ALICE DOHERTY The Minnesota Woolly Girl

Birth: 14 Mar 1887, Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA

Death: 13 Jun 1933 (aged 46), Dallas, Dallas County, Texas, USA

Alice Elizabeth Doherty was an American woman born with the condition hypertrichosis lanuginosa. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with approximately two-inch long blonde hair all over her body. None of her relatives are known to have had a similar condition. She had blue eyes. She holds the unique distinction of being the only recorded American to be born with hypertrichosis lanuginosa. She was the original American Werewolf and was known as the Minnesota Woolly Girl.

In the heartland of Minnesota, amidst the rolling plains and whispering winds, there emerged a tale as peculiar as the frosted prairies themselves. Born into the chill of 1887, Alice Elizabeth Doherty, with her cerulean eyes and a mane of woolly hair, was a marvel, a phenomenon of humanity.

Her father, Aloysius Doherty, recognized her singular peculiarity from her earliest days. This tender blue-eyed girl, wrapped in the wool of astonishment, became the focal point of curiosity. Aloysius, a man of keen insight and perhaps some desperation, foresaw the allure Alice would wield upon the eyes of the public. Thus, it was not long before the Doherty family embarked upon a journey, not merely of survival but of exhibition.

From the tender age of two, Alice was thrust into the limelight, displayed for the awe and wonder of spectators. Her parents, driven by necessity and a blend of ambition and pragmatism, paraded her across stages, through storefronts, and under the scrutiny of curious onlookers. She became a fixture of sideshows and a spectacle in her own right, a curious enigma that captured the imagination of all who beheld her.

Through the Midwestern United States, Alice wandered, a solitary figure amidst the whirlwind of commercial fascination. She was presented alongside Professor Weller’s One-Man Band, her woolly visage juxtaposed against the merry tunes of performance. Yet, it was never Alice’s desire to entertain. Her heart, perhaps lost in the vast expanse of Minnesota’s plains, longed for a quietude that eluded her in the glare of public attention.

Nevertheless, duty bound her to the stage, to the storefronts, to the crowds who marveled and gawked. She bore the weight of her peculiarity with a stoicism born of necessity, supporting her family’s livelihood with each curious gaze cast upon her. Her dreams, veiled beneath the wool of her existence, whispered of retirement, of a sanctuary far removed from the prying eyes of the world.

And so, in the year 1915, Alice Elizabeth Doherty, the Minnesota Woolly Girl, bid farewell to the glare of the spotlight. Her retirement, though long-awaited, was a silent triumph amidst the tumult of her existence.

In the warmth of Dallas, Texas, where the winds whispered of distant lands and forgotten dreams, Alice succumbed to the embrace of bronchial pneumonia. On June 13, 1933, at the age of 46, she departed this world, leaving behind a legacy woven from the fabric of curiosity and wonder.

Her story, a tale of human marvel and frailty, is a testament to the enduring power of the extraordinary amidst the mundane. And in the quiet corners of Minnesota’s plains, where the winds still whisper of her name, Alice Elizabeth Doherty remains forever enshrined in the pages of history, a woolly-haired enigma wrapped in the embrace of memory.

Extracted from Freaks - A Night at the Circus by Uwe DIEGEL. Available worldwide on Amazon https://a.co/d/dcE0jJX