Mourning Art: Hair Wreaths

In the library on the second floor of the Skolfield-Whittier House, hanging on a wall above the fireplace, is a shadow box. It contains a horseshoe-shaped wreath. As you get closer to it, you see that the wreath is composed of many small flowers—some gold, some white, some brown, and others silver. But this wreath isn’t made of flowers—it is made of human hair.

Hair wreath on display at the Skolfield-Whittier House,
probably made by Eugenie Skolfield Whittier or her sister Augusta Marie Skolfield.

Hair wreaths, which were primarily created between 1850 and 1880, were made by Victorian women. These women tended to be middle and upper-class, as they had more time on their hands than did their lower-class counterparts to make crafts. Usually, hair wreaths took the same shape as the one at the museum—that of a horseshoe. And, just like horseshoes, these wreaths were also hung with the open top facing up, facing heavenward.

Hair wreath made by famed botanist Kate Furbish, who is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. From the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# 1992.75.19.

Why was it important that these wreaths faced heavenward? Often, hair wreaths were created as memorials to the dead. When someone in a family died, some of their hair was collected and incorporated into the hair wreath. To make a wreath, Victorian women would start with a simply wire, horseshoe-shaped frame. Next, they would wrap the deceased’s hair around a piece of thin wire, and then shape the wire into flowers. Sometimes they would cut the hair to create tufts, simulating flower petals. Magazines like Godey’s Lady Book printed instructions on how to create these wreaths.

The first flowers to be added to the metal frame would be at the bottom, center. When another member of the family died, the older flowers would be moved up and outward, while the newer hair would take its place in the bottom center position. But hair wreaths were not always made as memorials to the dead. Sometimes, hair was collected from entire schools, churches or communities and woven into one wreath. Because hair wreaths were usually a personal celebration of a family or other group there is little evidence that they were ever created for commercial or solely decorative purposes.

A particularly elaborate hair wreath, made by Mrs. Clara B. Kennedy in 1868. From the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# OH 186.

Indeed, hair was often used as a deeply personal memento of a loved one who had passed away, but it was not exclusively used in hair wreaths. In the time before photographs were widely available or affordable, hair allowed people to carry a piece of a friend or family member around with them. Often, this hair was woven into jewelry, such as bracelets or brooches, and was often worn during the mourning period following a death in the family. Yet hair was not used exclusively by those in mourning. Victorian women often had a hair receiver on their dressing table, in which they would deposit the loose strands from their hairbrush. This hair was then used to fill pincushions—the pins would be coated with the natural oil from the hair, allowing them to move through fabric much easier.

A hair receiver, from the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# 1978.79.

In Victorian America, women utilized their own creativity to create elaborate and beautiful memorials to loved ones using hair. Today, hair wreaths live on as elaborate creations produced from one of the simplest mediums.

Sources:
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Hair Art: Jewelry to Be Worn Close to the Heart website.
Harran, Susan & Jim. “Remembering a Loved One With Mourning Jewelery”. Antique Week, December 1997.
Rombeck, Terry. “Museum Tangled in History of Hair”. LJWorld.com website, 9 October 2005.

Bowdoin's First President: Rev. Joseph McKeen

Most people who visit the Pine Grove Cemetery do so to see the grave of Civil War hero Joshua L. Chamberlain, and they end up walking right by the grave of Rev. Joseph McKeen. McKeen’s grave, which is inscribed entirely in Latin, is certainly a tougher read than Chamberlain’s. But both men were veterans, and both were presidents of Bowdoin College—and both have interesting stories to be told.

Engraving of Rev. Joseph McKeen, from Wheeler & Wheeler's History of Brunswick

Reverend Joseph McKeen was born in Londonderry, New Hampshire on October 15, 1757. He earned three degrees from Dartmouth College over a period of 30 years—a Bachelor of Arts in 1774, a Master of Arts in 1777 and a (honorary) Doctor of Divinity in 1804. McKeen opened a school in his hometown at which he taught for eight years before studying divinity, after which he then returned to teaching at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. In August of 1778 he served 25 days in Gale’s New Hampshire Regiment as a sergeant during the Revolutionary War, and probably participated in the events leading up to the Battle of Rhode Island.

Transcription of the agreement signed by members of Gale's Regiment when they enlisted

McKeen’s longest term of employment, however, was as a Congregational preacher in Beverly, Massachusetts. Ordained on May 11, 1785, McKeen spent the next 17 years of his life in Beverly, marrying Alice Anderson and together raising their family of three sons and two daughters (several of his children will be featured in posts of their own on this blog later on). McKeen was passionate about his Congregational roots—he once referred to Maine’s itinerant Baptist and Methodist preachers “illiterate vagrants who understood neither what they say nor whereof they affirm” (quoted in Kirkland, 32).

In 1802, the young college in Brunswick, Maine was able to lure McKeen north, and he was inducted as the college’s first president on September 2. Bowdoin College was then a very small school—there were but eight students and one professor. There was also only one building, Massachusetts Hall, where McKeen and his family lived with the students. To call the students together, McKeen would simply tap his cane on the banister.

