Hair Force One, Part 3 or Hair to the Chief

Statue of Franklin Pierce, prior to installation on the statehouse lawn at Concord, NH

In previous posts, I have discussed Franklin Pierce's hair, a topic which has fascinated historians and sparked spirited debate among cosmetologists for decades. I can't take full credit for the title of the current post. An occasional reader of this blog, Daniel P. Cory JD (an abbreviation which once may have stood for juvenile delinquent, but now indicates he is a full-fledged lawyer), suggested the title "Hair to the Chief" when commenting on one of the said previous posts. I was conflicted as to whether to use that as the title of the current missive, or to use "Hair Force One, Part 3," since two previous posts were "Hair Force One" and "Hair Force One, Part 2." I have gotten some hits to the blog via Google from people searching for Hair Force One. I assume most of them are looking for a heavy metal band by that name. Unfortunately, I just made a disturbing discovery by Googling "Hair Force One 3" myself. Topping the list of links is a site selling a series of adult movies entitled "Hair Force One." So maybe some of those people who land here via Google are looking for something other than loud music. Whatever. If it means more page views, I'll continue to use the phrase.

But, as usual, I digress.

I decided to follow the shining example of the writers of the 1960s cartoon, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and use both titles, as they frequently did. Examples include:

Axe Me Another or Heads You Lose!
Avalanche is Better Than None or Snows Your Old Man
The Deep Six or The Old Moose and the Sea

And on and on. Brilliant!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the hair of Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the USA. While researching another Pierce topic, soon to be revealed in a separate post, I found an article in the May 19, 1900 Fitchburg (Mass) Daily Sentinel in which F.C. Currier writes about meeting Franklin Pierce during the Presidential campaign of 1852. Currier described Pierce as follows:

He was tall and of slender build, with erect, military bearing, black hair, standing up somewhat in curls.

So there you have it. Another foray into the obscure. Hair today and gone tomorrow! Hey wait a minute! It's another title. . .

Googling Hair Force One

I chose to use the term Hair Force One in two previous posts about President Franklin Pierce's hair. I chose this phrase because it is a word play on the name of the Presidential airplane. The only time I had heard it previously was on CNBC, in reference to commentator Joe Kernan on the show "Squawkbox." He is endowed with a full head of hair, and host Mark Haines sometimes refers to Kernan's desk as "Hair Force One." Anyway, monitoring hits on this blog via Feedjit, I noticed one reader arrived from a Google search "watch hair force one 3 online." Hmmm, I thought, I wonder what that's about. I ran a search for Hair Force One myself, and found out that there is a heavy metal/hair band by that name. Many of the search results had to do with a video of somebody named Edguy performing a cover of the band's romantic ballad "F***ing with Fire!" I also learned that Hair Force One is an online game at the National Pediculosis Association web site, where the player uses a Lice Meister comb to remove lice from a child's head (see also my previous post "How to Avoid Writing"). Finally, the search yielded a site with a rather disturbing video which "defends hairy women around the planet." A good portion of the video consists of a woman applying some sort of gel to the ample hair on her bare midrift. As if that weren't bad enough, a good portion of the rest focuses on unshaved female armpits. The moral of the story is that shaving of female body hair is the result of a greedy plot launched in 1915 by the Wilkinson Sword Razor Blade Co. and Harpers Bazaar Magazine. Wow! I won't supply a link to the video. If you're that interested, you can google it yourself.

I apologize to anyone who might have landed here looking for a heavy metal rock band, a louse-killing game, or hirsute females.

