In the 1970s, archaeologists tracing the original footprint of Fort Stanwix recovered a tiny figure from a nineteenth-century privy. The doll stands only four centimeters tall inside a glass bottle nine centimeters high. It belongs to the family of one-piece figures known as Frozen Charlottes, made in sizes ranging from about an inch to more than eighteen inches between roughly 1850 and 1920.

The cheerful-sounding name came from a grim folk ballad. In the song, a young woman refuses to wrap herself warmly for a winter carriage ride to a ball and arrives frozen. The small rigid dolls acquired her name as they became popular. This particular Charlotte had another enclosure: according to the National Park Service, she was manufactured inside the vial.

That leaves the best question unanswered. Was the bottle a permanent display case, preserving the miniature figure behind glass? Or was the owner expected to break it to release the doll? Other bottled examples exist, but this form is relatively rare, and the park does not pretend to know the intended ritual. The artifact survives as a toy whose package may have been part of the play—or a barrier designed to be destroyed.