Now on Display: The Eugenia C. Rhein Doll Collection

Written by Amy Gresham, Library Customer Adviser, Downtown Main Library

The Eugenia C. Rhein Doll Collection is comprised of over 100 dolls representing over 50 countries from around the world. It was donated to the Library in 1981 by retired staff member Eugenia C. Rhein. She was a former administrative secretary who served under four Library directors. Her lifelong career at the Library spanned from 1935 to 1977.  

This one-of-a-kind collection is now on display to view in the John T. Nolan Jr. Room on the third floor of the South Building at the Downtown Main Library, opens a new window. 

About the Collection

Eugenia began collecting dolls in earnest around 1955, though her love for dolls began at the age of five. When she was interviewed about the collection in 1979, she vividly remembered traveling with her mother to Milan, Italy, where she picked out a porcelain doll on her birthday. As an adult, each time she traveled to a new country, she would purchase a doll that wore traditional garments from that region. Her friends also gifted her many dolls from their own travels.  

These dolls were well-known to Library customers who visited the old Children’s Room at the Downtown Main Library in the 1970s. Eugenia would loan them out for use in programming there and at branches. Every year starting in 1970, she would display the dolls for Christmas. Though she retired in 1977, Eugenia continued to loan the dolls for use in programs and exhibits. Eugenia died in Cincinnati on December 27, 1981.  Shortly before her death, she gifted her entire doll collection to the Library. The Eugenia C. Rhein Doll Collection was officially announced by the Library’s Board of Trustees in 1982. 

About Eugenia Charlotte Rhein

Eugenia Charlotte Rhein was born in Milan, Italy on July 27, 1916. Her biological father was a soldier who died in World War I. When Eugenia was 3 years old, her widowed mother, Adele Marie Barffudi, married an American soldier from Cincinnati named George Thomas Rhein. He was serving with the US Army in Europe during World War I. When George Rhein sailed back to America with the Army in 1919, his new wife and daughter went with him.

Eugenia graduated from Western Hills High School in 1934. According to a Cincinnati Enquirer interview in 1979, she was determined to work at the Public Library after graduation. In 1935, she obtained a job working as a shelflister, which was a position that helped to maintain an inventory of titles in the Library's collection. Eugenia was very grateful for this job, as the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Eventually she advanced to become an administrative secretary to the Library director, a position she would maintain until her retirement in 1977. She was a founding member of the Cincinnati chapter of National Secretaries Association International. She served as the president of the chapter in 1958.

Eugenia was active in many Library organizations, including the Ohioana Library Association and the Library’s former dramatic society, Ex Libris. She served as president and in other leadership positions for the Library’s Staff Association. She provided administrative support to the newly formed Friends of the Library at its inception in 1957. She may be most remembered, however, for creating the Library’s Pet Memorial Fund In 1960. She initially donated $50 in memory of her dog Trixie.

The money was used to purchase children’s books focusing on pets and pet care for the Library. Inside each book purchased with her donation was a special plaque commemorating Trixie. The fund was the first of its kind in the country in 1960, and it continues to this day as a way to memorialize cherished pets. After her death in 1981, Eugenia – or Jeanne as she was called – was buried at Vine Street Hill Cemetery in Cincinnati alongside her beloved parents, George T Rhein and Adele Barffudi Rhein.

View the Eugenia C. Rhein Doll Collection in the John T. Nolan Jr. Room on the third floor of the South Building at the Downtown Main Library, opens a new window.