Combing Through History

In the 1800s, people often wanted something more personal than an autograph from those they admired. They wanted their hair.

Collecting locks of hair from great men and women is a largely forgotten fad, but an amusing and fascinating article in today's New York Times reminds us that hair collecting had a respectable past.

John Reznikoff, the collector the Times profiles, owns samples of hair from both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. And he obtained much of his collection by purchasing locks collected by Margaretta Pierrepont, whose husband was the attorney general in the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.

People today consider hair collecting to be pretty weird, but an official with the Smithsonian quoted in the article notes that in the 19th century it was considered "a sign of affection" for a notable person to give someone a lock of hair.

That made me curious to look up locks of hair in the Smithsonian collection, and I came across an artifact that must have made a lot more sense in the 1800s: a framed display containing locks of hair from the first 14 American presidents.