According to college historian Louis C. Hatch, McKeen’s early Bowdoin students were certainly no less rambunctious than they are today. McKeen and the professors would act as “detective-policemen” (Hatch, 25) and punish students caught doing everything from unnecessarily riding on a Sunday (for a fine of $1), to playing cards, to stealing & butchering a Brunswick resident’s geese, owning and using firearms & fireworks and lighting bonfires. Even future Maine governor Robert P. Dunlap (who is also buried in Pine Grove) was punished for skipping chapel. McKeen, who also taught mathematics at the college, conferred the first six Bowdoin graduates with their degrees.

McKeen's grave as it appears today. An English translation of the Latin transcription can be read here (this source mistakenly translated his birth year as 1742).

But a long presidency was not in the cards for McKeen. Afflicted with what was then called “dropsy”, which was probably edema due to congestive heart failure, McKeen died in Brunswick on July 15, 1807, after serving the college nearly 5 years. Bowdoin College contributed $300 (approximately $4,500 today) to McKeen’s family to help cover his burial and $100 to pay for a “table tombstone of white and Egyptian marble” (Flanagan, 14). The college also paid for the monument’s repairs in 1829 and 1842.

Sources:
Bowdoin College. "Agency History/Biographical Note". George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives website.
Calhoun, Charles C. A Small College in Maine: Two Hundred Years of Bowdoin. Brunswick: Bowdoin College, 1993.
Chapman, George T. Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College, From the First graduation in 1771 to the Present Time, with a Brief History of the Institution. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1867.
Flanagan, Teresa M. Mourning on the Pejepscot. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1992.
Hatch, Louis C. The History of Bowdoin College. Portland, Maine: Loring, Short & Harmon, 1927.
Kirkland, Edward Chase. Brunswick’s Golden Age. Lewiston, Maine: C. Parker Loring, 1941.
Wheeler, George Augustus & Henry Warren. History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine, Including the Ancient Territory Known as Pejepscot. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1878.

Pine Grove Cemetery: An Introduction to the Dead

Pine Grove Cemetery, located just off Bath Road & Pine Street in Brunswick, Maine, is arguably the region’s most prominent cemetery. Men & women who have impacted the history of the United States, Maine and Brunswick all lay buried beneath the towering pines which lend the cemetery its name. Among these dead are a Civil War hero, Maine’s most famous botanist, a physician who developed vital forensic tests, the parents of a First Lady, two Maine governors, a slew of Bowdoin College presidents & professors (including the “Father of American Mineralogy”), librarians, Revolutionary War veterans, a former slave, sea captains, and the state’s first printer.

The cemetery is located on land which once belonged to Bowdoin College, which sits directly next to it. In 1821 Bowdoin’s trustees deeded the land to Pine Grove’s first proprietors, Robert Eastman, Nahum Houghton, Abner Bourne “and their associates, heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns”. The two acres were given with the stipulation that the college could take back the land if it were not used as a burying ground.

Painting of Bowdoin College, circa 1825. From the Pejepscot Historical Society collection, acc# 1992.112.84.

But there was no need for the college to worry about the fate of the land. In 1825 the cemetery land was cleared “carefully and selectively” as Teresa M. Flanagan, author of Mourning on the Pejepscot puts it, “not stripped clean as it had been for early town burial grounds.” Though this was six years before Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston—“America’s first garden cemetery”—Pine Grove Cemetery might qualify as a part of the rural cemetery or “cemetery beautiful” movement if not for its location. Rural cemeteries were carefully landscaped and designed, intended to serve as parks do for communities today. Yet, unlike Pine Grove, rural cemeteries were intentionally placed on the outskirts of cities & towns where there was more room for expansion and the grounds were more rolling and picturesque. Pine Grove Cemetery is where it is because it was closer to Brunswick’s population center.

Before the 1820s, the town’s most prominent graveyard—the old First Parish Church Burying Ground—was located next to the meetinghouse on the 12 rod road (now Maine Street). When the church moved closer to downtown Brunswick (its current location) a new cemetery, closer to First Parish Church, was needed. The college stepped in, providing the land for the graveyard. Not only did the town’s most prominent cemetery move from the old First Parish Church Burying Ground to Pine Grove Cemetery, a few of the dead did as well. Bowdoin College’s first two presidents, Joseph McKeen and Jesse Appleton, had each died before Pine Grove Cemetery was established. After the new cemetery was laid out, the remains of both men were relocated to the new cemetery to rest on the land that had once belonged to the college they presided over.

Nearing its 200th birthday, Pine Grove Cemetery continues to hold an important place in Brunswick's past, present and future. According to a 2005 survey by Mark & Donald Cheetham, there are 2,491 marker stones in the cemetery and the earliest death recorded on a gravestone is 1794 (the same year Bowdoin College was founded). Yet, despite its age, the cemetery is active and continues to serve as the final resting place of the area's residents.

Sources:
Cheetham, Donald & Mark. Pine Grove Cemetery, Bath Road, Brunswick, Maine, volumes 1 & 2 (Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 2006.7.1 & 2006.7.2), 2005.
Flanagan, Teresa M. Mourning on the Pejepscot. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1992.
Hatch, Louis C. The History of Bowdoin College. Portland, Maine: Loring, Short & Harmon, 1927.
Wheeler, George Augustus & Henry Warren. History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine, Including the Ancient Territory Known as Pejepscot. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1878.