Prologue: Pieces of History

Earlier today, I was searching for images with “bicycles” to create a Facebook album after being inspired by the commuters of DC, who took to the streets on their bikes to celebrate DC Bike to Work Day.

I was thrilled to see this image, which is not only a fine example of a nineteenth-century velocipede, but is also a tandem bicycle for double the old-timey fun. And not only that, but this gentleman has a fine moustache and sideburns, qualifying him to be featured in Facial Hair Friday.

But the burning question is this: Are these two on a date?

After all, what better way to spend time out in public with your sweetheart in a way that met the high moral standing of the day?

If they are, I am impressed. They are both have corsages to pinned to their coats and have on stylish hats. The woman is wearing gloves and a fitted corset with many, many tiny buttons. The man’s facial hair is neat and tidy, unlike the flowing beards and neards that we often see. They are impeccably groomed, a fact noted in the original caption to this photo which refers to them as a “smartly dressed couple.”

And despite operating a four-wheeled bicycle together using their feet and their hands, neither of them seems sweaty or flustered. If it is … [ Read all ]

It’s very rare to have an example of a recent beard, and even more rare to have a bearded President after, oh, 1890. So I was shocked when John Keller, an archivist at the Clinton Library, sent a link to this picture of President Clinton. He explains the unusual find in this guest post:

Here are two aspiring Yale law students posing for a photo in the early 1970s and looking very seventies indeed. Please admire the “Viking” beard look that this future President is sporting at Yale Law School.

You won’t be the only admirer: the First Lady cited the “Viking” look in her memoir Living History. This is the first of many photos—to say the least—in which Bill and his new friend Hillary would be featured in the coming years. But that was all in the future. It was the early seventies and this picture of law student Bill truly captured the “hairy” nature of the times.… [ Read all ]

Edward Bates was living quietly and comfortably in 1860. He had been out of public life for two decades but now was being courted by backers for the highest office in the land. The new Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States was wide open, and a number of contenders were vying for the prize.

Those who urged Bates to put his hat in the ring considered his standing as an elder statesman of Missouri (he’d arrived in St. Louis in 1814 and been a delegate to the state constitution convention) and his previous public service (state legislator, U.S. Representative, judge). Perhaps they were also swayed by his impressive whiskers, which give him a patriarchal air.

Bates did not win the nomination—a beardless lawyer from Illinois won the party’s backing and the Presidency. When the newly be-whiskered Abraham Lincoln was filling his Cabinet, though, he called on Bates to be his Attorney General. Bates was part of the unlikely “team of rivals” brought together by Lincoln. Two other former Presidential candidates, William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, were brought into the Cabinet as Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury. (Another member of the Cabinet, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton has been a Facial Hair Friday honoree.)

President Lincoln himself remarked on Edward Bates’s facial hair. He teased his Attorney General about the contrast … [ Read all ]

After a brief hiatus, Facial Hair Friday is back with a special Valentine’s week post!

When Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri wanted to encourage Americans to emigrate to the west as part of the Manifest Destiny movement, he decided that eyewitness descriptions of the landscape were necessary.

So in 1842, Benton sent off his son-in-law John C. Frémont as the head of a series of expeditions to survey and map the Oregon Trail to the Rocky Mountains.

It wasn’t Frémont’s first time surveying new territory. Frémont had been in the Corps of Topographical Engineers and later explored and surveyed the Des Moines River and the area between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

But this trip called for a special guide, and  Frémont hired Kit Carson, the well-known mountain man and adventurer to lead the first expedition. After that, the men went on several expeditions into the Sierra Nevada and along the Oregan Trail.

And in a move sure to swell his father-in-law’s heart with pride and his fellow explorers’ hearts with jealousy, Lt. John C. Frémont also “discovered” Lake Tahoe on February 14, 1844, Valentine’s Day,  putting the lake on a map for the first time.

You can read pages from Frémont’s report in the “Eyewitness” online exhibit.… [ Read all ]

We may be a litttle short-staffed on this quasi-holiday, but I couldn’t let Facial Hair Friday go by without a nod to some historic beards. Today’s honoree is Gen. Albion P. Howe, veteran of the Mexican War and the Civil War.

When a captain in the U.S. Army,  Howe served under Col. Robert E. Lee at Harper’s Ferry in the action against John Brown. During the Civil War, he served in the Army of the  Potomac and led his division in the Battle of Fredericksburg. After the war he was a member of the honor guard that watched over Abraham Lincoln’s body and was appointed to the military commission that tried the Lincoln conspirators.

I came upon the general serendipitously. I was actually looking for information about sewing machine inventor Elias Howe, Jr.,  when I chanced upon the general’s flowing mustachios. Further research into Howe brought me back to Facial Hair Friday for June 25, 2010, when Hilary presented Col. Marshall Howe’s amazing neck beard.

What is it about Howes and facial hair? One even sees a progression of hair upward, moving from Marshall’s neck to Elias’s lower chin to Albion’s extravagent mustache and full beard. Keep your eyes peeled. If you come across any more Howes with noteworthy facial hair, let us know!… [ Read all ]