Unknown Stories: Lincoln's Beard

Buffalo, NY -- As you drive through the Village of Westfield in Chautauqua County, you could easily miss the small park at the corner of the village crossroads. Two statues are there, of an American president and a little girl.

"This is the Lincoln-Bedell Park with a statue, a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln and Grace Bedell as a little girl in 1860 here in Westfield," says John Paul Wolfe of the McClurg Museum. "And this commemorates that meeting between Lincoln and the little girl."

Here is the president elect, on his way to his inauguration ... stopping in Westfield to thank 11-year-old Grace Bedell. "To thank her for having him grow a beard," says Wolfe.

Lincoln was in the heat of a presidential election. slavery was the red-hot issue between North and South. He was beardless then.

"She thought he'd look a little better with a beard on," Wolfe explains.

Grace's father was anti-slavery, a devout abolitionist. He joined the fledgling Republican party in Westfield, went to a Republican rally at a fair, brought home a poster with Lincoln's picture on it.

Wolfe says, "It clearly showed Abraham Lincoln without a beard, and so Grace was able to see what the man looked like, and thought, a little bony, a little thin."

So grace wrote him a letter, dated October 16th, 1860:

"My father has just come home from the fair and brought home your picture, I'm a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much, so I hope you won't think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. I have got four brothers, and part of them will vote for you anyway, and if you will let your whiskers grow, I will try to get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better because your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers, and they would tease their husbands to vote for you, and then you would be president. My father is going to vote for you, and if I was a man, I would vote for you, too.

Phoebe Forbes, a consultant for the Chautauqua County Historical Society smiles as she reads the letter. "Good for her," she says. "She should have been able to vote when she was old enough."

Wolfe says Lincoln received the letter and then wrote her back  on October 19, 1860:

"My Dear Little Miss," he wrote. "Your very agreeable letter of the 15^th is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters. I have three sons, one seventeen, one nine and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now? Your very sincere well wisher, A. Lincoln."

"And he won," says Wolfe. And, as we know now, he'd grown a beard.

Wolfe: "This was probably six months later that he'd stopped on his way through, and he got off the train and said, 'Is the little girl who wrote me about my whiskers here?'

"She was pushed up through the crowd and she had a bouquet of roses to give him, forgot the roses, and met the president."

He went from clean shaven to bearded in less than six months. But the Civil War years inflicted a change in his appearance even more obvious and severe.

The McClurg Museum in Westfield has the lights from the carriage that took him to Ford's Theater the night he was assassinated. On a shelf above the carriage lights is red and gray bunting from the funeral train that carried Lincoln once again through Westfield.

And nearby in the museum is the story of one small voice, the letter from Grace Bedell. But it is also about the sheer kindness of a man who would be president. Grace was 13 when her father got his wish and Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She married and moved to Kansas, and was 72 when women got the vote in 1920.  Grace died 14 years later, just short of her 88^th birthday.

But she is part of his legacy, just 11 when she wrote him a letter. He grew a beard then and won the election. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

• Click here to visit the McClurg Museum's website
• Click here to visit the Abraham Lincoln Research Site