How Many of My Ancestors Had a Beard? – 52 Ancestors #45

It turns out that finding pictures, and therefore visual confirmation of beard vs clean shaven, wasn’t easy.  There are more male (and female too) relatives that I don’t have an identified pictures of than I had thought. 

To start with my father’s family line:  my father, grandfather Salt, and great-grandfather Salt were all clean shaven.  My g-g-grandfather Wilshire Salt had a beard in the couple of pictures I have of him.  Here he is, probably around the time of his marriage to Ann Justice in 1851.

My father’s maternal line, the Boothbys, were not given to having photographs made before the advent of the home camera, so I don’t know whether my great-grandfather or g-g-grandfather had beards.  I have one blurry home snapshot that I think may be my great-grandfather and I don’t think he had a beard but it is really too far away to tell (and I don’t have any confirmation that I’m right in my identification of him in this picture).

On my father’s Coffin and Justice sides there are only Coffin pictures for Z.B. and for Cyrus Coffin and they were both clean shaven.  I don’t have any Justice men identified in photographs, so I don’t know.

On my mother’s Denman line my grandfather, great-grandfather, and 3g-grandfather and 4g-grandfathers were all clean shaven.  I don’t have a picture identified of my g-g-grandfather but I know that some of his brothers had beards.  The picture I love is of the brother my grandpa Lyle called Uncle Ed’ard:  he had what is called a neck beard or neck curtain.   Edward Denman was born in 1820 so by the time my Grandpa Lyle remembered seeing him on a Sunday afternoon as a maybe three-year old or so, he would have been at least 79 years old.  So he probably looked a lot like this.

On the Minor side, I know that my g-g-grandfather Charles had a beard.  I don’t have any identified pictures of his father Cyrus so I don’t know about his facial hair.

On the Snow side (mother’s mother) as far as I can see the men were clean shaven.   My great-grandfather C. H. Snow did not have a beard in the couple of pictures I have.  There are again one or two men, my g-g-grandfather and 3g-grandfather, who may have had photos taken but I haven’t seen them.

My g-g-grandfather Colvin Sweet had a beard, as did several of his brothers, but I don’t know about my 3-g-grandfather Waterman Sweet.

********************

Note to self – I couldn’t come up with anything to write about “Frightened” #44, so I skipped it.  If anything occurs to me later I will come back to this theme.