Hair Force One, Part Two

It seems that Presidential hair was a hot topic around February 15, 2008. As I explained in an earlier post, that's when the New Hampshire Historical Society unveiled what they felt was the secret of Franklin Pierce's hair. That very Presidents Day weekend, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia put on an exhibition of Presidential hair--really! The hair samples came from the Peter Browne Collection of Pile--again I say, really! Peter Browne (1762-1860) was a lawyer and amateur naturalist who was interested in sheep (in a nice way, I mean). He started out collecting wool, otherwise known as pile, and studied what types of wool would be suited to different uses. He then branched out into collecting samples of human hair, including the hair of famous people. Included in the collection are the locks of several Presidents, including none other than Franklin Pierce. Thus occurred another opportunity for the media to take potshots at the 14th President. Writing in the article "Presidential Hair on Display" at Philly.com, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano pointed out that the hair samples do not include the follicles, and therefore would not be a source of DNA for "cloning the brilliant redhead Thomas Jefferson or, for sheer laughs, good ol' Franklin Pierce, the very distant relative of President Bush's mother, and a Confederacy-supporting alcoholic with a thick, brown mop."

Bashing of Handsome Frank aside, it's an interesting article with an accompanying video and a slideshow that includes a photo of the page from Browne's scrapbook with Pierce's hair sample. It's much more attractively displayed than the one at the New Hampshire Historical Society web site shown in my previous post, "Hair Force One."

Hair Force One

Currier Print of Franklin Pierce

The hair of Abraham Lincoln is so desirable to collectors that a 1/16-inch-long piece of a single hair, allegedly cut from the Great Emancipator's head on his deathbed, is listed on eBay at $1900. One-sixteenth of an inch!

Consider then, the value of this lock of Franklin Pierce's hair from the New Hampshire Historical Society collection.


To me, it looks like something a cat coughed up. That, plus Pierce's sullied reputation as an ineffective President, tells me that his tresses probably wouldn't fetch a high price in the booming deceased celebrity hair market. But I may be wrong. Maybe there are enough Pierce aficianados out there to bid up the price.

Apparently, Pierce's tonsorial splendor was one reason behind his nickname, Handsome Frank. Today, there is some question among Pierce commentators (don't look for them on CNN or MSNBC) about whether Franklin Pierce's hairdo was a result of careless indifference, or thoughtfully planned coiffure. The experts seem to come down on the side of thoughtful planning. Writing in the blog Mental Floss, David Holzel lists as number five of his "Five Amazing Facts About Franklin Pierce (In Honor of His 203rd Birthday)" the tantalizing possibility that Franklin Pierce perfected the combover. He cites as evidence a photo from 1862 which supposedly shows Pierce's hair on two levels--"above, the hair combed on a deep slant, and below, a small patch at the front and center of his wide forehead." Alas, the photo is not included in the article so that astute readers might judge for themselves. I haven't been able to locate the said photo, even in an extensive gallery of Pierce's hairstyles at the website of the New Hampshire Historical Society. The NHHS e-newsletter of February 15, 2008 focuses on a bit of evidence in the great hair, or should I say big hair, debate. The Society purchased a letter written by Franklin's wife, Jane, at auction. The letter, written to her sister in 1857, contains the passage, “Today, Mr. Pierce has met the citizens of Norfolk and after the fatigue is quietly lying on the sofa by a bright fire with Miriam brushing his hair soporifically.” Miriam was Mrs. Pierce's maid. I'm not sure if the phrase means that Mr. Pierce found the hair-brushing so relaxing he was falling asleep, or the maid found the task so boring that she was nodding off. In any case, one might conclude from this little vignette that Pierce was interested in the appearance of his hair. In the newsletter, Peter Wallner, director of the NHHS library and author of two volumes of Franklin Pierce biograpy, states, “While the evidence is not conclusive, the letter leads one to suspect that the vanity Pierce showed for his appearance extended to his hair as well.”

The other mention of President Pierce's hair I have found in my exhaustive research comes from the newspaper description of his lying in state at the New Hampshire State House in Concord, where mourners commented on “his mass of curly black hair, somewhat tinged by age, but which was still combed on a deep slant over his wide forehead.” [New Hampshire Daily Patriot, October 11, 1869]. Deep slant or combover? You be the judge. As David Holzel says at the conclusion of his Mental Floss article, "Pierce’s hair unquestionably is a subject for future historians to wrestle with." Let's just hope they don't have to wrestle with that hairball at the NHHS Museum.