Leila Cohoon's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri, has on loan a possible piece of a president.
Six baby blond tufts of hair could belong to the late Harry Truman.
"It's a hair wreath made in the neighborhood where Truman grew up," Cohoon said.
It was a common practice for women to weave hair belonging to friends, neighbors and club or church members into hair crafts.
Recently, with the owner present, Cohoon snipped one of the sections of blond hair to be tested for DNA. [Link]
Remember the story that circulated a few years ago about blondes becoming extinct? That one turned out to be false, but a new one says redheads are an endangered species.
According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years.
The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world's population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago.
Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and so producing little redheads of their own. [Link]
Carmena Capp has made a unique donation to Locks of Love, a non-profit that provides hairpieces to kids and teens suffering from permanent hair loss.
Fannie "Frances" Amelia Fretwell Wilkerson -- her birth certificate says Fannie, but she went by Frances -- died in Boise, Idaho, in 2001 when she was 89. Among her things, Capp found a pair of braids with a note in Aunt Frances' handwriting: "My own hair -- cut when I was a teenager -- about 1926?"
Locks of Love accepts hair donations that are at least 10 inches long and bundled in ponytails or braids. The hair must be clean, dry and packed in a plastic bag.
And, according to guideline No. 7 on the organization's Web site, "Hair cut years ago is usable if it has been stored in a ponytail or braid." [Link]
DNA tests are underway to see if residents of a remote corner of China are descended from Roman soldiers. This might explain all the green eyes, big noses, and blonde hair thereabouts.
Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. "We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour," he said. "At school they call her 'yellow hair'. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don't know about our ancestors." [Link]
The Springer family of Hettinger, North Dakota, has inherited a curious genetic trait. A large proportion of them are born with a white patch of hair on their foreheads. Known as piebaldism, it's a dominant trait found in every generation of the family.
The white lock gene traveled from England with the Stowell family. Three of the Stowell family girls married three of the Springer family boys way back in the late 1800s and early 1900s when it was fairly common for groups of brothers to marry groups of sisters. The three Springer-Stowell unions were prolific, with the brothers, wives and their 17 children settling in North Dakota, Minnesota and Colorado.
Kaye McIntyre said she was amazed when she attended a Springer family reunion in Minnesota a few years back.
"I could not get over all the white locks," she said. "Wherever I looked, I kept seeing my own children." [Link]
A growing number of people are checking their DNA to see if they're related to famous historical figures. Tom Bopp of Kailua, Hawaii, found out he's related through his mother to Marie Antoinette.
The guillotined French queen's mitochondrial DNA had previously been extracted from a lock of hair clipped when she was a child, and the analysis published in a genetics journal.Of course, not everyone gets the results they're hoping for.
Just who Mr. Bopp's and the monarch's shared ancestor might be is unknown. But that doesn't stop Ms. Bopp from telling her husband to "eat cake" when, for instance, he expresses premature concern about what's for dinner.
Of the 74 Lees who have had their DNA tested with Relative Genetics in hopes of finding a link to Robert E., for instance, none matched the signature of the known descendants of the general.
"One lady who sponsored a male cousin of hers asked if he did the test incorrectly," said M. Clint Lee, the project coordinator, who counts himself among the disappointed. "She didn't want to believe the results." [Link (reg. req.)]
Through the genealogical research of Lynda Von Duhn, her mother Peggy Lill and aunt Gladys Nohlquist were reunited last month after spending a lifetime apart. They last saw each other 79 years ago at an orphanage in Troy, N.Y.
Lill, who was 4, recalls that Nohlquist, then 2, was wearing a sunsuit with a duck on the front. She is sure of it.
Nohlquist insists that wasn't her.
"Did you have blonde hair?" Lill, 83, asked her sister.
"No, I had brown hair," said Nohlquist, 81, after the two were reunited recently in Lill's Glenview home. [Link]
From the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader:
Heir to hair wants $750,000 for Washington locks
BOONEVILLE WOMAN HOPES EBAY HELPS HER SELL AMERICANA
By Amy Wilson
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
BOONEVILLE - Christa Allen has a hank of George Washington's hair. Well, not exactly a hank. Two hairs secured under glass in a pocket watch. Two more hairs are in an envelope.
She has always known they were from Washington's head because her father, William Allen, said so. The former Philadelphia lawyer also said he had the proof. Only he was a pack rat who didn't much believe in safety deposit boxes. So he hid things in his old suburban Philadelphia house. Then he forgot where they were.
[snip]
It all started sometime in late 2000, when her father, in failing health, handed her the watch with the hair (along with a Revolutionary War map and an antique land deed) and told her to search the house for what he knows are two pieces of proper documentation to establish the hair's pedigree.
For the first, he advised, look in the "far left-hand corner of the house attic in a small cardboard box with various other papers." The second document, he assured her, "is located somewhere inside the house."
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
