite the numerous dolls the most intriguing item I picked up at the estate sale in Kershaw was not a doll, but an antique victorian doll trunk.

Inside I found lots of hand sewn doll clothes. Most of them for doll house size dolls made in such a way to give away the lack of skill of a young seamstress. I wrote in the description that there was a “vintage Sparrows candy box from Massachusetts, a paper cut out of a young girl, a ribbon tag with the words ‘Presbyterian S. S. MORE’ on it, a dollhouse pillow, a dollhouse pillow cover, beginnings of a dollhouse quilt (it seems), and so much more”

The Date of March 13, 1900

One of the fun items was a little sock. The small sock had a poem written on it that read:

“At the Academy Tuesday Night MCH. 13, 1900 This little sock I give to you, Is not for you to wear; Please multiply your size by two And place therein with care, In pennies or in cents, just Twice the number that you wear, (We hope it is immense). So if you wear a No. 10, You owe us twenty, see? Which dropped within the sock, Will fill our hearts with glee. ‘Tis all we ask: it isn’t much, And hardly any trouble, But if you have only one foot We’ll surely charge you double. Now if you have a friend quite dear Or if you know someone who’d come We will gladly give you two. So don’t forget the place and date, We’ll answer when you knock, And welcome you with open arms – But Don’t Forget the Sock!”

The doll trunk started feeling more valuable when I read the date of March 13, 1900 on the item.

The Monogram

Historical family provenance had showed up in this find. The story of provenance grew when my eyes caught sight of a piece of fabric with the hand stitched initials of K.H.B.

Because the estate sale was the Brewer family I assumed the B stood for Brewer. All those small antique doll dresses drew a picture in my imagination of a little girl years ago enjoying the dolls that now lay in my car.

Curious and loving the opportunity to get more facts for the doll trunk’s provenance story, I decided to find out who K.H.B. was. Kershaw being such a small town I decided I could probably easily find the local cemetery where the Brewer family ancestors might be buried. If I could find the Kershaw lots, maybe someone with the initials K.H.B. could be found. Since the dolls were turn of the century dolls, I would be searching for a woman born just before the turn of the century, probably.  I was also keeping in mind the small sock item with the date of March 13, 1900.

The Local Kershaw Cemetery

Using the website Find a Grave, I found the cemetery with the Brewer family. It lay just outside of town not too far away. Once there it took no time at all before I located the names of the family and there among them was a stone with the name Katherine Haile Brewer born 1895. Bingo. I stood and stared at the small stone. She was a child among the others because she passed away in 1906 probably 11 years old. Now all those little doll items seemed sadly more preciously endearing.

The Antique Doll I Kept

Of all the dolls, I eventually sold all but one of the dolls over the course of the next year. A small papier mache head doll with a coarse stuffed body remains with me today. I decided I didn’t want to sell this small souvenir of a great trip. She wears a simple handmade dress that reminds of the little hand-sewn items in Katherine’s doll trunk. The doll brings me to remember that once upon a time small hands spent time trying to make her own doll clothes.  Though her life was short, some precious hand sewn evidence of Katherine’s love for her dolls remained to brighten up the life of some modern doll collector.

It’s been two years, and I’ve never enjoyed such a great antique doll find like that in my area of the world since.