The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Benedict Arnold’s hair rediscovered
Lock to be displayed at fort where American traitor was captured
ALBANY, N.Y. » A rarely displayed lock of American traitor Benedict Arnold’s hair will be exhibited at the New York fort he helped capture with the help of Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys in the Revolutionary War’s opening weeks.
Officials at Fort Ticonderoga announced Wednesday that locks of hair from Arnold and his first wife Margaret will be displayed this weekend when the privately owned upstate historic site and tourist attraction opens for the season.
Curator Matthew Keagle said the hair was recently rediscovered among the museum’s vast collection of 18th century military artifacts, ranging from muskets and artillery to uniforms and documents.
“There so much in the museum collection that’s not on display. It’s still an ongoing cataloguing process,” This 2017 photo provided by Fort Ticonderoga shows a lock of Benedict Arnold’s hair along with the paper wrappings that enclosed it, at Fort Ticonderoga, in Ticonderoga, N.Y. The hair will be exhibited for one weekend only, Saturday and Sunday, May 5-6, 2018, at the New York fort Arnold helped capture in opening weeks of the Revolutionary War.
Keagle told The Associated Press. “Sometimes we rediscover things, and this was one of them.”
Keagle said the hair was preserved by the couple’s youngest son Henry, who was living in Canada when someone sent him the keepsake
after his father died destitute and forgotten in London in 1801. Margaret Arnold died in 1775 in Connecticut, Benedict Arnold’s home state. Benedict’s lock of hair was wrapped in paper inscribed: “Two locks of my Father’s Hair sent from
London, 1801. Henry Arnold.”
Saving a lock of a deceased loved-one’s hair was a common practice during the era, a method of preserving “a physical reminder of the presence of that person,” Keagle said.