Once upon a time there was a pretty good guy named Joe who was considered a pillar of his community in Massachusetts. A farmer who had fought in the War of 1812, Joe was a deeply religious man who wanted to do whatever he could to be closer to god. For whatever reason in his mid-30's, Joe decided that this meant growing a big greasy hobo beard. After all, every picture of Jesus showed him wearing a beard, so for a god fearing man, beards were obviously where it was at. Now at this point you’re probably thinking to yourself, “so what, it's just a damn beard”. Well, for whatever reason at that time in American history nobody wore beards. In fact, nobody of any respectability had worn a beard in over a century. To the good people of Massachusetts, the sudden appearance of Joe's bearded visage amongst them came as quite a shock, and this being before the time one could just post angry Facebook rants, they of course dealt with it by being as shitty as possible directly to his face. People harassed Joe on the street, ministers refused to serve him the holy communion, and children threw rocks at him. The town even gave him a nickname, "The Old Jew", because of course people who treat a man like shit just for wearing a beard aren't that accepting of other religions. Despite the abuse, Joe steadfastly refused to shave.
Things came to a head in 1830 when four men armed with scissors and razors attempted to forcefully shave off Joe's beard. Joe managed to fight them off with his pocket knife, wounding two of the men, but was then arrested for assault. Joe refused to pay the small fine levied by a judge, so was instead thrown in prison. Life in jail wasn't easy for Joe, because even in prison a guy with a beard was just considered the lowest of the low. The guards, being sadistic sons of bitches, beat him, starved him, and locked him in solitary confinement for long periods of time. When not being harassed by the guards, Joe was attacked by his fellow inmates, who on several occasions tried to forcefully shave his beard. Through it all Joe persevered by sneaking letters out of the prison describing his trials and tribulations which were then published in local newspapers because the editors thought the whole thing was rather funny.
After fifteen months of these shenanigans, the local politicians decided that they’d had enough of old crazy bearded Joe making everyone involved in the prison system look like assholes. Joe's sentence, which again, was just because he was wearing a beard, was commuted, and he was told he was a free man. However, Joe rather enjoyed his celebrity status and so refused to go. The politicians tried several tricks to get him to leave, even bringing a letter from his 80 year old mother, but still Joe refused. Finally, out of other options, the prison guards tied Joe to a chair and forced him to accept his freedom. Joe and his beard spent the next several years lecturing across the country about prison reform and the abolition of slavery, reveling in his new found popularity.
In 1843, like many celebrities of the time, Joe joined a commune called Fruitlands, founded by none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson and Amos Bronson Alcott (father of American author Louisa May Alcott). The commune hoped to create a utopia where people subsisted on just fruit and water. Fruitlands was not exactly the success that its founders hoped it would be, mostly because the men were all a bunch of poets who had no idea how to farm, and even if they did, they saw their role as debaters of philosophy while the women did all of the actual work. Mysteriously a number of the women started to disappear. Joe, being somewhat of a clever bastard, and one of the few who actually knew how to farm, spent all of his time out in the fields with the women, where he was free to sample the fruits of his labor as he would. When the commune failed the following year, Joe bought the land and remained there the rest of his life, his popularity and fame declining rapidly in the 1860's when beards came back into fashion.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Palmer,_Fruitlands.jpg