Update, I emailed the guy with the pair listed on ebay along with pictures of my figure and here is a copy of his response. Interesting.
"I actually know what yours is. It is what my wife thought my dolls were at first. Yours is one of a set of 5-9 dolls that were conected in a ring/circle "hugging" each other. They are call friendship rings. I have a complete set in my collection. I will send pics later to show you what I am talking about so you can see what a complete set looks like. I would bet that there are 4-8 more dolls somewhere on that farm in MO. Your right the ones I have on auction do look similar to the "friendship type" of dolls but they have some small differences. One difference is the hole in the belly, as appears on your doll . On the complete friendship ring I own this hole appears on every other doll. There are 7 dolls in all on my complete set.This hole does not appear on the auction set on the belly, as is common with friendship rings. However, both dolls do have a hole between the legs which is not were it would be if these were friendship dolls. The holes were to keep them from bursting when fired. Also, the feet on my auction set are flared or hoofed and the facial features are flat. On the complete set of 7 the facial features are pronnounced like your doll. And finally, the ones I have on auction were not connected to any more dolls. They were only connected to each other making them unique. Both sets of dolls I own came from the same area of East, Texas. The set of 7 I own were aquried in a similar fashion as your doll. A farmer was chasing his horse and triped over the head of one of the dolls that was sticking out of the ground. He dugg them up. Much later I found my dolls and a friend of mine said he knew were some were just like them. So, he bought them from the farmers wife and brought them to me. I believe this set to be early 1900 to late 1800. I have not found very many examples of these type of dolls in my reasearch but finding them in patures and on farms seems to be the most common place they are found. I had never seen another even close to mine until an archelogist came to my house to see my dolls that I have on auction. It took him a week to email me pictures. He said that the ones on auction were not friendship ring dolls but thats as close a he could get to an example.
Larry "
