The little girl who suggested Abraham Lincoln grow a beard lived
her adult life in north-central Kansas. Grace Bedell was just 11
years old when she wrote a letter on Oct. 14, 1860, to the man
who was then just the Republican nominee for president of the
United States. In her letter, Bedell told Lincoln that her
father had just brought home a picture of him from the fair, and
she believed he should grow a beard. "You would look a great
deal better, your face is so thin," she wrote. "All the ladies
like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for
you and then you would be president." After being elected
president, Lincoln stopped at her hometown in New York and told
the little girl he had taken her advice. Six years later, when
she was 17, Grace married George Billings, who was a sergeant in
the Union Army during the Civil War, and moved to the state
whose early troubles had made Lincoln famous — Kansas. They
settled in Delphos, where Grace lived until her death in 1936.
Grace and George are both