Best place for Barbie to study her family tree
There's a train room, with operating layouts of 12 trains in various gauges, and an impressive display of toy soldiers. But the real treat here is for your inner - or outer - little girl. The Wenham Museum, the historic core of which is the childhood home of serious doll collector Elizabeth Richards Horton, houses an extensive and fascinating display of miniature persons, including dolls modeled after Julia Ward Howe (with sheet music for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in her lap), General Douglas MacArthur, and the Dionne Quintuplets as rendered by Madame Alexander.

Horton, who bequeathed the museum to her dolls in 1922, began her collection with a doll made from peanuts. He's here, along with everything from an ancient Egyptian funerary figure, elaborately garbed French and German bisque dolls, and early-American cloth dolls and Native American kachinas. A leisurely walk through the collections - including the International Doll Collection assembled by Horton, which is anchored by Miss Columbia, a 19-inch rag doll who traveled the world between 1900 and 1902 to raise money for needy children - provides a neat history of the doll-making craft, along with a gander at some pretty exquisite antecedents to the Cabbage Patch. And yes, Barbie, three of your progenitors are here.

Wenham Museum, 132 Main Street, Wenham, (978) 468-2377; www.wenhammuseum.org.