Eſſay One: Debunking Facial Hair Being 'Prevalent' On Anglo-American Men, c. 1680-1800

Did pirates wear beards? Not really...

Main Point: In the eighteenth century living history community, a debate rages which may seem inane to the outsider: should men portraying Anglo-American sailors, soldiers, laborers, or aristocrats have facial hair? Few spectators at events in the Southeast (where I live) will see a pirate reenactment (early 1700s) or a Revolutionary War reenactment (c. 1770s-80s) where at least 1/3 of the men aren't fully-bearded (in the manner you see on Duck Dynasty). 

As we'll discuss below, the preponderance of both primary and secondary evidence suggests that while facial hair was not unheard of, it was exceedingly rare on most Anglo-American men of the era.  

I'm not advocating forcing every reenactor to shave. It is a personal choice of course like piercings and tattoos...The 18th-century maritime living history unit that I am the captain of, The Crew of the Charles Revenge,  has adopted what we believe to be a middle-ground approach to what can be a contentious and personal decision: beards are allowed, but it is incumbent on wearers of said beards to let the public know that that it is a personal rather than historical grooming choice. 

But we should tell the public the historical truth when we know it. So this post is written in the spirit of trying to "debunk" various "reenactorisms" that justify beard wearing, and that are frankly frustrating.  While fashions change over time, the fact that most Anglo-American men (a catch-all term for residents of Great Britain and its colonies) remained mostly beardless throughout the century is an assertion based on the preponderance of evidence we have from the period. While this topic may seem to have been beaten-to-death in various sub-cultures of reenacting (i.e. progressive pirate reenacting, progressive Rev War reenacting, etc), I wanted to put together a blog post that tries to address facial hair from throughout the century, and which draws together resources from early, mid, and late eighteenth century discussions on the topic. 

N.B.: this blog post is targeted at Anglo-American impressions alone and does not imply that facial hair was absent for every culture or people. 

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Recent Scholarship/What Historians are Saying: 

Thankfully, this topic has been well covered in the secondary scholarship, both amongst academics and living historians alike! Let me start with some great virtual resources:
1. Adam H.L.'s video lecture on Revolutionary War-hair care 
2. The Kabinettskriege Blog post on the topic from a military perspective.
3. The Pirate Surgeon's article on ship's barbers during the Golden Age of Piracy, c. 1680-1730
4. The 'Royal Tars' blog, which covers Royal Navy fashions c. 1740-1800

The most recent academic research I can find is a recent book by Alun Withey, Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Practice in England, 1650-1900 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).  Withey's study is groundbreaking in that it traces hair-care and beard-care trends throughout the long-eighteenth century, a term that historians use to describe the period from the Glorious Revolution (1689) to the Conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars (c. 1815). That is useful for almost all 18th-century reenactors in the United States and Europe. His work is also moderate in tone, allowing for exceptions and nuance at every point. 

Here are some relevant points for those who don't have time to read the excellent book (but you should anyway!) 

1. Up to the 1650s, beards were seen as an important part of one's health, even to help balance Galenic Humors (His explanation of the medical side of grooming is fascinating, but unfortunately I don't have space to summarize it here). (9)
   
   
2. By the turn of the 18th-century, aesthetics and medical concerns were changing. Rising concerns with 'elegance' prioritized a clean-shaven face (emphasized by Louis XIV's first facial-hair-free portrait in 1701), and medical ideas started to change. Namely, while doctors had previously believed that hair served a function in helping to regulate humoral balance or heat in the body, the 18th-century's gradual departure from humoral medicine made this connection less obvious.  Withey contends that in the 1700s, a "central component in the gendered performance of masculinity," and facial hair was seen by many as a sign of barbarous "otherness." To shave/keep up one's appearance was to express a certain enlightened mastery over oneself (pp. 33-40).
   
   
3. There were still men that chose to wear beards for varying reasons  post-1700 (lack of money for shaving, to hide disease, to hide their appearance, etc.), but they were notably among a minority. While facial hair wasn't necessarily an extreme rarity because of these exceptions (and Withey constantly argues that pre-1750, some level of moderate facial-hair growth was comon before the widespread availability of commercial razors), its presence was also not "ubiquitous" for any sector of the population of 18th-century Britain  in any sense. Furthermore, , there were individual cases of men who chose to remain bearded, Withey concludes that "it still seems likely that perhaps the majority of the poor and lower orders in late seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Britain were, like the polite, elite gentleman, beardless..." 

Now let us dive into specific reenactor-isms and misconceptions!

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Misconception I: We only have depictions of rich people in paintings that are clean-shaven. Poor people/people on the frontiers didn't care about facial hair as much or societal rules.

Primary source evidence belies this mistaken 'reenactorism.' One great example, which I copy from the Concerning Beards, book cited above, is a 1713 newspaper article from London that advertised a Barber that was "skilful in taking off that horrid excrescence on the chins of all males [beards], and casting by the touch of his hand, a cheerfulness where that excrescence grew" (p. 107). 

There are actually a great deal of artistic depictions of "common" men, in both military and civilian contexts from throughout the period in both Britain and America. And they are all, with few exceptions, fairly beardless. 

1725 painting of Royal Navy sailors on HMS Royal Sovereign by L. De Man 

Late 1730s Engraving of South Carolina sailors from 
'An Exact Prospect of Charles Town...' 

