Xavier Zahnley wanted more than the bleak hills of the Allemande had to offer him. In the early nineteenth century, the young man from Baden, Germany boarded a ship headed to America and its continuously expanding manifest destiny. Sometime between 1820 and 1835, Xavier crossed the hearth of North America and began a life with Harriet Bowerize in the evergreen farmlands of Morris County, Ohio. The young couple gave life to a group of children whose progeny would spread forth from their small Ohio farmland to all corners of the United States. The couple and their children adopted the various customs and dreams of their respective generations, moving from farmlands to cities, cleansing their spirits in churches, serving up their bodies for American militias, and most fascinating of all, picking up a now-extinct art of hair jewelry. At the center of my analysis stands a stunningly-constructed hearth ornament, the Zahnley family’s hair wreath.

The name 'Zahnle' is interesting, as it points to a distinct geographic family origin. “Zahn” a name typical for people living in the western French-German borderland, means “tooth” in German. The “le” ending of the name in German indicates an endearing affinity and translates into “little tooth.” The addition of the “y” to the name was likely a clerical error or an Ellis Island invention in an attempt to make the strange sounding Teutonic name sound more English. The Zahnleys in the United States tended to live in communities with high concentrations of European immigrants, and most of them settled in Kansas.

The story of our Zahnley family begins with Xavier. Xavier Zahnley was born in 1809 in Baden, Germany, and later married Harriet Bowerize. He is the forefather of James Zahnley, the true patriarch of the Manhattan Zahnley clan. James was married to Rebecca Curry in 1867 in Sullivan County, Ohio, and the couple soon got to making the American dream. They were a hardworking farming people who reaped the benefits of arriving in the United States at a time of economic prosperity for the northern territories. All in all, they raised seven children whose progeny would spread across the United States. Allice Zahnley was born in 1869, Harriet in 1871, Frankland in 1873, William Washington in 1876, Arthur Lyman in 1877, James Walter in 1884 and Harry Christopher in 1890 (“1920 United States Federal Census”). The family lived in Morris County, Kansas from 1880 to 1920, and the children ventured off as they came of age.

The 1940 United States Census indicates that James died in 1935. Rebecca lived as a widow in Alta Vista, Kansas, until her death in 1945 at the age of ninety-seven. That is, sometime around 1880 the Zahnley family relocated from Ohio to Kansas, likely following the pattern of wheat farming and harvesting. James was an original trustee of the Morris Presbyterian Church in Morris County, built in 1885. It is likely that the life of James and Rebecca would not have been one of extreme comfort. However, as evidenced by James' position as a church trustee, the family was well respected and clearly had enough wealth to have a hand in decision making in the county. In The Farmers Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860, Paul Gates emphasizes that the United States' number one crop was wheat during that period, pointing to Ohio as the epicenter of wheat production. That is probably why James, as a wheat farmer, was relatively successful. James owned land, regularly went to church, and lived a prosperous and successful midwestern life.

The Zahnleys’ second daughter, Harriet, married George Jenner in 1895 at the age of twenty-four. The couple moved to Wichita, Kansas, and had six children: John, Anna, Ruby, Roscoe Frederick, Eva Marie, and George Raymond. Harriet passed away in 1926, only forty-five years old. While Wichita today is one of the largest cities in the Midwest, at the time that Harriet and George lived there it would have been something different entirely. We have few details on George's profession. It, however, is not unreasonable to assume that he came from a wealthier farming background as well. As the twentieth century churned along, the wheat agricultural center transitioned to Kansas, which was dubbed “The Breadbasket Of America.” This might have motivated the Zahnley family to move from Ohio to Kansas.

