AS LONG AS I CAN GROW IT...
"Gimme a head with hair...long beautiful hair." Before these words meant 1960s freedom and rebellion they could have been the motto for The Sutherland Sisters, a sibling act that had long hair, and...that was basically all. Well not all. They sang religious songs, sold millions of hair care and cosmetic products, built a mansion, refused to bury a dead sister, took drugs, and swapped sex partners. Allegedly - the drugs and sex swapping were never proven, but the dead sister part - yeah, that was real. The Sutherland Sisters followed a trajectory of obscurity to fame, fame to wealth, wealth to poverty, and poverty to obscurity that set up the pattern followed by many celebrities for well over 100 years. And they did it with - "shining, gleaming, streaming, ... shoulder length or longer" ... hair
Born on a turkey farm in Cambria, New York from the years 1845 to 1865, the Seven Sutherland sisters were : Sarah, Victoria, Isabella, Grace, Naomi, Dora, and Mary. Each girl had long hair as children and in an effort to preserve their hair's length and beauty, their mother would rub a horrible smelling concoction of her own design onto the girl's heads. Needless to say the Seven Sutherland Sisters were not in with the in crowd at school. Their father, Fletcher, was a minister by desire and a turkey farmer by way of inheritance. Their mother died of dropsy (edema) in 1867. They had one brother, Charles, who left the act early.
The sisters sang at church services and played various musical instruments. They toured churches in the area spreading the good word about the good Lord and good hair. They toured with the W. W. Cole circus and traveled to Mexico. Part of the act was unpinning their hair and letting their tresses cascade down their backs. This bordered on a Victorian Era peep show. In Victorian times long flowing hair equated to the utmost beauty and femininity. Several paintings of the era depicted women with luxurious cascading hair. Women pinned up their hair as a sign of marriageable maturity. Women took down their hair in private. As Charlie Rich told us : "And when we get behind closed doors
Then she lets her hair hang down
And she makes me glad that I'm a man
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors"
In 1884 the sisters joined Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth as a "freak" act. (Acts involving hair were relegated to the sideshow.)
Billed as : "7 Wonders of the World! 7 Accomplished Musicians! 7 Refined and Educated Ladies! … 7 Ladies with 49 feet of hair! 7 feet of hair each!” {1}
Each of the Sutherland Sisters did not really possess 7 ft. of hair. To put that into modern perspective one could say "Each sister has one Shaquille O'Neale of hair! ; "one Yao Ming of hair!" ; "one Kareem Abdul Jabar of hair!" In other words hair as long as a really tall guy who is good at basketball. Only Victoria could boast an actual 7 ft. of hair. Admirers would try to snip a lock or two and Victoria was offered $25,000 to cut her hair. She did ultimately sell one strand for $25.
Lest we forget, the sisters were actual women and not just hair. They were performers with talent and personalities:
Sarah - eldest, played piano, always carried a Bible with her
Victoria - liked clothes and expensive jewels (so...Posh Hair - Spice) - longest hair
Isabella - rumored to be the "not a" Sutherland Sister - possibly a cousin or adopted (because her birth certificate had a different place of birth. That does make a difference - Leslie "born in Eagleton" Knope...)
Grace - Peacemaker and negotiator
Naomi - good humor, best singer
Dora - most beautiful, charming, witty - best at business, managed family fortunes
Mary - dark member of the family (personality-wise) not musically gifted
In order to capitalize on their growing fame, father Fletcher decided to revive and manufacture their mother's hair tonic. Only ... no one remembered the formula. Fletcher concocted his own formula, and had it analyzed by a lab. Mostly Bay Rum and witch hazel, the lab pronounced it safe to use. Fletcher was a man of God, not business and had no idea how to market his product. Harry Bailey, the Bailey of Barnum and Bailey, had been both managing the girls and courting Naomi. Harry started a corporation and applied for a trademark. Bailey called the tonic "The Lucky Number 7 Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower" and sold the tonic at the queenly price of .60 cents per bottle - $15 in modern money (I pay $2 a bottle for Suave at Wal-Mart.) Naomi and Harry wed in 1885. Three years later Fletcher died in 1888. The sisters also sold trading cards of themselves.