Hogarth, 'Beer Street and Gin Lane' c. 1751

In fact, just about any midcentury Hogarth print, which in many cases lampoons the poor, does not typically have bearded men! 

Misconception II: Newspaper accounts of 'bearded' men (and in particular run-away or deserter advertisements) proves that beards were common amongst the lower classes. 

One common refrain from reenactors who support sporting full beards is that by using a newspaper database (e.g. Newspapers.com), you can find hundreds of mentions of runaway servants or enslaved people with beards. For example, see the below image from the 1720 American Weekly Mercury: 

Alun Withey considers this rebuttal in his aforementioned book, Concerning Beards, and using "such advertisements as evidence for the wearing of facial hair is problematic" for a number of reasons. Firstly, such advertisements often overtly emphasized the 'Otherness' of the "poor, troublesome and criminal..."(170). Secondly, people on the run might intentionally grow out facial hair to conceal their identities. 

It is important to note that just because the search term "beard" might have a large gross total in period newspapers, that does not necessarily indicate what a 21st-century person might consider a "long beard." The word "Beard," as reenactors have pointed out to me before, could have multiple meanings in the early modern period. Samuel Johnson, at midcentury, defined any facial hair on the lips or chin as a "beard." This could incorporate peach-fuzz as much as a Duck Dynasty/ZZ top look. 

Another note is that these depictions oftentimes relate to men growing facial hair in a very temporary fashion rather than wearing beards on the regular. Take for instance this 1724 advertisement warning of a Virginia criminal on the run in Pennsylvania (The American Weekly Mercury, c. February 1724): 

Finally, let's play a game of math for a second (a scary proposition for a historian, so forgive and feel free to correct any errors here)

On newspapers.com, a search for the term "beard" for the years 1775-1783 brings just over 1,000 hits. Many of these are mistakes (with false flags on similar words like "board."). But let's pretend for a second that there were 1,000 newspaper advertisements about bearded men in Revolutionary America. That is a miniscule sample size to extrapolate for an estimated 1770s population of 2.5 million (with men likely making up half of that number as they do today). 

Misconception III: Men on the mid-late 18th-century frontier didn't shave! 

Perhaps the greatest modern offenders against 18th-century facial hair mores are so-called "mountain men" or "militia men" who feel that civilian impressions from the 'backcountry' of Colonial America permit more loose following of 18th-century fashion standards. This crowd typically makes the strangely self-contradictory claim that because so few examples exist of drawings/paintings of frontier-settlers, that it is likely that men far away from cities (whether in combat or hunting) wore long beards. This is a classic example of an 'Argument from Ignorance' fallacy. 

Those descriptions we do have of people in the rural peripheries of British colonial America still indicate a general preference for clean-shavenness, or in the least do not imply common beardedness. In a list of vices that the 'hoity-toity' Anglican minister, Charles Woodmason, made of backcountry South Carolinians in the 1760s, excess facial hair was not among them. He did have complaints about their grooming standards however: 

"—Indeed Nakedness is not censurable or indecent here, and they expose themselves often quite Naked, without Ceremony—Rubbing themselves and their Hair with Bears Oil and tying it up behind in a Bunch like the Indians—being hardly one degree removed from them..." 

Paintings and sketches of militiamen from the Revolutionary War-era, limited as they are, do not suggest beards being prevalent at all. Take for instance this 1775 drawing of an American militiaman in Arbuckle's company of Pennsylvania and the following 1781 drawing of a Virginia rifleman. 

Beards and Race

I admit that there are some limitations to my 'anti-beard crusade' for living historians. One obvious point that has been amply demonstrated by others: there were religious groups (viz. Ashkenazic Jews) who would certainly have kept facial hair. But these groups were among a very small minority of populations in early British America. 

One other obvious question is: do these 'beard-free' fashion standards apply to enslaved or free Africans in the 18th-century Atlantic world? If we take a gander at those limited paintings or drawings of enslaved/free Black men from the period, they do seem to be clean-shaven like their White brethren, but there are major exceptions. Take for example this c. 1785-1790 painting, 'The Old Plantation,' which depicts a rare moment of levity for enslaved men and women in South Carolina. It is clear that a large minority of the men in the painting have some manner of facial hair. 

Could this, as with White members of religious minorities, have been a sign of faithfulness to a religious tradition? It's entirely possible. There is some evidence that some enslaved Muslims from West Africa still maintained beards (along with prayer mats and various Islamic religious rituals) when they were kidnapped and brought to colonial Georgia. On the other hand, there is also evidence that enslaved Africans were forcibly shaved when initially seized from their homelands. It is doubtful that enslaved Africans followed European fashion trends with any interest, but I admit my ignorance on this topic and would be very interested to learn more/read any sources people might suggest. 

Does any of it matter? 

One final limitation is the simple question of: does it really matter whether living historians wear beards or not? I personally would never pressure someone to shave, but I do think it matters in the image we portray to the public when at events. If the evidence suggests that most men abstained from having pronounced facial hair, perhaps we--in the name of telling the truth--should in the very least heavily encourage our friends to tell spectators this, even if they choose to have beards. 

And the truth is fairly plain: facial hair was limited outside of certain circumstances.