Rowland, desired to create a doll that focused on girlhood and made history interesting and fun to learn.
It was also the birthplace and early home of Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), and the scene of much of her Story of a New England Girlhood (Boston, 188q).
The company's aim is to "encourage them [girls] to enjoy girlhood through fun and enchanting play."
An Idyl of Work (1875) describes the life of the mills and A New England Girlhood (1889) is autobiographical; she wrote many stories and poems, of which Hannah Binding Shoes is best known.
Her girlhood was passed at Ismailovo near Moscow, with her mother, an ignorant, bigoted tsaritsa of the old school, who neglected and even hated her daughters.