Frankland, the oldest Zahnley son, married a fascinating woman by the name of Sarah Lowe. We can trace her linage back to the year 1328 with the marriage of a William Taylor to a Mrs. William Taylor. The Lowes family was clearly wealthy over many generations, which makes Frankland and Sarah's marriage even more fascinating. All of the Zahnley children married into prosperous middle class families, which is why the family had the means to buy houses whenever they moved. This explains why Xavier Zahnley's great-grandson, James C Zahnley, donated a number of upper-middle class objects to the Riley County Historical Society, including an ivory photo album and our ornate hair wreath. As we journey through the histories of the Zahnley family, it is fascinating to retrace how an immigrant family lived the American Dream.

Our primary focus, however, is on James and Rebecca's son, James Walter. His wife Hazel was probably the maker of the complex hair wreath, and James’ roots grow the deepest in the amber plains of Kansas. James lived from 1884 to 1974, far exceeding standard life expectancy of the time. When James was born in Ohio in 1884, the eight-hour workday was established as a law for the very first time. When James died at the age of ninety in 1974, the world population had grown to almost four billion people. James Walter became a Professor of Agronomy at Kansas State University, following a long family farming tradition. While his father and siblings chose a more traditional lifestyle, James developed into a respected academic with published research papers in major journals. He probably chose agronomy due to his firsthand experience working the fields with James Senior and his brothers, inspired to ease the trials of farmers across the world.

James Junior married Hazel Lillian Anderson on May 29, 1937, in Liberty, Missouri, and by 1939 they both lived in Manhattan, Kansas. At a young age Hazel's mother, born 1872, emigrated with her parents from Antrim County, Ireland, to the US. Her grandparents, John Anderson and Louisa Williams hailed from Virginia and Illinois, respectively. Louisa's ancestral history is untraceable after the birth of her grandparents in New York. This is not an altogether uncommon story, though it is truly engaging to see the micro-history of the Zahnley family in comparison to the macro story of the United States at the time. As thousands of immigrants arrived at the shores of North America, there is no telling the end of their stories. Some Europeans never made it out of New York, living in hovels or shantytowns barely fit for living, while other intrepid wanderers found the prosperity that they sought.

Yet in a way, James' tale was not as all-American as it appears on first glance. James Walter was probably married before his union with Hazel. There is a marriage record showing that James Walter was married in the year 1900 to a woman named Mabelle. There is a photograph in the 1909 Kansas State yearbook showing a photograph clearly labeling a woman as Mabelle Zahnley. If there was a death of a first wife, it doesn't appear in public records. In the occurrence of a divorce, the semi-puritanical society of the Midwest around the turn of the century would have encouraged a cover-up of sorts.

In the very first edition of the Polk Manhattan Directory, James is listed as the proprietor of a house with Hazel on 1850 Claflin Road. The house still stands right across the street from Marlatt Hall, just adjacent to the Kansas State University campus. Their residence in that house for over thirty years is a symbol of how deeply rooted the couple was in the Manhattan community. They went to church, taught, worked, and raised a family in Manhattan. James and Hazel had two children, James C Zahnley and Donald Zahnley. Donald was born on February 19, 1940. He attended Manhattan High School and graduated in 1958, enrolling for four years in the Marines Corps immediately afterward. When he returned from his military service, he enrolled at Kansas State University, the school where his father worked as a professor. He graduated with a business degree in 1966. Donald became employed by the Coleman Company for several years before using his degree to secure a job as a federal banker. As part of his job, he relocated his wife Beverly Schneider to Topeka and Oklahoma City. Perhaps this was the reason why the pair never had any children. When Hazel passed in 1988, Donald was the executor of her estate, bestowing many family possessions to the town that this branch of the Zahnley family loved and understood as their home: Manhattan, Kansas.

Information on James C Zahnley is a little harder to find. After his graduation from Kansas State University, he moved to California. He met Marrilyn Bissell and married her at the age of twenty-six in Santa Clara, California in 1965. J.C. Zahnley, as he was referred to in academic circles on occasion, published several papers for the National Center of Biotechnology Information. All of the James's aunts and uncles went their separate ways after their childhood on the farm. Today members of this Zanhley family branch live in over ten different US states, children descended from the intrepid Xavier scattered about America.

