top of page

Fun Facts About American Girl Dolls Kirsten, Julie, Addy, Kit and Josefina

Writer's picture: AdminAdmin

American Girl put up webpages for Kirsten, Julie, Addy, Kit and Josefina, each with never-before heard facts about these dolls! Here they are:


  • One of the outfits that was sold for Kirsten was a housecoat and sockor, or wool slippers. The sockor for the Kirsten doll were handmade by a woman in Sweden beginning in 1987 for twenty years.

  • In Pleasant Rowland’s original business plan, Kirsten was named Rebecca, and was a Norwegian immigrant in 1865.

  • The team who created Kirsten did a lot of research with the Minnesota and Wisconsin Historical Societies, who had a lot of information about the Swedish settlers who came to these states in the 1800s.

  • To learn more about what Josefina’s life would have been like, author Valerie Tripp spent two summers in New Mexico. She visited living history museums and interviewed elderly New Mexican women about the daily lives of Hispanic families and children in rural New Mexico.

  • The models for Josefina’s home were la El Rancho de las Golondrinas near Santa Fe and Hacienda de los Martinez near Taos, NM. Both are former ranchos from Josefina’s time and now living history museums that you can visit today.

  • Josefina’s first and last names are drawn from the New Mexican censuses of 1790 and 1823.

  • Although Josefina is actually a Mexican citizen, the advisory board felt comfortable calling her an “American girl” because her story presents a history and heritage that’s an integral part of America today.

  • By the end of her series, Josefina has a new mother. This plot element symbolizes the change for the Spanish settlers of New Mexico and the Southwest, who lost their mother country of Mexico when they became citizens of the United States, their new mother country.

  • Researchers on Addy confirmed when the full moon would have been during Addy and her mother’s escape from enslavement in 1864 to ensure historical accuracy in the timing.

  • The museum program, Addy at Ohio Village, debuted in 1998.

  • The dialect used in the Addy books was created by author Connie Porter to be a balance between what speech of the time would’ve sounded like and what is accessible for young readers and was reviewed by two dialect experts at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.

  • Addy was the first American Girl character to have an advisory board. Addy’s advisory board was made up of Black historians, educators, and museum curators who ensured the depiction of Addy’s life and times was historically accurate.

  • Addy’s first three books sold more than a million copies in the year they were released.

  • When Julie launched, in 2007, American Girl historical characters’ years had always ended in 4, so Julie’s year was set as 1974—even though her stories begin in 1975.

  • When Julie debuted, some customers felt American Girl should not depict a girl with divorced parents. But since about 50% of kids today live with divorced parents, the creators of Julie felt it was important to have a character and doll who represented their experience.

  • Author Megan McDonald has four sisters who inspire many of her stories. Quite a few of the scenes between Julie and her teenage sister Tracy were inspired by Megan’s experience growing up with her sisters.

  • Illustrator Walter Rane used himself as a model for the grumpy grocery store owner in Kit’s stories.

  • Like Kit’s dad, author Valerie Tripp’s grandfather paid his staff out of his own pocket as long as he could, but eventually had to close his hotel during the Great Depression.

  • After the launch of the Kit doll and books, Valerie Tripp received a letter from a woman named Kit Kittredge who had grown up in Cincinnati during the Depression and was very excited about the coincidence!

927 views11 comments

Recent Posts

See All

American Girl Sales Grow in Q4 2024

Mattel's earnings report for quarter 4 of 2024, and 2024 as a whole, indicated that American Girl's sales grew as a whole in 2024...

11 Comments


What's wrong with admitting that divorced parents and couples exist? Are they trying to gaslight kids into thinking that they never existed and never will? Or do they have some personal thing (hate) towards people who divorced? My parents divorced when I was 12 years old when my dad literally walked out on me. My parents went through a nasty divorce and my mom would try to make things work when my dad would miss the ferry or cancel the visit. If he came late, she would try to extend the time my brother and/or me would see him, something that not all divorced parents with complete custody of their kids would do, but a lot of time , my…

Edited
Like

pinkdolly
pinkdolly
May 03, 2024

super interesting thank you for sharing all this info! it just shows how much love goes into AG's girls.

Like

KirstenKitFan
KirstenKitFan
May 03, 2024

oooh amazing! i knew about the rebecca thing but not the others! :o


(this article left out a kit adjacent fact at the end of her page- American Girl’s Claudie Wells, whose stories are set in the 1920s, could have faced the challenges of the Great Depression in her teens and twenties. ;)

Edited
Like
Unknown member
May 05, 2024
Replying to

It’s pretty cool that another character with a European immigrant background was later created and named Rebecca!!!

Like

RuthieFairyFan
RuthieFairyFan
May 03, 2024

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but someone (possibly an employee from American Girl store) said that the original meet outfits for Josefina, Addy, and Kirsten are limited edition. I don't think this is likely because American Girl is now showing more of Addy and Josefina in their original meets. Julie has been shown in her original meet as well, but maybe in several months she will be going back to her original meet.

Like
RuthieFairyFan
RuthieFairyFan
May 06, 2024
Replying to

Julie is probably still in her Beforever meet because of her journal and her comic book that depicts her in her Beforever meet. I think eventually she will have her old original meet back. Since the short does show her original meet. Maybe this could happen later this year in the fall or in early 2025.

Like

RuthieFairyFan
RuthieFairyFan
May 03, 2024

These are really interesting facts behind the scenes! I wish they could do that to every other historical character. Here are other things I heard from behind the scenes. Grandmary was supposed to have passed away, which lead to Samantha living with Aunt Cornelia and Uncle Gard, but was utlimately changed to Grandmary getting married to the Admiral and traveling on a cruise with him. Rebecca was originally supposed to called Tasha, whose stories dealt with worker's strikes (I'm not sure if Tasha had a desire to be an actress). Julie was supposed to wear her hair in braided pigtails for her meet doll.

Edited
Like
bottom of page