The Sutherland Sisters Corporation earned $90,000 in its first year. After Fletcher's death the sisters expanded the product line to include scalp cleanser, combs, eight shades of hair colorant, and cosmetics. At price points ranging from $.50 to $1.50, these were luxury products - like, Sephora level. But the sisters' fame made their products all the more desirable. The sisters modeled their own products, expanded production and sales all over the U. S., Canada, and Cuba. They employed a sales force of 28,000 people.
They returned to the turkey farm in 1893 to build a mansion. The whole family lived there. By then Naomi and Harry had three children, but the other sisters remained unmarried. They built a home office in the mansion and "it had bedrooms for each sister, a marble lavatory with hot and cold running water, a turret and cupola, imported fine furniture, massive chandeliers, black walnut woodwork, and hardwood floors." {1}
The sisters became increasingly eccentric. They biked around their yards in bathing costumes (I argue with that as being eccentric. Bikes = fun / costumes = anything done in costume is 100% more fun.) They fed their menagerie of pets fine foods and dressed them up in handmade sweaters ; when those pets passed on to puppy / kitty / insert proper animal here heaven, they were afforded an obituary in the newspaper, and an elaborate burial. Which is odd, considering when Naomi died in 1893 the family kept her in the home until a mausoleum could be built. Only that never came to be and they buried their sister in an unmarked grave on the mansions' property. Naomi was replaced with a substitute sister, Anna Louise Roberts, who had 9 ft of hair. That's a whole ... Andre the Giant plus a toddler of hair.
The sisters held elaborate celebrations at their mansion and closed out the events with fireworks. The town gossiped that the sisters took drugs and swapped sex partners. That last one seemed to have some creedence, as Dora's suitor, a gent called Frederick Castlemaine, married Isabella instead. Isabella had a good 10 years on her husband. Castlemaine did have drug abuse issues. He liked to sit on the porch and shoot guns. When he died by suicide he was left unembalmed but enclosed in glass, so the sisters could sing to his corpse. He got a mausoleum while AN ACTUAL SISTER - again - WAS BURIED IN AN UNMARKED GRAVE.
Victoria, as a 50-year-old, married a 19-year-old. I will be 49 in March. I want no part of having a 19 year-old around. A 19 year-old would have been a baby when Friends ended. This guy was Victoria's shiny guy named Chad. And the rest of the family thought so too, for Victoria and her "Chad" were estranged from the family until Victoria died in 1902. She was replaced by Anna Haney - 6 ft of hair - a whole "stay this far away to not catch Covid-19" of hair.
Isabella, after 2 years of mourning, married Alonzo Swain. She was 46, he was 30. In 1907 the sisters ended ties with Barnum and Bailey. Mary's mental state deteriorated to the point she began to threaten the family. Mary was locked in her room and provided meals on trays through a slot in her bedroom door. Isabella died in 1914, and Sarah in 1919. The act fell apart due to popular new hairstyle - The Bob. Shorter skirts, shorter hair, the times changed while the Sutherland sisters rode bikes and crooned to corpses. Dora, Mary, and Grace, the three surviving sisters, went to Hollywood to sell the pictures on their life story. No deal. Dora was killed in a car accident while the trio were in California. The sisters were too poor to pay the fees necessary to claim her body. In 1931 they abandoned their mansion, which burned down, destroying all family and business records. The two remaining sisters died - Mary in 1939, Grace in 1946, poorer than their early days on the turkey farm. Let this be a lesson to all aspiring stars - your dogs don't need steak and hand knit sweaters - save money for your future.
FURTHER MEDIA :
Forgotten Lives : The Seven Sutherland Sisters
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