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KINGSTON — Though she was born nine years before Raggedy Ann was patented by an Indianapolis newspaper artist, Suzanne C. Kenyon, who died Thursday, was known as the “Raggedy Ann lady” having made thousands of the dolls even up until just months before her 103 birthday on June 17.

People lined up at Kingston’s Fayerweather Craft Guild’s annual Christmas bazaar to get one of the dolls she handcrafted, sewing the loopy hair strands by the light of her living room lamp. In the daytime, she would sew sitting beside her dining room window using sunlight as her guide. She told a reporter in 2005 when she was 99 that though her eye doctor prescribed sewing glasses, “I don’t use ‘em too often.”

Using the Singer purchased by her husband in 1952, she constructed the doll parts, soon filling up her dining room table with doll arms, legs, dresses and aprons. She said she bought her first pattern for 50 cents, and the last one was $9.50 and said she was self-taught sewer. She guessed she started sewing, she said, during World War I when she made scarves for the soldiers......
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