Hair and the American Presidency

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. In producing this podcast, I spend a lot of time browsing the United States Library of Congress online collections, searching photographs, newspapers, graphic arts, maps, and audio recordings. These are the kinds of things you probably imagine when you think about the Library of Congress, along with the archives of the personal papers of US presidents, Congress people, Supreme Court justices, and other notable Americans. But the Library of Congress also houses a collection that may be a bit more surprising. They have a lot of hair. Some of that hair is of notable Americans like George Washington, Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Claire Booth Luce. And some of it is from ordinary Americans, like a Civil War soldier, whose hair is kept with a handwritten inscription by his parent. Composer Ludwig von Beethoven, who died in 1827, never set foot in the United States, but the United States Library of Congress houses a coil of his hair. In recent years, scientists have used these hair samples to solve old mysteries. Analysis of Beethoven's hair, for instance, showed lead levels that were 64 to 95 times higher than the hair of someone today, and even 10 times higher than the average person in Beethoven's day, suggesting that his frequent health complaints, including hearing loss, jaundice and debilitating GI ailments, may have been caused by or perhaps exacerbated by lead poisoning. Beethoven desperately wanted to know the cause of his ailments, but he had no way of knowing that scientists in the future would be able to analyze his hair. So why was his hair, or the hair of so many people from the 18th and 19th centuries saved? In the days before ready access to photography, keeping a lock of someone's hair was a way of keeping them with you. During the Civil War, soldiers and their wives would wear lockets with each other's hair enclosed while they were apart. If the soldier died, his widow might keep wearing her husband's hair as a way to remember him. Hair could also be a gift to a suitor during courtship. In the British regency era, most gifts were given by men, but a woman may give an intensely personal gift, like a handkerchief embroidered both with her hair and the suitor's hair combined. Giving and requesting hair was not limited to loved ones, though.On March 18, 1778, George Washington, then Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, sent a letter from his camp at Valley Forge to Kitty Livingston, daughter of New Jersey Governor William Livingston. The text of the letter reads, "George Washington, having been informed lately of the honor done him by Miss Kitty Livingston in wishing for a lock of his hair, takes the liberty of enclosing one, accompanied by his most respectful compliments." Washington, perhaps the biggest American celebrity of his time, was used to such requests. As one curator of the National Museum of American History put it, "If you went to Mount Vernon when Washington was alive, you were almost obligated to take out a pen knife and get a piece of it." When then President George and his wife Martha visited the Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, in 1795, Martha cut a lock of George's hair during the visit and presented it to Oliver's wife Elizabeth as a memorial to the general. Elizabeth then had the hair set into a locket. Lockets weren't the only kind of jewelry to encase hair, especially during the Victorian era, with its elaborate mourning customs. Queen Victoria herself had at least eight pieces of jewelry created that incorporated the hair of her beloved husband, Albert, who died in 1861. Mourners on the other side of the Atlantic wore hair jewelry too. When Secretary of State Daniel Webster died, his cousin, Thomas Lee, commissioned a brooch for his wife that contained two locks of Webster's hair that he had given to her years apart. The gold brooch with crystal covering the locks of hair surrounded by 18 pearls, can be seen today at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Pieces like the jewelry that Queen Victoria wore, or the brooch made with Daniel Webster's hair, were fashioned by jewelers, and jewelers like Charles T. Menge in New York City, did a big business in hair work. But women of the 19th century also learned to create hair work at home. In the mid 19th century, Godey's Magazine and Ladies Book published hair jewelry patterns for women to follow at home. In 1867, Mark Campbell published a book 276 pages long, called, "Self Instruction in the Art of Hair Work: Dressing Hair, Making Curls, Switches, Braids and Hair Jewelry of Every Description," due to what he called, "universal demand" that he do so. In addition to saving money, Campbell suggested that another advantage of making hair art oneself is the, "inexpressible advantage and satisfaction of knowing that the material of their own handiwork is the actual hair of the loved and gone." In other words, if you hand off the hair to a jeweler, you have no way of knowing that the product they return contains the actual strands you gave them. In making hair jewelry, the hair wasn't always just displayed behind crystal or glass, but rather itself used as thread to create things like bracelets and necklaces. Not all hair art was worn. Some women created magnificent wreaths for display made from human hair. The Maine State Museum has in its collection a wreath made by Mariah Bailey Wright, around the year 1875. She created the elaborate wreath with locks of hair from many different family members and good friends, including two of her brothers who had died in the Civil War. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia in the Mutter Museum even houses an example of a three dimensional sculptural memorial tree made from hair in the mid 19th century. Hair could also be dissolved into kind of a pigment and used to paint miniature scenes or letters for artwork. Like many practices and styles of the Victorian era, hair jewelry and hair art had mostly gone out of fashion by the time of the First World War, although you can still find various tutorials online if you'd like to give it a try yourself.

