What's more strange than a jar of hair?

"My Dear Mother's hair cut
from her head the night
she Died at 11 o'clock on
June 8, 1902 Rememberance
age 53 years May 22, 1902"

This jar and its contents were kept by my grandmother Evelyn Kerr. The explanatory note was written by her mother, Lizzie Schulte, on the back of a Christmas gift tag.

I've often been curious about the color of this lock of hair cut from Alvina Tobien Schulte's head when she was 53 years old. Not a strand of grey! I suspect there may have been some dye involved. If so, in 1902 it would have been henna. You'll find some very interesting information about the history and use of this dye at Henna for Hair.

In the Victorian era, beloved family members were sometimes remembered with mourning jewelry made from the deceased person's hair. Called "hairwork," there are a number of websites where you can learn more about that. I don't know whether Lizzie ever intended to have Alvina's hair made into jewelry. It seems not, though. Hairwork began to fall out of fashion around the time of Alvina's death. I think the lock of hair was keepsake enough for Lizzie.

I found this jar of hair a rather odd bit of family memorabilia. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found another one among my mother's things after she died. Kept in the same kind of jar, this was a lock of her own hair.

"Mary's curls cut
from her hair - at
Crown Point, Ind.-
when she was ill
2 yrs. old. 1925"

The handwriting on this note looks like Evelyn's. It looks like someone tried to change the 2 to a 3. My mother would have turned three years old in October of 1925. The trip to Crown Point was probably taken in the summer, though, when she was still just two.

Perhaps Evelyn cut the lock of hair because she feared her daughter was ill enough to die. She had lost her first daughter, Mary June, at the age of only two days (there may have been a miscarriage or two along the way also--I'm sorry, my memory is foggy on that point). After that, she bargained with God for healthy children.