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Second only to his autographs, the most widely distributed relics of the first president are pieces of his hair. These are found in such numbers that one wonders how our famously dentured patriarch was able to generate enough keratin to satisfy the seemingly insatiable demand. It is fortunate that the style of his era encouraged him to wear a wig at least some of the time, or our one dollar bills and quarters might have a Yul Brynner lookalike gazing back at us instead of the stylishly quaffed figure we have grown so used to seeing. In addition, Reznikoff has hair from George Washington, whose locks were probably the most widely distributed of any president’s. Unlike many men of his era, Washington didn’t wear a wig (that’s his real hair you see on the one dollar bill). The Smithsonian Institution and the Academy of Natural Sciences bothhave locks of his hair.
George Washington’s Hair: How Early Americans Remembered Their Founders by Keith Beutler
His mission was to take a life mask - a plaster cast of Washington’s face - which he would then use to create sculpture copies (below right). The mask was used to sculpt what’s known as “Washington’s Official Likeness” - a lifesize sculpture located in the Virginia state Capitol (below left). "It is a way of feeling like you are in touch with a tangible connection to the man who is regarded as the indispensable figure in the founding of our country," Schoelwer says. "The Hamilton family gives it a good bit of credibility," Schoelwer says, although she is unable to authenticate the school's claim.
Finding a Lock of George Washington’s Hair, and a Link to American History
Perhaps Washington’s greatest wartime legacy was his decision to surrender his commission to Congress, affirming the principle of civilian control of the military in the new United States. One question a lot of our guests ask is, "Why isn't George Washington buried at the Capitol?" While George Washington's gravesite is at his home, Mount Vernon, other people tried to have him buried elsewhere upon his death. Capitol building was at one time intended to be the burial place of the first president. In his will, George Washington outlined his desire to be buried at home at Mount Vernon along with his wife and the rest of the Washington family.
George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders
As Beutler recounts in vivid prose, these and other ordinary Americans successfully enlisted memory practices rooted in the physical to demand a place in the body politic, powerfully contributing to antebellum political democratization. Between 1790 and 1840, popular memory took a turn toward the physical, as exemplified by the craze for collecting locks of Washington’s hair. These new, sensory views of memory enabled African American Revolutionary War veterans, women, evangelicals, and other politically marginalized groups to enter the public square as both conveyors of these material relics of the Revolution and living relics themselves.
year-old portrait of first US President George Washington swiped from Colorado storage unit
However, it’s not clear how the envelope ended up inside the almanac, and how the almanac make it to the college’s library. To make sure the wax figures would look like the real George Washington, the hair they used must be the right color. Because in the 18th century it was common to keep small locks of hair that belonged to someone you loved or admired. Mostly hidden from public view, like an embarrassing family secret, scores of putative locks of George Washington’s hair are held, more than two centuries after his death, in the collections of America’s historical societies, public and academic archives, and museums. Excavating the origins of these bodily artifacts, Keith Beutler, PhD ’05, uncovers a forgotten strand of early American memory practices and emerging patriotic identity.
George Washington’s Incredible Hair Routine
Then, Mr. Myers found an envelope slipped into the almanac, its paper as brittle as the rest of the book’s pages. It was inscribed in cursive with initials that he did not recognize and at the top, “Washington’s Hair.” Inside, he found a lock of grayish-colored hair tied together with thread. Once gathered at the back, hair was braided or sometimes just tied at the neck by a strap or, on formal occasions, a ribbon. Washington would occasionally bunch his ponytail into a fine silk bag, where it would bob at the back of his head. Luckily, small silk pouches could be tied around the long hair at the back of the head to contain any powdery locks that could dispense powder everywhere.
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Wendy MacNaughton draws people, cats, bottles, scenes, faces, places. If, totally out of the blue, I call her and say, “Can you imagine Leonardo da Vinci’s personal notebook or George Washington getting his hair done? If you want to see what she’s up to right now, you’ll find more of her work here.
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Schoelwer says short of DNA evidence, experts look at provenance. A peek inside revealed several strands tied together with a thread. The elder Philip Schuyler was one of Union’s founders and advocated for establishing the school in Schenectady instead of Albany. His portrait hangs in a campus dining hall, according to school officials. “You had to actually open the book and see it there,” marveled India Spartz, head of Special Collections and Archives at Union’s Schaffer Library. Beutler maintains that “in the period between 1790 and 1840 … Americans increasingly embraced reductive materialist views of memory,” influenced by “such ideas as physiognomy, brain localization, and their popular combination as phrenology.” Each chapter of his...