Kelly Therese Pollock  9:42  
There are still people who collect hair. John Reznikoff, a renowned collector and expert authenticator, has an archive of strands of hair from historical figures, including John F. Kennedy, Napoleon, and John Wilkes Booth. He acquired most of his hair archive from the collection of Margaretta Pierrepont, the wife of Edwards Pierrepont, who was the Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant. Reznikoff doesn't generally sell celebrity hair, at least not to the general public. Others do, though. As of this recording, Paul Fraser Collectibles has on offer, locks of hair from such figures as John Adams, King George the Third, Elvis Presley, and Justin Bieber. One priceless hair artifact that's not for sale is a framed collection of strands of hair from each of the first 14 presidents of the United States, George Washington through Franklin Pierce. The locks, collected by John Vardhan, who was keeper of collections for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science at the US Patent Office in the mid 19th century, now resides in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Joining me now to tell us about how hair intersects with presidential history is Ted Pappas, author of, "Combing Through the White House: Hair and Its Shocking Impact on the Politics, Private Lives, and Legacies of the Presidents." 

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:11  
 Hi, Ted, thanks so much for joining me today.

Ted Pappas  12:13  
Great. Nice to be with you. Kelly,

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:16  
Yes, so my first question is, how did you decide to write a book about presidential hair?

Ted Pappas  12:21  
Well, it might sound strange, but when you think about it for a moment, hair is that strange, unusual, biological element that weaves itself, forgive the pun, into virtually every aspect of our lives, from our personal, professional lives to our politics and even history. Most obviously, hair reflects personality, identity, fashion, even our social stereotypes, right? The dumb blonde, the blonde bombshell, the fiery redhead. But hair also reflects historic periods of political control, power and protest from the short haired flappers of the 1920s, the shaved heads of Holocaust victims, the long haired hippies of the 1960s, even to the shaved pates of skinheads and metoo activists of recent days. But hair even plays a role in the touching and traumatic episodes of our lives. First Lady Barbara Bush, for example, was holding her three year old daughter Robin, combing her hair when the little girl died of leukemia in 1953. As Barbara later wrote, she never felt the presence of God more strongly than at that very moment, holding her daughter, combing her hair, performing this simple act of care and devotion. And the last thing that Bobby and Jackie Kennedy did when viewing the slain president in his coffin was also tied to hair. Both Kennedys were overwhelmed with grief, and both wanted to stay connected with her lost loved one in some special way. Bobby did so by inserting a lock of his own hair into the President's coffin. And Jackie, as I say in my book, she was not in the giving mood. She did the opposite. She cut locks from the president's head to take with her as a precious keepsake. In other words, for the historian, hair is actually a wonderful hook and tool, can be, for personalizing the past and re narrating history in a fresh, engaging and moving way, all through that simple element of life that we all can relate to, hair, and that's exactly what I've tried to do in this new book. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:28  
So, what was your process, then, of figuring out what stories were out there, what to include, how you were going to pull together these different things and tie them together through hair?

