Staff photo / Bob Coupland Warren resident Carolyn Merrifield, an avid doll collector, devotes an entire home for her collection.

WARREN — As a child growing up in Brookfield, Carolyn Merrifield said she always enjoyed dolls.

After her husband died in 1992, she began to comfort herself by building dollhouses and collecting dolls that now fill an entire house.

Merrifield, 78, now of Warren, said she has more than 60 dollhouses, most that she built, and thousands of dolls on all three floors and in the basement. All shapes and styles, the dolls are from different places.

“I have had dolls since I was very young. I get them at antique shops and garage sales. I have lots of dolls; I just don’t know how many,” she said.

While the dolls are all in one house, Merrifield lives in another house nearby.

Merrifield said she always liked the Cabbage Patch dolls, which she considers her favorites, and has one room dedicated to them. Another room features dolls in bride and groom outfits, and another has a “Gone with the Wind” theme.

She turned a Barbie dollhouse into a house with small dolls and decorations for the holidays such as one room for Christmas, one for Easter and another for Halloween. The kitchen of the house has all chef-themed dolls. One shelf near the kitchen contains dolls from other countries. The bathtub and sink also are filled with dolls.

She said making dollhouses became therapeutic for her after she lost her husband, Stanley “Red” Merrifield.

The dollhouses take time to assemble, decorate and furnish.

Merrifield’s daughter, Sue Knepper, said her mother “likes to rescue dolls” and then dress them up and make them look nice. Merrifield has a closet with many doll clothes.

Merrifield said she makes special dollhouses that reflect interests of her daughter and her four grandchildren. Knepper is a teacher, so her mother had a dollhouse scene of a school.

“My mother is so creative in what she does. She finds things and uses them in her dollhouse,” Knepper said, noting her mother used an old flashbulb from a camera to make a museum art piece display of a large diamond and used a colorful bookmark as a rug in the dollhouse.

Merrifield also likes doing puzzles with large, completed ones glued together and displayed on walls or tables.

“I love puzzles and looking at them when they are done. They take time, but I concentrate on putting them together,” she said.

Merrifield lately has been doing diamond art where you place small, shiny beads together to create things. She is part of a local dollhouse club where the members meet to go over ideas for dollhouses.

She also helped give tours of the Sutliff Museum on the second floor of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library before the pandemic began, and will be at its 50th anniversary celebration in November.

Merrifield also is a traveler, having just been to North Carolina.

Earlier in her life, she lived in Brazil for a time as a member of the Peace Corps.

“I was in my 20s and knew then I like to travel. I was in Brazil for two years and really liked it,” she said.

Merrifield has been to all the states except Alaska and said she is not too concerned if she does not make it there.

She enjoys taking road trips, usually with her daughter and grandchildren. She has a display in her basement of pictures from trips to California, Washington and Arizona, and the souvenirs she acquired in each state.

“A lot of times on the road trips I can stop at antique malls and find dolls. I have visited national parks and they also have places to shop at and they have dolls,” she said.

To suggest a Saturday profile, contact features editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or metro editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.