1990s
#1
1830 Joseph Palmer: The Stubbornest Man In Town
The thump of rocks pounding against his house jolted Joseph out of his chair. Someone was throwing rocks at him! Joseph put down the cup of tea in his hand and rushed to the window. Too late! Whoever had thrown the rocks was gone.
The rock throwing was no surprise. It was just the latest in the insults aimed at Joseph Palmer since he left his farm weeks earlier to live in the small town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Something strange seemed to happen almost every day: Town merchants refused to wait on him. Women whispered to one another when he passed by, and the men in the town would not even return a hello.
Joseph took all of this calmly, but what happened the day after the rock-throwing incident surprised him. As he left his home that morning, he noticed four men standing nearby. When he drew closer to them, the men circled around him. Two of them grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
Get off me!
Joseph yelled, but the men only tightened their grips around his arms. Joseph was in his early forties, but farming the rocky Massachusetts soil had kept his muscles strong. He grabbed the arm of one of the men and worked his way loose. He then stood up and kept swinging at his assailants until they ran off. Joseph dusted himself off, but if he thought it was the end of the incident he was mistaken.
Later that day the sheriff came by and took him to the town judge who accused Joseph of attacking the men. The judge ordered Joseph to pay a fine. When he refused to pay the fine—even though he could afford to do so—the judge sent him off to the town jail.
As he sat in the cramped jail, Joseph had time to think about all that had happened since he arrived in town. He was an honest, hard working farmer—certainly no criminal. Yet children threw rocks, merchants ignored him, women shunned him, men attacked him, and a judge sent him to jail. Why were all these things happening to him?
Joseph knew exactly why. If you lived in Fitchburg in 1830 you would understand. Yes, Joseph was an honest, hard working farmer, but he was different from every other man living in Fitchburg: Joseph Palmer had a long white beard that he refused to shave off. No man in all of Fitchburg had a beard. Citizens were not just about to let this newcomer, this stranger, be different. The men who attacked Joseph were not trying to rob him. They only wanted to cut off his beard!
True, many men before him wore beards. The early explorers—whether from Spain, France, Portugal or England—had beards. Many of the patriots who declared their independence from England in 1776 and gave us our Constitution in 1781 wore beards. However, by the time Joe Palmer arrived in Fitchburg in 1830, most Americans were no longer wearing beards.
Joseph could have easily stopped the citizens and the judge from persecuting or picking on him. All he had to do was take a scissors and razor in hand and shave his beard—but Joseph liked his beard! And, no matter what anyone else in town said, he was going to keep it. After all, Joseph claimed, a man had the right to wear a beard if he wanted to!
Before long, citizens throughout Massachusetts were reading about The Bearded Prisoner.
Respected Americans—men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau—began speaking out against keeping Joseph in jail. When the news reached cities like Philadelphia and New York, more and more citizens began to argue that it was wrong to keep a man in jail simply because he wore a beard.
The sheriff and the judge of Fitchburg grew tired and embarrassed by all of the attention. The judge then ordered the jailer to release Joseph. Joseph however, was not about to leave. I won’t leave until you tell me that I have the right to wear a beard,
he insisted. By now, the jailer had also had enough of Joseph Palmer. Together, the jailer and the sheriff lifted Joseph and his chair. They carried him outside, sat him down, then slammed the jail door behind him. Whether he wanted it or not, Joseph was a free man.
By this time, Joseph was too well known to fade away and be forgotten. People began inviting him to join different groups. He joined the Prohibitionists,
and added his voice to the people demanding a stop to the sale of liquor. He also became active in an abolitionist
group that wanted slavery to end.
When Joseph Palmer died in 1875 a small stone monument was placed over his grave. Inscribed on it were but five words: Persecuted for wearing the beard.
Joseph had lived long enough to see Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes elected U.S. presidents one after another. All three wore beards.
Vocabulary
1. jolt 2. incident 3. assailant 4. provoked 5. cramped 6. persecute 7. prohibition 8. abolition
Think It Through
1. Take one side or the other and explain the side you take.
—Joseph was silly for not cutting off his beard.
—Joseph did the right thing by refusing to cut his beard.
2. What do people mean when they say, He was standing up for his principles
?
#2
1838 John Cleaves Symmes: I Declare the Earth is Hollow
John Cleaves Symmes had a doctor write a note for him saying that Symmes was a sane man. The note did little good. When Americans read a pamphlet Symmes had written, they thought for sure he had lost his mind.
To all the world,
Symmes proclaimed in his pamphlet, I declare the earth is hollow with people living inside.
Inside the earth,
he went on to say, "there are about a half-dozen spheres, or rounded floors, one on top of the other." According to him, people lived in the spaces between each floor. And what is more—so he claimed—there were openings near the North Pole and the South Pole that led to a huge hole in
