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11-year-old Grace Bedell wrote to Abraham Lincoln suggesting he grow a beard for his presidential campaign in 1860. Lincoln eventually grew a beard and their meeting in Westfield, New York, became a famous children’s story. A statue of their meeting still stands in Westfield. Bedell later married and died in Kansas in 1936.
Grace Greenwood Bedell has an unusual place in American history. As an 11-year-old girl living in Westfield, New York, Grace decided that one of the presidential candidates in the 1860s would look better with a beard than she did. She so she wrote to Abraham Lincoln, telling him that she “would look so much better” if he grew a beard. The former Frontier attorney thought about it, telling Grace in her return letter that she feared people might think growing a beard while on campaign was a “stupid affectation.” Lincoln finally decided to give it a try, and at his inauguration in January 1861, he sported a full beard, a look that has since become iconic.
Back when a beard meant something:
On his way to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration, Lincoln stopped in Westfield to meet his young pen pal. “You see?” he told her, “I let this mustache grow for you.”
The meeting spawned a famous children’s story after Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in 1865. A statue depicting their meeting still stands in Westfield.
Grace Bedell later married a Union Army veteran and moved to Kansas, where she lived for the rest of her life, dying two days before her 88th birthday in 1936.
