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CHALLENGE MATCH THE TRESSES Unlock the puzzle of presidents' hair
Fredericksburg lays claim to a varied collection of presidential hairDate published: 2/18/2007
(Story contains clues.) By LAURA MOYERThe hair looks a bit like a bird's nest, a rusty red clump. Once this hair blazed atop the presidential head of Thomas Jefferson. But at his death a lock was clipped off and wrapped in white parchment. A note was made in fine handwriting, in iron gall ink: Thomas Jefferson Monticello July 4th 1826 cut by Nicholas Philip Trist immediately after T.J.'s death Eventually, the hair came to reside in Fredericksburg, where it was labeled, catalogued, placed in a plastic bag and stored in a drawer at the James Monroe Museum. It's just one of several presidential hair samples to be found in city museum collections. In honor of Presidents Day, we give you this short summary of the other First Locks of Fredericksburg : George Washington's hair sleeps here. There's a Washington hair brooch in the collection at historic Kenmore, the mansion of George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation. And Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge 4, A.F. & A.M., owns a strand of Washington hair, currently on display at the Fredericksburg Area Museum. James Monroe is rightly represented in the Monroe Museum's hair archives. Clippings of his brownish hair, and the darker hair of his wife, Elizabeth, rest in gilded wooden frames. Also at the Monroe Museum is a lock of John Tyler's smooth gray hair. It was made into mourning jewelry with overlapping loops enclosed in a postage stamp-size brass frame with corner studs of jet or onyx. And finally, the Monroe Museum owns a few wispy strands from Millard Fillmore's salt-and-pepper head. There's not much Fillmore hair, but what's there is carefully gathered into a piece of green ribbon and crimped with brass. The hair samples aren't big tourism draws, museum officials say. They're not even on regular display at the Monroe Museum, said curator Meghan Budinger, though Jefferson's and Monroe's locks probably will be included in a display of collection curiosities to open this spring. The existence and careful preservation of early presidential hair is only partly because of the prominence of the heads on which it grew. In the 18th and 19th centuries, locks of hair cut from living heads were commonly bestowed as tokens of love and remembrance.
Date published: 2/18/2007
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