George Washington’s Hair Found in 18th-Century Almanac

In 2018, librarians at Union College in Schenectady, New York, made an extraordinary discovery while conducting a routine inventory: a six-inch lock of hair tucked inside a 1793 almanac, accompanied by an envelope whose handwritten notes linked the strands to George Washington himself. The first president, born February 22, 1732, did not wear a wig — the silver hair on the one-dollar bill is his own — and during the 18th and 19th centuries, locks of hair were treasured keepsakes exchanged among friends, lovers, and admirers. For students of Native and Indigenous history, the find opens a wider window: hair was never merely a personal ornament in early America. Across Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and countless other nations, hair carried ceremonial, diplomatic, and spiritual meaning long before European colonists adopted it as a sentimental token. This article examines Washington’s hair, its journey through the Schuyler and Hamilton families, and the deeper Indigenous traditions that shaped how hair was understood in the American Revolution era.

Union College’s Discovery: A Lock of Washington’s Hair in a 1793 Almanac

The discovery was made by John Myers, a librarian at Union College’s Schaffer Library, during a systematic inventory of the archives. Inside a 1793 almanac — likely owned by Philip Jeremiah Schuyler, brother of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton — researchers found an envelope containing a lock of Washington’s hair. Union College has deep ties to the Schuyler family: Philip John Schuyler, Eliza and Philip Jeremiah’s father, was one of the college’s founders.

The handwritten notes on the envelope suggest a chain of descent: Eliza Schuyler Hamilton reportedly gave the hair to her son James, who passed it on to his granddaughters. How the envelope slipped into the almanac and how the almanac reached Union College’s library remains unknown, but the documentation trail — however fragmentary — is the sort of archival breadcrumb historians rely on to authenticate objects from the founding era. This is the same archival discipline used to trace wampum belts and their diplomatic records, where provenance determines whether an object is a genuine historical witness.

The Cultural History of Hair as a Keepsake

Hair in 18th and 19th Century Euro-American Society

Gifting a lock of hair may seem eccentric today, but in Washington’s era, it was entirely unremarkable. Hair was woven into brooches, lockets, rings, and elaborate “hair wreaths” displayed in family parlors. Surviving strands attributed to George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln still circulate in museums and private collections. Washington’s hair is especially abundant: the Smithsonian Institution, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Mount Vernon estate and museum together hold dozens of samples, some set into jewelry. Washington’s locks were likely the most widely distributed of any president’s — a physical relic of public admiration in an age before photography.

Indigenous Hair Traditions: Ceremony, Mourning, and Kinship

Long before colonists adopted hair as a sentimental token, many Indigenous nations of North America observed profound traditions around hair. Among the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, hair was cut in mourning and styled to signal clan, status, and spiritual readiness. The Mohawk roach and the Anishinaabe braid were not mere ornament but markers of identity, honor, and community standing. In some traditions, a lock of hair honored the dead or sealed a bond between families — a practice strikingly parallel to, yet spiritually distinct from, the colonial keepsake custom that later produced Washington’s strands. Understanding these traditions is essential to reading American history accurately, as studying the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy makes clear: hair, like wampum, was a carrier of meaning and memory.

Authenticating the Hair: Expert Opinion and Comparative Values

Union College sent photographs of the six-inch strands and their accompanying materials to John Reznikoff, a manuscripts and documents dealer with a major collection of historical hair. Reznikoff owns locks from John F. Kennedy, Napoléon Bonaparte, and Ludwig van Beethoven. He even holds a sample of Lincoln’s hair with fragments of dried brain matter, plucked after John Wilkes Booth shot him in 1865.

Reznikoff’s assessment of the Union College lock was notably honest: “Without DNA, you’re never positive, but I believe it’s 100 percent authentic.” He estimated the strands’ value at two to three thousand dollars — modest compared to the $6,875 paid for a lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair in 2016, or the $25,000 a Lincoln lock fetched the year before. Yet he added firmly, “it’s undoubtedly George Washington’s.” Such authentication dilemmas echo those faced by curators of Indigenous material culture, where oral history and provenance often carry weight equal to — or exceeding — scientific analysis.

