Auburn-haired Pollyanna has made a six-decade round-trip to end up where she first started — at the Red Deer Advocate.

The pretty 63-cm (25-inch) composition doll was purchased for posterity on Sunday by Advocate publisher Fred Gorman, on behalf of the newspaper, after a private owner put her up for auction.

The doll in her original blue-and-yellow bonnet and dress will either be donated to the Red Deer Museum or eventually be displayed at the Advocate’s Bremner Avenue office — along with other historic artifacts, such as old Advocate cookbooks.

“We’re looking at the two different options,” said Gorman, who bid $650 to bring Pollyanna home because she’s part of Central Alberta’s history.

For many years, the doll was the treasured possession of Markerville-area resident Helen Anderson, who won her in a Red Deer Advocate subscription contest in about 1951.

The Advocate first started offering fully-dressed, wigged dolls with moving eyes in 1929 to little girls who could sign up or renew 10 annual newspaper subscriptions.

The promotion was a huge success — in that first year, no fewer than 105 large dolls were awarded, along with 19 smaller dolls for girls who sold fewer than 10 subscriptions.

By 1939, the offer had been expanded to include prizes of skates, skis, blankets and boots. And the Advocate had accumulated 4,200 subscribers at a time when the city’s population was only 3,000 and another 4,000 people lived in the region.

Anderson entered the contest when she was already a young mother — perhaps because she never had the chance to have any nice dolls while growing up on a farm during the Great Depression.

She doesn’t remember it being a big problem signing up newspaper subscribers.

“I asked my in-laws and relatives and good neighbours, and I went to the post office to find out who didn’t get the Advocate,” recalled Anderson. She was so thrilled to receive the doll, she immediately named her Pollyanna and removed all her original clothes so they wouldn’t get ruined. “I dressed her in frilly baby clothes instead,” she recalled.

Pollyanna, who survived three house moves, sat on a trunk at the end of an upstairs hallway for many years. She was out of the sun, which is why Anderson believes her doll’s vibrant colouring didn’t deteriorate. “Also, nobody in the family smoked,” said her son, Phillip Anderson, who with his brother had no interest in playing with the doll.

Phillip recalled his mother “freaked out” once when a neighbourhood girl picked up Pollyanna and began undressing her.

Helen remembers thinking that a few moments of careless play could cause indelible damage — which was smart thinking, since Red Deer historian Michael Dawe believes most Advocate dolls likely did not survive playtime.

Given that the dolls were given out over 25 years, to the early 1950s, Dawe believes hundreds would have been in the hands of little girls. Yet, Dawe has never before seen one turn up that was identified as an Advocate doll — although a pair of girl’s skates, won through the subscription contest, are in the Red Deer Museum’s collection.

Part of the problem is that there was no Advocate label on the dolls, so unless someone knew their history, the dolls would look like any others, he said.

Helen, now in her late 80s, had no daughters to pass Pollyanna to, so she decided to put the large doll on the block at the Cherry Hill Auction before moving into an Innisfail lodge. “I’m so happy she’s going to a good home.”

Returning to the Advocate “is the best place for her,” she added.

lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com