Ted Pappas  14:39  
It's actually, it's been a process of 40 years of reading presidential history and just squirreling away these examples that I'd come across, until finally getting enough examples that I think, "Yeah, this could actually make an intriguing book." I also had occasion, 40 years ago to have a private dinner with Barbara Bush. And it even got me thinking about hair as a prism and a new way of looking at history, back then talking with her. Then it was a process of trying to find some thematic ways to organize the material. Obviously, this is going to be an unusual book. You can't just chronologically go through every president of the United States and find an intriguing antidote having to do with hair. It just doesn't work, and so I tried to group it in in categories that made sense, some centering around a specific administration, like the Kennedy administration, others having to do with parallel stories like Barbara Bush and the Bush family and Franklin Pierce, and other times having a theme, like the history of collection, of collecting hair, why collecting hair as an intimate keepsake of folks we've loved, lost and admired and want to memorialize has been so prevalent through the centuries. So it's been a long time in the making, and just from a lot of reading and finding those interesting intersections of hair and politics and public life and private life.

Kelly Therese Pollock  16:06  
Yeah, let's go back to Barbara Bush, who you brought up. So, you know, I my entire memory of Barbara Bush. She's got this, this shock of white hair. Could you talk a little bit about that, how that happened very early in her life. And you know what, what you were able to find out about that story and how that ties into the larger story of Barbara Bush and really perceptions of first ladies?

Ted Pappas  16:32  
Sure, Barbara Bush is fascinating. You know, she has a 12 year history with the White House, serving 12 years as First Lady and then second lady of the land as wife of the vice president. So 12 consecutive years, and during that time, she was second only to Abraham Lincoln as the most body shamed person in White House history. And you might remember that comedian Phil Hartman repeatedly played her in drag on Saturday Night Live, endlessly mocking her for her signature white hair. But Barbara is associated with something called the Marie Antoinette syndrome, which is the sudden whitening or graying of one's hair due to stress or grief. This supposedly happened to the French queen in 1793, due to the stress of her imprisonment, impending execution. And this supposedly happened to Barbara Bush as well when she was 28 years old, due to the stress and grief of the death of her daughter Robin from leukemia in 1953. Now, Barbara always denied the reality of this sudden change in her hair color, but her friends and family did not. They noticed it and they wrote about it. I think it was simply too painful, perhaps, for Barbara to really deal, with and doctors, interestingly, have denied the reality of the syndrome for centuries. They've only always relegated such stories of a sudden whitening of one's hair due to stress or fright or grief to legend and folklore, until recently, until 2020, when researchers at Harvard finally came upon compelling evidence and a tie between stressors and a sudden loss of the pigment color producing stem cells in our hair follicles, meaning stress and grief likely were the cause of the French Queen's sudden white hair and the signature white hair and rather matronly, grandmotherly looks of one of the most admired and liked but mocked and lampooned first ladies in American history, Barbara Bush.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:34  
So there's another first lady in the same time period who has a lot of association with hair, and that's Hillary Clinton. That was formative years for me, during the 90s, when she was being mocked for her hairstyle, and, you know, too feminine and too masculine all that. Could you talk a little bit about Hillary Clinton? You talk about her briefly in the book as well, and the way she reflects on hair? 

Ted Pappas  18:57  
Yeah. Hillary had a great line. She said, "Whenever I want to knock a story off the front pages, off the headlines, I just change my hair, my hairstyle," and she changed it often, and she meant that literally, she did. And that was like throwing red meat to the news hounds hot on her trail for the hidden meaning behind every phase of her "hairvolution," as one journalist called called it, from bouffant and bob to scrunchie and headband. But the deeper meaning is this, that the hallmark of the Hillary Clinton brand, like it or not, was going to be far from the frills of more glamorous first ladies like like Melania Trump and Jackie Kennedy. The hallmark of the Hillary Clinton brand, was going to come down, as a London Telegraph said, "It came down to the three P's: pant suits, practicality and power hair."