Hair, Sovereignty, and the American Revolution

The American Revolution era was also the era of the Proclamation of 1763, the Treaty of Paris, and waves of treaty-making that reshaped Indigenous homelands. Washington’s hair may sit inside an almanac in an upstate New York library, but the same years saw Haudenosaunee, Cherokee, Shawnee, and countless other nations negotiating their survival against colonial expansion. Objects, treaties, and records remain tightly interwoven. For a fuller picture of how the Revolution reshaped Native lives, see the account of how the Proclamation of 1763 redrew Indigenous boundaries — a companion story to any artifact of the founding generation.

Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways

Several themes unite this discovery with the broader field of Native and Indigenous history:

• Hair as memory: Across cultures — from Haudenosaunee mourning customs to colonial keepsake jewelry — hair functioned as a tangible link to kin and community.
• Provenance matters: The Union College lock’s chain of custody through the Schuyler and Hamilton families mirrors the diplomacy embedded in Indigenous wampum and treaty belts.
• Authenticity is layered: Reznikoff’s careful caveat — value without molecular proof — parallels the interpretive caution required when handling Indigenous objects whose meaning rests on oral tradition.
• Museum stewardship: Institutions such as Mount Vernon and the Smithsonian preserve Washington’s hair just as tribal museums and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) govern the care of Indigenous remains and cultural items.
• Ongoing scholarship: The 2018 find shows that archival work can still surface new evidence, reminding us that the histories of Native nations and the founding generation are not strictly separated but entangled.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was George Washington’s hair preserved for more than two centuries?

Hair is chemically durable, composed primarily of keratin, and survives well when kept dry and away from light and insects. In the 18th century, locks were pressed into paper envelopes, sewn into fabric, or encased in jewelry, all of which helped protect the strands. The Union College lock’s envelope, with its handwritten genealogical notes, provided context that guided authentication.

Did Indigenous peoples of the Revolution era also keep hair as keepsakes?

Yes, though the traditions differed. Many nations had ceremonial practices involving hair — mourning cuts, braids signaling clan or status, and tokens exchanged between families. In Haudenosaunee and other Eastern Woodlands cultures, these customs carried spiritual and diplomatic weight distinct from the Euro-American sentimental fashion that peaked in the 19th century.

Is the Union College lock definitely George Washington’s?

Without DNA testing, it cannot be stated with absolute certainty. John Reznikoff, the hair expert who evaluated the photographs, believed it is authentic and estimated its value at roughly $2,000–$3,000. The handwriting on the envelope supports descent through the Schuyler–Hamilton families, but gaps remain in the documentary record.

What legal and ethical rules protect Indigenous hair and remains today?

In the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 governs the return of human remains and cultural items to lineal descendants and tribes. Similar laws and policies exist in Canada. These frameworks recognize Indigenous rights to ancestral materials and stand in contrast to the market for celebrity hair keepsakes.

Where can I see Washington’s hair or Indigenous hair-related artifacts today?

Washington’s hair is displayed at Mount Vernon in Virginia and held by the Smithsonian Institution. Indigenous material culture — including items that use hair or reference its traditions — is cared for at institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian and numerous tribal museums across the United States and Canada.

Cultural Legacy and Modern Preservation

The 2018 discovery at Union College is a reminder that history arrives in fragments — an envelope tucked in an almanac, a lock of silver hair, a handwritten line pointing back to the Schuyler and Hamilton families. For historians of Native America and the founding era alike, the lesson is the same: objects matter, provenance matters, and the stories embedded in them — whether hair, wampum, or treaty paper — deserve the rigor of evidence and the respect of honest scholarship. As museums and tribal nations continue to reexamine the past together, discoveries like this one reinforce a simple truth: the story of the American Revolution belongs as much to the Indigenous nations who shaped its landscape as to the men whose portraits hang in our national galleries.