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George Frisbie Hoar, a Massachusetts congressman and Lincoln Republican who began his senate career under the Grant administration, donated this locket to the Massachusetts Historical Society not long before his death in 1895. According to Hoar, he had received the locket twenty years earlier from a friend who, likewise, had received the lock of Lincoln’s hair from one of the physicians attending the dying president. The simplicity and diminutiveness of this jewel focus attention on the hair compartment and floral motif, beautifully hand engraved on both sides and on the inside border surrounding Lincoln’s hair. The cartouche has no memorial dedication or any other personalization.