Curious Graves - Persecuted For Wearing The Beard

My friend Barry would not have had a good time living in the Massachusetts in the early 1800's. He's one of those guys who likes to go for stretches at a time without shaving, such as an entire season or two, and it's not uncommon for him to show up at our house sporting the kind of shag you half-expect something to jump out of. In the prim and proper 1830's this lack of grooming was just the kind of thing that could get you ostracized from a community.

That was the dilemma for Joseph Palmer, a man perhaps born in the wrong generation. Like my friend Barry, Palmer enjoyed a thick but not quite so lustrous beard. But when Palmer moved to the town of Fitchburg Massachusetts at the age of 42 he was singled out by everyone from young kids who would ridicule him in the streets, to clergy who would shame and criticize him for what they claimed was Palmer's resemblance to the devil.

Never mind Palmer's argument that when you put pictures of the devil and Jesus side by side Jesus tended to be the scruffier of the two, the townsfolk didn't want to hear that, they just wanted him to clean up and conform to society. When he continually refused, things came to a breaking point, and one day four of the more reasonable men in town set out to beat Palmer up and forcibly shave him themselves. Palmer was a stubborn man in more ways than one however, and with a small knife was able to fight the men off and injure two of them in the scuffle.

With zero sympathy in the community, Palmer was quickly deemed the instigator in the fight and sentenced to jail. There he took his stubbornness up a notch, writing letters and smuggling them out through his son which were published in the local Worcester Spy newspaper, where he told of his story and persecution. And a funny thing started to happen. As word of Palmer's plight became widespread, sympathy throughout neighboring communities began to grow until a call went out for him to be released. Realizing the court of public opinion had swayed, the sheriff told Palmer that he was dropping all charges, and no hard feelings you're free to go. But not satisfied with the sheriff's simple admission of my bad, Palmer refused to leave his cell until many days later when police had to physically remove him and dump him in the street.

Palmer's story has a happy enough ending, at least. Due to the popularity his letters from jail brought, he was able to live the rest of his days free from harassment until his death in the 1870's. But he never forgot how he was treated, and as a message to the world - and perhaps as a big middle-finger to many of his tormentors - he adorned his gravestone with this bearded likeness of himself, and on it had carved this reminder; "Persecuted For Wearing The Beard"

Joseph Palmer's grave is located in the front row of the Evergreen Cemetery in Leominster,
(Lemin-stir, not Leo-minstir ... Tina) Massachusetts.