It is thanks to Dr. James C Zahnley that we have the wealth of information about his family's nineteenth-century hair wreath. He returned to Manhattan in the early 2000s and visited the Riley County Historical Society. He told them all he knew about the hair wreath. From him we know that part of the wreath is made of hair from Rebecca Curry, his grandmother, and from James Zahnley, the original James and patriarchal grandfather. James told workers at the Wolf House Museum in Manhattan that the Frank Zahnley identified in the wreath was Frankland Zahnley, the husband of Sarah Lowe. The Hattie referenced in the wreath is likely his mother, Hazel. Hattie was common short hand for her name when the wreath was created. The Mary McAdoo tag on the wreath probably references Mary Francis Helfer. Her maiden name was McAdoo before she married Daniel Helfer, and she died on February 27,1930, in Riley County. The fact that her hair is part of the family wreath implies that Mary and her relatives were close family friends of the Zahnleys; so close that they were thought of as family. There are several other names mentioned on little white tags on the wreath whose relation to the Zahnley family are unclear.

Pinning down exactly who made the artful hair wreath is a bit tricky. Most of the Zahnleys who lived in Kansas would have had the financial resources to send collected hair of different family members back east, as many people did in the nineteenth century. Most likely, however, the hair object was a homespun creation. What is more, the people named on the paper tags attached to the wreath would have been alive in the late nineteenth century, which is when hair jewelry was at its zenith. Rather than being a mourning wreath, this hair object might have been a celebration of family bonds set up at the heart of the home.

The creation of hair wreaths comes from the Victorian tradition of taking hair of the deceased and weaving it into elaborate patterns to symbolize interconnected family ties. The aesthetic of hair ornament derives from natural and organic forms, such as flowers, trees, and forestry. Much of the hair jewelry was a lock of hair fashioned into a motif inside a broach or glass container. The Zahnley wreath, however, is an expansive piece of art that would have been displayed on the hearth of the family's home. It is particularly interesting because the wreath holds hair of individuals who were alive at the time of its conception. This was rather unusual for hair jewelry.

The wreath is 10.5 inches high and 11 inches wide, which means that the architect of the piece was creating an elliptical hair structure. Over twenty-five individual blooms and singular constructions build the wreath into a slightly oval shape. Such individual ornaments would have taken months to master and required rigorous planning to be executed properly. The wreath would not look out of place in a forest on the long road from Morris Country, Ohio to Riley County, Kansas. Its flower designs were clearly inspired by the coniferous forests sprawling over the United States. The wreath is an excellent example of nineteenth-century hair jewelry and mourning culture. Hair jewelry was a way to keep the dead amongst the living, and flowers symbolically embodied the growth of life. As the dead were buried in the ground, flowers started to root and grow. Life springs eternal, as people say.

There is hair from about ten different people used in the wreath: the names of Mary, Hattie, Frankland, Mabelle, and Becky Zahnley can be found on the paper labels connected to the wreath. A number of tags simply say “grandpa” and “grandma,” which suggests that perhaps even hair from Xavier Zahnley and Harriet Bowerize was kept and used. The wreath was probably constructed in the 1920s, following instructions published in a popular women's journal. The wreath is a masterful piece of art of blond, brunette, and several strands of strawberry brunette hair from several generations of the Zahnley family. Encased in a wooden and glass box, the wreath is bound around a 6-inch-wide circle created from the hair of the Zahnley family as well.

The wooden box holding the wreath weighs 12 pounds and is a 22-inch by 22-inch structure. The box keeps the wreath safe and made it easy to display on the hearth of the Zahnley home. The amber brown box would have blended into the walls, drawing focus to the wreath itself, a proud symbol of the eternal bonds that united the family. Hazel Zahnley kept the box and wreath in her home on 1850 Claflin for her entire life. Her son donated them to the Riley County Historical society in 1988 after Hazel passed away. Those who have worked closely with the object believe that the wreath was constructed at home.