George Washington’s Oh-So-Mysterious Hair
“It’s not hugely valuable, maybe two to three thousand dollars for the strands you have, but it’s undoubtedly George Washington’s,” Reznikoff told college officials. The book was noteworthy in itself, as it belonged to Philip J. Schuyler, the son of Gen. Philip Schuyler, a wealthy New York senator who served in the Revolutionary War and was the father-in-law of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Enter your email to receive history's most fascinating happenings in your inbox each day. Comments and respectful dialogue are encouraged, but content will be moderated. Please, no personal attacks, obscenity or profanity, selling of commercial products, or endorsements of political candidates or positions. We also cannot address individual medical concerns or provide medical advice in this forum.
On occasion, he—or an attendant—would bunch the slack into a black silk bag at the nape of the neck, perhaps to help protect his clothing from the powder. Then he would fluff the hair on each side of his head to make “wings” and secure the look with pomade or good old natural oils. As for keeping the powder off one’s shoulders, how Washington did that—if he did do that—nobody could tell me. Probably every powder-wearing guy in the 1760s knew the secret, but after a couple of centuries, whatever Washington did to stay spotless is lost to us. She claims that the historical evidence that was discovered in December 2017 alongside the hair is enough for the college to consider the locks of hair as the real deal. "It could just be a way to remember me, because people didn't know if they'd see each other again in those days; life was more fleeting," said India Spartz, who is the head of archives at Union College, which is about to intersect with our old hair story in a big way.
George would (likely) don a powdering robe, dip a puff made of silk strips into his powder of choice (there are a few options for what he might have used), bend his head over, and shake the puff out over his scalp in a big cloud. Spartz is working with a local conservator to figure out how best to preserve the precious lock of hair — and then she wants to display it with the almanac for the public to enjoy. To assess the hair’s authenticity, Union College sent photos of the six-inch strands and the materials they were found with to John Reznikoff, a manuscripts and documents dealer who also has a huge collection of famous people’s hair. Reznikoff has locks from John F. Kennedy, Napoléon Bonaparte, and Ludwig van Beethoven. He even has a sample of Lincoln’s hair with dried pieces of brain matter stuck to it, since it was plucked after John Wilkes Booth shot him in the head.
In recent days, after Union College announced the discovery, there has been a high level of excitement on the liberal arts college’s snow-covered campus and it has drawn attention from around the country. Unlike those who chose to wear an already styled wig over their natural hair, Washington’s hair would have taken much longer to style each day. The dedication to his appearance was a trait that Washington shared with his wife Martha, who also had a love of fine fashion and thoughtfully crafted hair. Early on in their marriage, George and Martha Washington chose to support American-made designers and merchants to show their support for the revolution. A librarian cataloging historic books in the Schenectady, New York, school's archive believes he stumbled across a lock of George Washington's hair neatly tied with a bow and kept in an envelope. But college officials do not want to risk destroying the sample by conducting a DNA test.
Houdon used precise pupil and eye measurements to approximate the appearance of the eyes while open. Although most of us think we know what George Washington looked like (the wig, the outfit…they both live etched in our American memory), when looking at the actual features of each man, they look like brothers instead of versions of the same man. Susan Schoelwer, who is the Robert H. Smith senior curator at Mount Vernon, Washington's estate, says proving it is the real deal can be a problem. If the hair was cut, it won't contain the follicle — the part most easily tested.
Based on physical descriptions from his lifetime, it’s not surprising that George Washington became someone of prominence. Standing over six feet tall, he would have been the tallest man in most rooms he walked into. In fact, a writer in 1790 said it was not necessary to announce his name when he walked in - everyone knew immediately who he was just by his appearance. The long-buried treasure was uncovered after an archivist surveying the school's oldest books in its Schaffer Library came across a leather almanac called Gaines Universal Register or American and British Kalendar for the year 1793. Archivist John Reznikoff, who has earned a Guinness World Record for his celebrity hair collection, told the school, "Without DNA, you're never positive, but I believe it's 100 percent authentic."
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