Bad Hair Day Winner!

Thank you for voting in the Bad Hair Day Contest and for sending in all those great hair photos. There is a winner!

Here’s how the votes stacked up.

83.7 % of the voters selected this photo. Congratulations go to Pat Daughtery for winning the contest and a copy of Fashionable Folks: Hairstyles 1840-1900.

The runner up is …

71 % voted for this photo.

I promised a few more photos this week so here goes.

Rachel Peirce sent in this before-and-after picture of her ancestor Hunter Carson White at 9-1/2 years old during the Civil War. She owns a picture of the boy’s father with his hair standing up on his head and wonders whether the second photo was taken to make the boy look more like his father.

Photo collector David Chase sent me this photo. It proves that man’s best friend also can have bad hair. <smile>.

Last weekend I was at the New England Regional Genealogical Conference. I met Janine Penfield who showed me this unusual photo in her family album.

It depicts a female performer known as Illavaro at age 14. She was photographed at several different times by Charles Eisenman of New York City. She would have been very comfortable in the late 1960s when this hairstyle was a fashion statement.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at 19th-century hairstyles!