Westfield, New York: Where Lincoln Grew His Beard

In the fall of eighteen sixty, an eleven-year-old girl named Grace Bedell sat down in Westfield, New York, and wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Her advice was simple: grow a beard. The ladies like whiskers, she told him, and whiskers might win him more votes.

Lincoln wrote back within four days, intrigued but noncommittal. He was elected anyway, and then he grew the beard.

On February sixteenth, eighteen sixty-one, Lincoln's inaugural train stopped right here in Westfield. He stepped onto the platform, called for Grace in the crowd, kissed her on the cheek, and pointed to his new whiskers. The first president to wear a beard, some historians say, wore it because a child from this small Lake Erie town told him to. A statue in the village center still marks the spot.