Lock of Henry Clay’s Hair
Brick Store Museum Collection. Gift of the Barry Family. 147

Henry Clay (1777-1852) was a distinguished lawyer and statesman from Kentucky. Not only did he serve as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, but he also had a 20-year career in the United States Senate. Clay was Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams and thrice ran as a presidential candidate. He was appointed one of the commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent with Great Britain ending the War of 1812. His diplomatic skills served him equally well on his home soil. Known as the “Great Compromiser,” Clay was instrumental in establishing the Missouri Compromise of 1820—in which Maine entered the Union as a free state—and the subsequent Compromise of 1850. The latter outlawed the sale of slaves in the nation’s capital, brought northern California into the Union as a free state and determined the states of New Mexico and Utah.

Customs of the day made it common to remember someone—living or dead—by a lock of one’s hair. A descriptive card accompanying the talisman on display here reads, “…given to Mrs. Charles Dummer by Moses Titcomb, who cut it off himself.” Mr. Titcomb was an intimate friend of Clay and it is said that he sat up with Clay the night he died in Washington, D.C. on June 29, 1852.