Kelly Therese Pollock  19:51  
So returning to presidents, then, you start out writing a lot about Abraham Lincoln, and so there's, there's a lot about his storied facial hair, but also his, his, as you mentioned, he was body shamed and hair shamed. Really. Could you talk a little bit about Abraham Lincoln? Why? Why hair is important? Why thinking about hair is helpful in us understanding Abraham Lincoln and who he was as a person and as a president?

Ted Pappas  20:21  
Sure. I think it's interesting and it's been overlooked by historians, because I think most historians think they'll simply be written off as a silly concept to do this. But because hair is something everyone, everywhere in the world, can relate to, it has a special quality and a way in which we can then understand and read history in a more personal and moving way as a result. And there was never a more down to earth self made man as president than Abraham Lincoln. He was endlessly mocked as a child for his lanky physique and tousled hair. When he ran for the presidency in 1860, he was endlessly mocked as the ugliest man ever to run for president because of his homely looks. Then when he did grow a beard to look less homely, which, in the opinion of many people, did give some definition, and it didn't to his face and his gaunt features. It did improve his looks. But then he was widely criticized for his hairiness when he became the first bearded president in American history, and roundly criticized and called an ape, a baboon, a gorilla, so he couldn't win. And what's interesting is, even after he was shot and taken across the street from Ford's Theater to Peterson house, during that nine hour vigil, when he really the doctors could do little more than try to keep him comfortable when he was dying, during that time, some 60 to 90 people visited his bedside, and interestingly, many of them came armed with scissors. They were cutting locks of his hair when he was still alive, lying on his deathbed, wanting these historic snippets of his hair, underscoring the centuries old tradition of collecting hair of folks we love and want to memorialize. And remember, there was frantic hair clipping while he was still alive, the next day after he died at the Peterson house, and then the furious hair clipping continued before and after his autopsy, when his body was moved to the White House. At one point, one of the surgeons conducting the autopsy cut a lock of hair and it fell to the floor, and there was a mad scramble of doctors body slamming themselves on the floor to try to rescue and retrieve and get their own, their own lock of Lincoln's hair. As I say in the book, there was such a widespread scalping of Lincoln, it was so prolific that it's surprising that the public didn't encounter a bald 16th president at the open casket ceremonies that followed over the next two weeks. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  22:55  
So this, this idea of hair clipping and keeping hair as a memoriam, I'm sure there are some people who still do it, but it's less common now, and it might seem a little strange to people who have not done that, but this was really common, right? Could you talk a little bit about that, that practice?

Ted Pappas  23:14  
It really was. It was a particularly important and prevalent during the Victorian era of the 19th century, when there were a lot of customs surrounding the death of loved ones and how to mourn them properly. A good example of this is John Hay, personal secretary to Lincoln. He too ended up with locks from locks of hair from Lincoln. But John Hay is interesting because in a little known fact of history, in the residency, three presidents wore hair rings, rings on their fingers containing hair from either George Washington or Lincoln. And you're right. Undoubtedly, this just sounds bizarre to the modern listener, right? But back then, again, before photography, which helped decrease the popularity of hair collection, because now there was a new and novel matter of kind of remembering your loved ones. But before that time, a lot of people collected hair,and these three presidents who received the hair rings, Rutherford B.Hayes, McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt, they were deeply honored to receive these three hair rings, all given by John Hay, who was personal secretary to Lincoln and later Secretary of State to McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. All were deeply honored to wear the ring. They felt their proximity to greatness, literally, their proximity to greatness in a tangible way by wearing the rings. And they all felt inspired to try to discharge their public duties as president in a more honorable way, in the most honorable way as possible, befitting the greatness of Washington and Lincoln. Now, in centuries past, asking for a snippet of someone's hair was not considered odd. It was considered a gesture of respect, kind of like, in some ways, akin to asking a celebrity for a selfie today. Okay, so it was kind of akin to that, but celebrity hair goes for big bucks today, not surprisingly, right in our era of celebrity obsession. Not too long ago, a chunk of Elvis's hair sold for $115,000 in 2002, and right now, Kelly, you might have to act quickly to get this: a big chunk of Marilyn Monroe's hair, described as a large, flirty swoop of her hair cut just hours before she's sang her seductive, breathy version of Happy Birthday to President Kennedy in 1962, is available for purchase right now, right now at the meager sum of $315,000. So you might want to jump on that. And last, a company in Chicago will even now make diamonds out of the carbon extracted from the hair collected from your lost loved one, or from the fur of your favorite dead pet. So old Whiskers or Fido can today come back to life, but they can come back to life as a stunning gemstone, all thanks to hair and evolving technology.

