DALLAS, TX.- A lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair – snipped by his personal physician at the time of his death on July 4, 1826 – made history Saturday, June 14, 2016, when it became the first time a lock of hair from the third U.S. President of the United States was ever offered at public auction.

Just 14 strands of hair sold for $6,875 – roughly $491 per strand – at a public Americana & Political memorabilia auction held by Heritage Auctions’ in Dallas. The lock was expected to sell for just $3,000.

“I couldn’t pass it up,” said William F. Northrop, who purchased the lock in the early 1980s. Northrop, a former VP with Ogilvy & Mather, is primarily an autograph collector but was drawn to the hair because of its rarity. “It’s all about history and the notion that these men and their ideas are still relevant.”

Northrop’s love of early American history started in his youth. He started collecting in early American pamphlets in his 20s and published the first facsimile of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” in 1976.

The lock is accompanied by an affidavit which documents the keepsake was descended in the family of Dr. Robley Dunglison, Jefferson’s physician. It then passed to his son, Dr. Richard J. Dunglison and then to his step-son, Charles Ferry Fisher, librarian of the Philadelphia College of Physicians. A section of the lock was donated to the college, but a small section was kept in private hands.

Northrop purchased the lock in the early 1980s from noted autograph scholar Doris Harris Hamilton, who, with her then husband, were experts in the field of autograph and manuscript collecting.

The letter is accompanied by a letter from Monticello, Jefferson’s home turned museum, documenting the lock as part of a census of the limited number of hair samples known to exist from the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

“We can’t find a record of a lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair ever being sold at auction in recent times,” said Don Ackerman, Consignment Director at Heritage Auctions. “It might be difficult for our society to understand, but at the time, sharing locks of hair was a very common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries. This was long before the advent of photography so a lock of hair kept the person close to their loved ones’ hearts.”