Her line of Ella Smith dolls became one of the hottest-selling toys in the early decades of the 1900s.
She was a seamstress, and she worked in repairing porcelain bisque dolls, eventually finding a way to make a virtually indestructible version.
She patented her invention in 1901, and she introduced the dolls at the 1904 World's Fair, winning a blue ribbon.
Her family was residing in Roanoke, Alabama, when she was born.
She was selling her Alabama for as little as $1.15 a half a century before Eliot and Ruth Handler created their Barbie dolls.
