Tmz website reported that a lock of George Washington’s hair, wrapped in an oval shape and placed in a small glass box surrounded by pearls on all sides, is for sale at auction for $45,000.
The Al-Rai daily quoting the website added that the back of the box is engraved with George Washington’s initials, “GW.”
Accompanying the lock is a collection of handwritten correspondence, dated August 15, 1873, between the noble American Derbys and a collector of antiquities of dignitaries and celebrities around the world.
The correspondence mentions that George Washington did not wear a wig on his head at all, unlike many of his contemporaries, but rather he styled it himself according to a specific mechanism, which was not specified, that made it appear as if it were a wig.
Regarding how this lock was preserved until today, an informed source explained that one of the nobles of the “Derby family” received the lock of hair from George’s wife, Martha, and it was passed down to his children, then his grandchildren, and so on over the course of 3 centuries, until it reached the open market through an auction.
The title “Derby” means an aristocratic nobleman in England, and with the colonization of the New World “America,” the title was transferred to the nobles who lived there, and it was limited to the De Ferrers family, but after its bankruptcy, it was transferred to other nobles.
This is not the first time that a lock of hair from the head of the first American president has been sold. In 2021, a lock of hair was sold tied to a copper handle, and accompanied by a handwritten letter of introduction.
The letter, dated June 28, 1836, states, “General Washington’s hair was cut off from his head in the year 1799 by John Perry of Philadelphia, from whom I received it. “I am Father Hopkinson-Villada.”
The lock was then offered for a thousand dollars, and after several days of display, it achieved $6,000 for sale, much less than an older lock that was sold through Christie’s Auction House for $35,000.
The website mentioned the presence of two other locks of hair of the founding American president in a museum in Philadelphia, which confirms that “artifacts associated with the country’s first president are highly desired by museums, history buffs, and souvenir collectors alike.”
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