Now this is special...

[DougCooper]

from the "There's one born every minute department" I give you...

http://www.jwbooth.com/purchase.shtml

[Spinster]

Re: Now this is special...

Reckon they've also got a piece of the True Cross for sale?? :tounge_sm

Wondering also if they ripped up those fine old floors and covered them with linoleum just so they'd have something to sell.

[va-yank]

Re: Now this is special...

In the same category of miniscule relics, we present Historic Hair

http://stores.ebay.com/Historical-Hair-and-Collectibles

[Bill Cross]

historic pedigree for such silliness

As silly as these both seem to us, there's a VERY long pedigree for souvenirs even far more ghoulish. Crusaders came back from the middle east with enough pieces of "the one true cross" to build a small ship, and there is even documentation that admirers (or huckers) took pieces of the hair and even cut off the nipples of a female saint during the Middle Ages. Saving a lock of hair from a dead loved one was widespread of course, along with women who would give a lock of their hair to a beau or husband heading off to war.

At an event last year, Hank Trent had a piece of the rope used to hang John Brown that he was selling to suckers (ahem) as there is documented evidence this kind of thing went on in the hills near Harper's Ferry. One more feather in Hank's cap and a reminder of what the hobby can achieve when we're willing to push the envelope a little.

[marine05]

Re: Now this is special...

This is not entirely implausible as I have quite a number of pieces of oak from Mayflower II and you can purchase pieces of Boston Garden's/Fleet Center's parquet floor. You get a piece that is quite small, less than 1 sq in.

But as far as that murderer, who'd want a piece, the house is not far from mine, 45 minutes or so but I have no desire to visit.

s/f


DJM

[Hank Trent]

Re: Now this is special...

One example of what Bill's talking about, from http://flag.blackened.net/daver/1sth...rs_ferry.html:

The gallows on which Brown was hung must have been a vast fabric and the rope used must have been as long as the Equinoctial Line, or, else, both had some miraculous powers of reproduction. Of the many thousands of soldiers who were stationed from time to time in Jefferson county, from the day of Brown's execution till the last regiment disappeared, more than a year after the war, almost every other man had a portion of either as a souvenir of his sojourn in Virginia. The writer saw pieces of wood and fragments of rope purporting to have formed parts of them - enough to build and rig a large man-of-war. If the soldiers believed they had genuine relics they were as well contented as they would be if they had the reality and it would be cruel to undeceive them.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[acwillen]

Re: historic pedigree for such silliness

Saving a lock of hair from a dead loved one was widespread of course, along with women who would give a lock of their hair to a beau or husband heading off to war.

Anybody happen to have some good examples of what a guy could DO with a lock of hair like that? Or even how much hair we're talking about here? I'm familiar with the practice, but I can't think of any actual references off hand.

[KentuckyReb]

Re: historic pedigree for such silliness

I've seen watch chains maid from plaited hair. Never seen any with a documented WBTS provenance, but they were apparently, while not common, not unheard of either. I don't know how well human hair holds up under weather...Such a thing might not have been something a soldier would find practical. Just one use I'd seen for human hair in 'our' century. Whether it was a practice soldiers engaged in I don't pretend to know. Otherwise, if it was just a snippet of hair, probably just carried it somewhere close to them, maybe in a matchsafe, pressed in a Bible...just something to take out and touch, maybe still catch her scent on it...certainly a welcome 'call from home' in those pre-phone days.