Kirsten Larson moved to Minnesota in 1854 at age 9 when her family left Sweden. That year, she lost a friend to cholera, made friends with a Dakota girl, stole animal pelts from a dead fur trapper, struggled to learn English in school and let a raccoon into her family’s house, causing it to burn down.
Kirsten is an American Girl doll. She also is an icon for many Minnesota girls who grew up with the American Girl line of dolls in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, along with its catalogs and books describing a year in the life of each fictional girl.
The dolls have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years — they were the subject of a Saturday Night Live skit in 2023 — and have become popular collector’s items and transitioned smoothly from historical fiction to the modern vernacular of memes.
But Kirsten and the other American Girl dolls represent far more than all that, Mary Mahoney, a historian, an author and co-host of the podcast “Dolls of Our Lives,” said Saturday at a Minnesota History Center program tied to the visiting “Girlhood (It’s complicated)” exhibit.
“Things like this matter so much because people need to see themselves in the past to feel like they matter,” Mahoney said after her talk, which was attended by dozens of people and more than a few dolls — mostly Kirstens.
Bridges to the past
American Girl debuted in 1986. Besides Kirsten, the early dolls included Molly, who grew up during World War II; Addy, whose family escaped slavery and rebuilt their lives in Philadelphia; Samantha, a Victorian-era orphan; and Felicity, a Revolutionary War-era girl.
The American Girl company has since added more dolls, including 2024′s doll of the year: Lila, a gymnast from St. Paul.
Mahoney and her friend Allison Horrocks discovered a mutual love of American Girl in a history Ph.D program at the University of Connecticut. Both identify as Mollys.