A lock of Abraham Lincoln's hair along with a blood-stained telegram from his 1865 assassination have both just sold for $81,000 during the last day of a Boston auction on Saturday.
According to NY Daily News, the 2-inch lock of hair was taken from a postmortem examination of Lincoln that took place in 1865 after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. How the hair has lasted this long is beyond us, but apparently the hair, as well as the letter, was originally preserved by members of Lincoln's family back in the 19th century.
"When you are dealing with samples of Lincoln’s hair, provenance is everything — and in this case, we know that this came from a family member who was at the President’s bedside,” RR Auction's executive vice president Bobby Livingston said in a statement.
The hair is also mounted on top of an official War Department telegram sent to the post office of his assistant Dr. Todd by George Kinnear in Kentucky. The hair and bloodied document sold together for $81,250, despite it originally projected to be sold for $75,000 by the company handling the auction.
Prior to this, the same lock of Lincoln's hair was sold in 1999 for an undisclosed amount.
