Prologue: Pieces of History

Since the new film Lincoln has spent a few weeks in theaters, we thought it’d be interesting to learn more about President Lincoln’s fantastically hairy cabinet. First up is Gideon Welles, who served as President Lincoln’s and then as President Johnson’s Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869, the longest anyone had held the [...]

It gets harder to find worthy examples of bearded and mustachioed Americans in our holdings after the first decades of the 20th century, when facial hair went out of fashion. Fortunately for us, we can look into a decade known for groovy facial hair: the 1970s. This is one of our most popular images, though [...]

Today’s guest post comes from Tammy Kelly at the Truman Presidential Library. This week’s Facial Hair Friday photo is a most unexpected person: Harry S. Truman, before he became President! At the Truman Library, we know of only two photographs of Truman wearing any kind of facial hair, so this is a rare photo, indeed. [...]

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, I don’t mean the frenzied season of gift-giving. I’m talking about November, the month when several of your friends who have maintained clean-shaven faces suddenly begin to grow mustaches. If you love facial hair, this is your time. Yes, it’s Movember! The month when men grow mustaches to [...]

Today’s featured facial hair is especially appropriate for the approaching Halloween weekend. It’s the plaster cast of a beard, taken of the deceased Walter Q. Gresham, who was Secretary of State at the time of his death in May of 1895. This  death mask—complete with a few beard hairs stuck in it—may seem like an oddity [...]