In the nineteenth century, people had two options to have hair jewelry made: they could send hair to companies in the northeast United States, or they could choose the cheaper alternative, which was to construct hair jewelry at home. It was common practice among young women around the turn of the century, to brush their hair using exactly one hundred strokes and deposit the brushed out hair in a special container. In fact, amongst the affects of Hazel Zahnley was such a deposit jar for human hair. Women's journals published do-it-yourself guides for hair jewelry that were accessible to middle class women who spent their days at home.  In “‘This Memento Strangely Fair’: Hairwork Jewelry in America,” Deanna Ledezma notes that hair artwork traveled to the United States from Germany (7). Ledezma argues, “the pivotal change in hairwork jewelry during the mid-nineteenth century centered on the popularity of hairwork as a domestic handicraft of middle-class women” (8). Ledezma also details the strategies of women's journals to make hair jewelry home constructions more appealing to women. Some journals, for example, warned that some manufacturers mixed in “dead” hair from wigs or hairpieces (11).

Women’s journals also generated a profitable business by selling hair bows, brushes, and braiding tools for hair art. Clearly, hair jewelry was part of a larger, flourishing culture of mourning. While the idea of elaborate public mourning is foreign to contemporary American culture, death was a central part of everyday life in the 1800s. The death of Abraham Lincoln in particular made the entire nation grieve for the loss of their father figure. The American Civil War pitted brother against brother and was one of the bloodiest wars in American history. Over 620,000 Americans died during the Civil War, and this had a deep impact on US society (“Civil War Facts”). When a family member passed, it was common to dress in black for month and even years. Nineteenth-century American literature derived many of its central themes from this pervasive nature of death. In “Communities of Death: Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Nineteenth-Century American Culture of Mourning and Memorializing,” Adam Cunliffe Bradford reads Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass and Poe's work as expressions of this larger culture of grieving. He writes:

Poe’s aesthetic philosophies were aligned with those that undergird many of the contemporary mourning objects of the day … his otherwise Gothic and macabre literature nevertheless served rather conventional and even recuperative ends by exposing the necessity of and inviting readers to participate in culturally sanctioned acts of mourning, and … he sought to confirm the harmony between his work and more conventional “consolation” or mourning literature by actively seeking to bring that work (and the “self” that produced it) visibly before his readership in a medium that this culture held was a reliable indicator of the nature and intent of both that work and its producer – namely his own personal script. (1)

Hair jewelry was a response to this culture of death and mourning. While hair ornaments traveled from the old country to the new, it took on a new meaning and life in the United States. Interwoven in the Zahnley family hair wreath are the remnants of the dead and representations of the living, forging a visual symbol of the family unit. From the former fruitful plains of Germany to the life-giving hills of the heartland of the Midwestern United States, the Zahnley wreath tells the story of a family that traversed the Atlantic to find and live the American Dream. 

“1880 United States Federal Census.” Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010. Web.

“1900 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2004. Web.

“1920 United States Federal Census.” Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010. Web.

“1940 United States Federal Census.” Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2012. Web.

Bradford, Adam Cunliffe. "Communities of Death: Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Nineteenth-Century American Culture of Mourning and Memorializing." Diss. U of Iowa, 2010. Web.

Brett, Mary. Fashionable Mourning Jewelry, Clothing, & Customs. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2006. Print.

“California, Death Index, 1940-1997.” Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000. Web.

“Civil War Facts.” Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust, 2014. Web.

Gates, Paul W. The Farmers Age: Agriculture, 1815–1860. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960. Print.

Ledezma, Deanna. "“This Memento Strangely Fair”: Hairwork Jewelry in America." MA thesis. U of Illinois at Chicago, 2012. Print.

 Sheumaker, Helen. Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hairwork in America. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Print.

 “U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.” Ancestry.com Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Web.