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:13  
Yeah. You mentioned that Lincoln was the first president with facial hair, and then there was a run for a while, where that was somewhat popular, but it's been a long time. You know, I think people think about all but one of our presidents has been a white man, but there has been a variety of hairstyles, changing hairstyles. Facial hair, has changed over time. Could you talk some about that? And I think people who don't know anything about Dewey except the "Dewey defeats Truman" headline might not realize the importance of facial hair and the presidency.

Ted Pappas  26:48  
Yeah, for the first half century of our of our presidential history, the presidents were clean shaven. That was more accepted for the refined gentleman of the east coast at that time. Facial hair was fine for the frontier trapper and cork and poor country farmer, but not for the gentleman farmer and businessman of the east coast. This changed, of course, with Lincoln becoming the first bearded president. And for another 50 years, almost all the presidents, except for two, are bearded or have mustaches, from the beard gruff fighting men of the Civil War era to 1913 when Taft left office, and Taft had the curly mustachioed tenure of Taft. And by the way, if, if Trump were to be reelected in the fall, his vice president, JD Vance and his beard would now be a heartbeat away from finally ending the 111 year, prejudice against presidents with facial hair, because, as I said, Taft was the last president in 1913. And it's interesting, in 1913 was the progressive era and its spate of public health reforms. And the feeling arose then that after the dirty and dusty 19th century, America needed to clean itself up. Our cities were dirty and teeming with people, thanks to urbanization, industrialization, rapid immigration and diseases like tuberculosis were spreading dangerously. So the feeling arose that a clean shaven look, where infectious diseases could not hide and fester in one's facial hair was a healthier, better look and fit for the new male on the move at the dawn of a new century, on the verge of the auto age, and better reflected the soberness and seriousness in a modern president, which was one of the things that folks used against Thomas Dewey in 1948. They did not like and react well to his Clark Gable-like 'stache. But what's interesting is that this perception has continued to the present. If you remember, after Vice President Al Gore lost the agonizing election of 2000 to George W. Bush, what did he do? He disappeared from the limelight and he grew a beard. To political pundits of the day, the hairy change in Gore signaled one important thing: his retreat from presidential politics. He might not have said this, but his hair reflected it. He was done, and the pundits were right. He was done.

Kelly Therese Pollock  29:21  
So hair, of course, is also important, you mentioned changes in science in solving some long historical mysteries. Could you talk a little bit about that, and the way that because hair lasts so long after a person has died, we sometimes still have the hair to test? 

Ted Pappas  29:39  
Because hair, by the way is so easily accessible and resistant to decomposition, that's a major reason why it's been such an easy and such a great collectible through the centuries. But you're right, science is clearly rewriting the history books, especially the chapters on the private lives of the presidents. When you think about it without science and DNA. President Bill Clinton likely would never have been impeached, because we could never have tied him directly to Monica Lewinsky's notorious stained blue dress. That whole controversy, probably without DNA, would have devolved into a PR ping pong match of He Said, She Said. Without DNA, we wouldn't know that Thomas Jefferson likely did have children with his slave, Sally Hemings, and we wouldn't know that President Harding did indeed have a child out of wedlock in 1919, and we wouldn't know such things as that Presidents Jackson and Taylor did not die from lead, mercury, and arsenic poisoning, as historians had long, had long claimed. So thanks to science, DNA, hair analysis, and changing involving technology, we now have solutions to and clarifications to many of these presidential mysteries and quandaries. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  30:54  
Could you talk a little bit about the ways that hair has impacted even foreign policy?

Ted Pappas  31:00  
Yeah, there's an interesting example involving Benjamin Franklin. You might have seen this, but recently, a civics poll reported that 21% of the American people think Benjamin Franklin was an American president. Of course, he wasn't an American president, but he did save the American presidency, and hair actually played a big role in this. When he was sent to Paris in 1776 as our minister to that country to negotiate a treaty of alliance with France during the American Revolution, he went to Paris and he did not wear a powdered wig for covering his big bald head. Instead, he wore a simple fur hat. Well, wearing a powdered wig at that time was diplomatic protocol, so this shocked the political class in Paris at the time, but the French people absolutely loved it. They fell in love with Frank Franklin, seeing him everywhere wearing this simple brown fur hat. He even wore it indoors, which was yet another well calculated faux pas by Franklin to garner attention for himself. And in fact, ladies even began, it even began a fashion craze with with women. They began to wear custom wigs designed specifically to resemble his famous fur hat, called the coiffure ala Franklin. As I say in my book, it's arguably the most politically consequential hairstyle in history, because it led directly to the support and treaty with France that were critical to America's victory in the American Revolution and the survival of that new country called the United States.

Kelly Therese Pollock  32:38  
And George Washington, of course, famously, also did not wear the powdered wig. And then, of course, American president, since did not.

Ted Pappas  32:45  
He did not. He did powder his hair white. And I think that's where the misconception comes up. But it is interesting, he didn't wear white powdered wig because he thought the white powdered wigs, which underscores hair's ability to transmit unspoken messages and symbolic messages, because he thought powdered wigs reflected the trappings, the pompous trappings, of monarchy, and he had just led us in war to get away from monarchy. So he thought wearing one would signal the wrong which would just signal the wrong message to the world as a leader of the world's latest Republic, but he did powder his hair, which was then a sign of distinction. And I think that's where the misconception comes up.

Kelly Therese Pollock  33:28  
Well, Ted, there are so many fascinating stories in this book. Can you tell listeners how they can get a copy?

Ted Pappas  33:34  
Sure it's available after August 20 from HarperCollins. It will be available everywhere. The audiobook version will also be available on that date, anywhere where you get your audio books. And I hope you all will check it out.

Kelly Therese Pollock  33:50  
And I do love audiobooks, but I will mention that the print book has fantastic illustrations and pictures too.

Ted Pappas  33:56  
It really does. It's chock full of hundreds of illustrations, including original artwork from an artist in Berlin. So it's a wonderful mixture of historic shots, very interesting graphics and original artwork. So thank you for mentioning that. It really is a wonderful book just to thumb through.

Kelly Therese Pollock  34:14  
Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Ted Pappas  34:18  
I think one takeaway would be this, for folks who might think this is, you know, oh my gosh, a book about hair is this, is that hair is simply incredibly rich in meaning and uses, historically, socially, politically and now scientifically, with the extraction and DNA and that it can just be a wonderful tool and hook for the historian, as I said, personalizing the past and re narrating history in a fresh, engaging and moving way, and I hope that's what folks will find in my book.

Kelly Therese Pollock  34:51  
Well, thank you so much. This has been a really fun discussion.

Ted Pappas  34:54  
Thanks so much, Kelly.

Teddy  35:45  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @UnsungHistory or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai