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Beyond Community

Rural Lives of Trans Men

In his recent work, Colin Johnson writes, “It still feels safe to many people to assume that rural Americans simply didn’t talk about same-sex sexual behavior or gender nonconformity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Or, if they did, what they had to say about these matters was probably more similar than not to what comparably situated people would say today.” Johnson goes on to refute this truism—which he refers to as the “rural repressive hypothesis”—because it “assumes incorrectly that nothing ever changes in rural America.”1 This chapter picks up Johnson’s insights and considers their applicability to the lives of trans men at the turn of the twentieth century. As such, this chapter follows a spate of recent work comprising the “rural turn” in queer studies—Johnson’s as well as that of John Howard, Peter Boag, Brock Thompson, Rachel Hope Cleves, and Nayan Shah—taking a fresh look at non-metropolitan areas and challenging much of what scholars (and society more broadly) have long assumed about queer history in rural spaces. Looking beyond the coastal cities that once dominated the field of LGBT history, this chapter takes an in-depth look at the lives of trans men who chose to live in rural (or at least non-metropolitan) areas in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. This chapter questions why, in a period when the nation as a whole was undergoing rapid urbanization and queer subcultures were beginning to emerge in the nation’s cities, many trans men chose to remain in (or relocate to) small towns and rural spaces in the nation’s interior.

While finding comprehensive statistical data on gender transgressors in this period is impossible, the available evidence suggests that many trans men chose to live in small towns. Between 1876 and 1936, newspapers discussed sixty-five unique cases of individuals who were assigned female at birth but who lived as men.2 Of those sixty-five cases, twenty-two (or close to 35 percent) lived in non-metropolitan areas. Many others lived in small cities not commonly associated with large queer communities, such as Omaha, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, Lincoln, and Bangor. In fact, at a time when the nation’s cities were growing at a breakneck pace, a majority of the documented cases of trans men lived outside of large cities. In this way, the stories of Joseph Lobdell and Frank Dubois discussed in the previous chapter do not represent a prehistory to the urban migration of trans men that the 1890s would usher in; rather, they suggest patterns that gender-transgressive individuals would continue to express well into the twentieth century.

Whereas the metronormative logic that has guided much of queer history to this point suggests that individuals need to move to large cities in order to lead queer lives, this chapter suggests otherwise. What makes the fact that so many trans men lived in rural areas and small towns so remarkable is that it appears as though this was their choice. Like most individuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trans men in this book were fairly transient, moving several times in their adult lives. Beginning in the 1890s, for example, a trans man named Ellis Glenn repeatedly chose to live in towns with populations under five thousand, such as Lapeer, Michigan; Hillsboro, Illinois; and Williamstown, West Virginia. And, as court testimony bore out, he was able to lead an active social (and romantic) life in each of these locales.3 This movement (from small town to small town, not small town to large city) paints a very different trajectory for queer lives than queer history has traditionally presented. This chapter will ruminate on such movement: Why did trans men like Ellis Glenn choose to live in small towns? What did these spaces offer that larger cities might not? How might these deliberate choices shift the way we think about queer history? In answering these questions, this chapter will argue that rural spaces and small towns presented trans men with surprising opportunities. While large cities might afford their queer residents the benefit of anonymity, non-metropolitan areas offered their own set of advantages, which some queers found preferable to the ones offered by larger cities. Specifically, non-metropolitan spaces assured trans men that as long as they lived their lives as normative men, their gender transgressions would be tolerated due to the structures of familiarity that regulate life in small towns. Indeed, trans men were protected both by the nature of small town life as well as by the value placed on masculinity in such environments. Because trans men preformed vital functions within their communities (serving as farmers, husbands, and neighbors), their lives as men were often seen in a positive light.

Beyond rethinking the notion that rural areas and small towns are inherently dangerous spaces for queer individuals, this chapter will also challenge the notion that these spaces are “backward.” It might appear on the surface that rural spaces were less likely to pathologize queer individuals at the turn of the twentieth century because they were “behind,” or unaware of the emergent sexological discourse on sexual inversion or homosexuality. However, this is not what I wish to argue. I do not mean to suggest in any way that the inhabitants of rural areas were any less savvy about sexuality or gender than their urban counterparts, nor were they ignorant of the emergent discourse of sexology. In fact, individuals in small towns were aware of the emergent sexological discourse of the day, as illustrated by the Waupun Times reproduction of Dr. P. M. Wise’s article “A Case of Sexual Perversion.” The fact that within a year of its initial appearance in the Alienist and Neurologist Wise’s paradigm-setting article would go on to appear in a small-town newspaper like the Waupun Times disproves the idea that rural communities were isolated from the emergent scientific discourse on sexual and gender deviance. Just as significantly, the Waupun Times editorial staff did not reproduce Wise’s article to serve as the last word on the Dubois case; instead, they offered the article alongside accounts from Dubois’s mother-in-law, neighbors, and other family members, and the testimonies from community members were granted just as much weight as the theories of sexual and gender deviance articulated by Wise.

This example suggests the utility of Martin Manalansan’s notion of “alternative modernity” in thinking through the realities of gender and sexuality in rural areas, rather than the “backward” framework that all too often colors discussions of small towns and rural spaces.4 Brock Thompson has deployed Manalansan’s notion in his work on Arkansas, in which he explains, “Arkansas was never behind; Arkansas never played catch-up to modern alternatives found elsewhere in the nation. Rather, Arkansas offered and operated under specific social and cultural conditions that shaped it as an alternative modernity … Arkansas … operated within its own framework of modernity, buttressed by and defined within specific cultural circumstances found in the rural South.”5 Thompson’s notion of Arkansas as an “alternative modernity” allows him to debunk the “rural is to urban as backward is to progressive” framework that has all too often guided work in queer history. This chapter will argue that Manalansan’s “alternative modernity” can help us rethink rural spaces throughout the nation as well. Indeed, rural Waupun, Wisconsin, was not isolated from the rest of the country, nor were its inhabitants ignorant of the theories being presented by sexologists. Sexological theories circulated, and were combined with more colloquial ways of defining normative behavior, to create alternative means of regulating social membership, in ways that should not be considered “behind” or “backward” but rather “alternative.” This alternative means of boundary definition, as this chapter will show, provided opportunities for trans men to gain acceptance and/or toleration in rural spaces at the turn of the twentieth century.

This formulation is dependent on a widening of Thompson’s application of “alternative modernity” from a state-specific application to refer instead to rural spaces and small towns more broadly. This is a significant shift in the historiography within the “rural turn” of queer studies. With the notable exception of Colin Johnson’s scholarship, much of the work within rural queer studies has been regional in its approach. For example, Peter Boag’s Re-dressing America’s Frontier Past investigates cross-dressing in the American frontier and argues that the specific historical realities of the frontier allowed for greater acceptance of gender transgressions than elsewhere in the nation. Boag correctly identifies the acceptance of cross-dressing in frontier communities, as well as common tropes through which Western cases of cross-dressing were discussed in national newspapers (“nineteenth-century sources typically found reasons for these female-to-male masquerades in the exigencies of western American settlement”).6 While this observation is absolutely true—national newspapers did commonly utilize tropes of the mythic West when discussing frontier cases of cross-dressing—the tolerance that cross-dressers found in frontier communities was actually quite similar to the tolerance that trans men were able to negotiate and build for themselves in rural communities throughout the nation.7 Indeed, as this chapter will illustrate, trans men were able to find tolerance in rural communities throughout the United States, from Virginia to Montana, from New York to Mississippi.

George Green

In the mid-to-late 1860s, a trans man who went by the name of George Green married Mary Biddle in Erie, Pennsylvania. There is little trace of the details of how they met, or the nature of their relationship, but we can glean something of their lives together from extant census records. It appears that George Green was born in England in 1833 and immigrated to the United States in 1865 at the age of thirty-two.8 Less is known about George’s wife; newspaper reports published upon George’s death suggested that she was married once before her marriage to George, but the veracity of those accounts cannot be determined. However, what is clear is that when Mary and George tied the knot around 1867, they both were above the average age of first marriage (Mary being twenty-six and George being thirty-four).

It is unclear where George and Mary lived immediately following their Pennsylvania marriage, but at some point in the 1870s the couple moved to the rural countryside seventy miles outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.9 The couple lived in this poor, racially mixed area for about twenty years, and by 1900 they were listed as having a mortgage on their own farm.10 At some point between 1900 and 1902, the couple moved 140 miles to the north, to the small town of Ettrick, Virginia, likely to be with family who lived in the area.11 Once they arrived in Ettrick, the couple blended in with their rural neighbors. Despite the fact that George was approaching seventy by this time, he worked as a farmhand. No one, from the neighbors to the men George worked with, suspected that anything was amiss. However, in the spring of 1902, George passed away after a brief illness. Given how seamlessly the couple had blended into the Ettrick community, their neighbors and friends were very surprised when they arrived to help prepare George’s body for burial, as it was only then that they realized his body lacked the anatomical components generally associated with masculinity.

Local newspapers12 suggest that the revelation of Green’s “true sex” was met not with condemnation, but rather with support for the fact that Green had been an honest and hardworking individual during his life. In fact, the Index-Appeal of nearby Petersburg, Virginia, suggested that any sensation elicited by the story was due not to the case itself, but rather was entirely driven by newspaper correspondents and editors of big-city papers who descended on the small town once word of the story had gotten out. The Index-Appeal reported, “The quiet and orderly community of Ettrick is about the last place that a newsmonger would look for a sensation, but as usual as it is the unexpected that has happened. Ettrick will wake up this morning to find itself famous all over the country wherever the Associated Press reaches and the enterprising correspondent has access. Ettrick has a genuine sensation.”13 Tellingly, the Index-Appeal chose to publish the story not on the front page, but rather in the “local news” section at the back of the paper, thereby suggesting that the widespread attention Green’s story was receiving was not entirely warranted.

Newspapers in Richmond devoted a bit more attention to Green’s story, and as with Petersburg’s Index-Appeal, this coverage was marked by sympathy rather than sensationalism. Richmond’s Times and Dispatch both emphasized how well Green played the part of a man. The Times remarked, “Daily has Green worked with men, and never [was there a] a suspicion that their companion was a woman.”14 Additionally, both papers emphasized how devoted Green’s wife had been. The first article published in the Richmond Dispatch reported, “Mrs. Green is overcome with grief and her sorrow at parting with her husband is as sincere and as genuine as has ever been witnessed.” The Times observed that “the wife is almost overcome with grief. No sorrow more profound or deeper was ever seen.”15 Such statements presented Green’s life as valuable in that he was sorely missed, and his widow’s grief was presented as sincere and understandable—not deviant or strange. These superlative statements describing Mary’s genuine grief and sincere sorrow had the additional effect of ensuring that she could go on living in the community without any negative repercussions.

As the coverage of Green’s case continued in the Richmond press, more details emerged about the nature of his marriage—details that helped to depict his life as laudable rather than abnormal. For example, in its second story on the case, the Times published an interview with Green’s widow wherein she explained the circumstances surrounding her marriage. Mary Green made clear that she did not know of her husband’s anatomy before they married, and once she learned of it, she decided to keep the secret to avoid embarrassing her husband. Since that day, she said, “we lived together as brother and sister.” Significantly, rather than criticize Mary Green’s choice as evidence of a pathology or sexual deviance, the Times endorsed her decision, writing, “Those who at first censured, now pity the woman, and recognize the nobility of character she has shown in carrying untold a sorrow, because it gave happiness to another. Her course is commended by everyone now, and those who dared offer suggestion against her, are repentant.”16 In this quote, the Times characterized Green’s marriage as one that no one else had the right to judge, despite its unconventional nature. Phrases such as “her course is commended by everyone now” suggest the universality of the paper’s assessment, making any further speculation of the motives behind the marriage—such as sexual deviance—seem foolish.

Despite its laudatory assessment of Mary Green as a self-sacrificing individual, the Times also made clear that she should not be considered a martyr, as George Green himself had been an honorable man. The paper quoted her as saying, “He was the noblest soul that ever lived. He has worked so hard through his life, and has been all I had to cheer me. No man can say he ever wronged him. He was a Christian and I believe he is now with Christ.”17 Apparently others in the community also shared this opinion of Green, as Petersburg’s Index-Appeal reported that Green’s funeral was held at St. Joseph’s Catholic church, conducted by Rev. J. T. O’Ferrell and that Green’s body was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Petersburg.18

As Green’s story circulated outside the local context to the pages of large metropolitan newspapers such as the San Francisco Call, the New York World, the Chicago Daily Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, it remained much the same as it appeared within the local press. This national coverage shared several common trends: most mentioned how well Green had played the part of a man, how contented his marriage had seemed, and rarely was any hypothesis offered as to why Green began living as a man.19

I will return to the implications of the national coverage of Green’s case later in this chapter. For now, I would like to suggest that the local newspaper accounts of George Green’s death can tell us a great deal about queer history in rural spaces. For one thing, the local reports are overwhelmingly supportive of Green and his life choices. While they present Green as a curiosity, at no point do they suggest that he was a deviant individual. Instead, they describe his life in male clothing in entirely normative terms—he was a hard worker, a good husband, and an altogether productive member of society. Furthermore, the fact that his funeral was held in the local Catholic church and his body buried in the parish cemetery supports the notion that the rural community of Ettrick was willing to stand by its queer citizen.

Additionally, the trajectory of Green’s life suggests to us a new way of conceiving of queer history. Most works on queer history focus on the urban lives of queer individuals, as well as the formation of urban subcultures. In his now-classic essay “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” John D’Emilio argued that the formation of the identity category of homosexuality was created out of the shifts that took place in the late nineteenth century from family-based household economies to modern capitalism. The movement from rural family units to urban enclaves of similar individuals was a crucial part of this shift. As D’Emilio explains, “By the end of the century, a class of men and women existed who recognized their erotic interest in their own sex, saw it as a trait that set them apart from the majority, and sought others like themselves … it has made possible the formation of urban communities of lesbians and gay men and, more recently, of a politics based on sexual identity.”20 Although some have quibbled with the particulars over the years, D’Emilio’s essay remains an extremely important text, and in fact, it can be credited with shaping much of the historiography of LGBT history in the 1990s and beyond. Indeed, with its focus on rural to urban migration, D’Emilio implicitly suggests that the city is the place for historians to look for queer history.

In this way, George Green’s case can be useful for several reasons. One, it seems to provide clear evidence that rural communities could be supportive environs for trans men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, George and Mary Green’s choice to continually live in rural spaces, perhaps in isolation from other queer individuals, runs counter to the ways that historians have imagined queer history and suggests the need to reevaluate how portable the insights about gays and lesbians can be in understanding the historical lives of trans men and other gender transgressors. Indeed, not only did the Greens choose to live in rural North Carolina and Virginia, they seemingly chose to live outside of queer communities. Thus, even though much about the Greens’ lives together is unrecoverable (Were they in a physical relationship? Was it true that Mary did not know George’s “true sex” before their marriage? etc.), the things we do know about them should prompt us to reconsider what we think we know about queer history.

Figure 2.1. William C. Howard, 1902. Image from the Chicago Tribune.

Similarly, we don’t know what precisely the Greens’ friends and neighbors thought about their relationship—whether, for instance, they presumed it to be asexual and therefore simply eccentric rather than queer. However, to assume that everyone in Ettrick presumed that George and Mary’s relationship was (and had always been) nonsexual ignores clear evidence that ideas about same-sex intimacy had been circulating in even the most remote corners of the nation for decades.21 Additionally, sexological theories of sexual inversion that connected cross-gender identification with sexual deviance (and, more broadly, pathology) had been circulating throughout the national press since at least the 1890s, and yet those ideas appeared irrelevant in the ways that the Ettrick community responded to the news that George Green lacked the anatomy traditionally associated with masculinity. He was not depicted as a deviant individual who had pathologically manipulated the public for years, but rather as a respected community member whose positive contributions were remembered fondly. Furthermore, it is worth noting that George Green was by no means the only trans man to choose to live in a rural area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, the day after newspapers nationwide reported George Green’s “deathbed discovery,” another very similar story appeared from Canandaigua, New York.

William C. Howard

Alice Howard was born in upstate New York in the 1860s. According to Howard’s half brothers, as a child, Alice would often wear “men’s attire, and showed fondness for boy’s and men’s work. This tendency grew till when still quite young she adopted male clothing and men’s mode of life.”22 By the time Howard was twenty, he had taken the name William and was living full-time as a man. Perhaps surprisingly, this transition did not happen once he moved to a city or even upon moving away from his family home. Instead, the 1880 federal census lists twenty-year-old William Howard (male) as living in the same household as his mother, sister Minnie, as well as an aunt and uncle.23 Although it seems that Howard’s family wasn’t thrilled with his choice (the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle later reported “though the family had known of the strange predilection … for many years, they had been unable to induce her to array herself in the proper garb for a member of her sex”), Howard clearly compelled them to reevaluate.24

As a man, William Howard became well-known within the small towns of western New York State. According to the Syracuse Evening Telegram, “ ‘William’ was quite a favorite with the girls, whom he frequently took riding in his rig, as many other ‘young fellow’ was wont to do on a Sunday afternoon.”25 Similarly, the Ontario County Journal reported that Howard was “a frail but good-looking young man, who enjoyed the company of girls. He spent his money freely and the rivalry for his exclusive attention was participated in by almost all the young women in the neighborhood.”26 As for Howard’s family, the paper reported, they “had tolerated the secret [of William’s ‘true sex’] so long that when they discovered the fearful limit to which the girl was going—the marriage to another woman—they seemed almost unable to break the secret.”27 These newspaper accounts are revealing in what they suggest about queer possibilities in rural spaces. Indeed, not only do they portray William Howard as successfully dating several young women, but they also reveal that these relationships took place under the watchful eye of Howard’s family.

As the Ontario County Journal article quoted above suggests, Howard not only courted young women but also ultimately married.28 In 1892, Howard married Edith Dyer, a local woman twelve years his junior, at the Wellsville Methodist Episcopal church; the officiating minister was Rv. E. P. Hubbell.29 Edith and William likely met when William was working as a milk peddler in Hornellsville, Edith’s hometown.30 The couple adopted a daughter named Ruby and established a home together in a “modest little cottage on D. C. Cook’s farm, on the Chapinville road,” near the outskirts of Canandaigua, New York.31

Howard remained a visible character within the rural community, and yet despite this visibility, no one suspected that he had been assigned female at birth. The Ontario Repository-Messenger later reported that he “was well known by the merchants here where she habitually traded.” However, this close contact did not raise any suspicion that he was not male—or if there was any suspicion, it did not infringe on his ability to carry out his life publicly as a man, as he enjoyed all the privileges that came along with masculinity. For example, he was allowed to enjoy a right that all women in the early twentieth century were denied: the right to vote. The Repository-Messenger reported that Howard “was a voter and regularly supported the republican candidates.”32

The Repository-Messenger was not the only local paper to publish accounts that indicated Howard’s masculinity had never been questioned by members of his community. The Ontario County Journal reported, “Working upon the farm among the men in summer, splitting wood and caring for the cattle in winter, many a night … in her action at home and among people, everywhere, she was a man. She voted and drove to town to trade.”33 As such, it appears that the rural outskirts of Canandaigua provided Howard and his wife, Edith, with an ideal environment in which to live their queer lives. Judging from appearances, the Howards were a happy family; the Ontario County Journal referred to William and Edith’s marriage as unfolding “with almost uninterrupted happiness.”34 Similarly, the Syracuse Telegram reported that “those who know the Howard family best declare they lived not only happily, but that there was an unmistaken affection between husband and wife.”35

However, their happiness was brought to an end in March 1902, when William suddenly died three hours after ingesting tablets for a cough. Given that he had previously been healthy, the circumstances surrounding Howard’s death prompted his wife to ask for an autopsy. However, the autopsy revealed more than the official cause of death (which, it turned out, was a cardiac event, unrelated to the ingested tablets).36 Coroner O. J. Hallenbeck also discovered Howard’s “true sex,” noting in his report that Howard’s genitalia was that of a “normal woman or adult female human being.”37 However, the coroner’s report is fascinatingly contradictory, as it includes a sworn statement from Howard’s widow, who refers to Howard as her “husband” and utilizes male pronouns throughout.38 In this way, the coroner’s report reflects the local coverage of the story: newspapers acknowledged the discovery of Howard’s “true sex” yet continued to depict his life as that of a “good man.”

As newspapers throughout western New York covered the story, they generally published ambivalent accounts of Howard’s life and marriage. Howard’s case was discussed as being unique, while at the same time his behavior as a man was cast in entirely normative terms. Rochester’s Democrat Chronicle, for example, reported of Howard’s half brothers (who, significantly, were described as “members of respectable families”) that “though the family had known of the strange predilection of [the] deceased for many years, they had been unable to induce her to array herself in the proper garb for a member of her sex.”39 In these quotations, Howard’s behavior, although out of the ordinary, is nonetheless described according to the scripts of normative male heterosexuality. Indeed, after assuming male attire “on her father’s farm” to perform chores, Howard soon “escorted girls about to parties and dances, spent money freely on them, and finally, as is seen, she married a woman named Dwyer.”40 As such, Howard’s life as a man was narrated along the course of normative heterosexuality: his courtship of women was conducted chivalrously, and he quickly settled down into married life, without an extended, raucous bachelorhood. Not only did this narrative remember Howard’s earlier life fondly, it also produced the women who had been involved with Howard in those years (and their families) as entirely normative.

As the story circulated away from the local context, however, newspapers were less likely to publish supportive accounts of Howard’s story. For example, the most common iteration was a brief Associated Press wire that appeared in at least twelve newspapers nationwide. This version relayed only a few details about Howard’s life and did not provide any details explaining the origin of his queer embodiment or the rationale behind his marriage:

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y.—March 22—A person who was known here for five years as William C. Howard died suddenly Wednesday night, and an autopsy showed that the supposed man was a woman. Howard, who was about 50 years old, and who was employed as a farm hand, came here five years ago with a woman, who was known as Mrs. Howard. Two children were born to the supposed wife.

The dead woman worked for farmers in the neighborhood, and those most intimately acquainted with the family never had the slightest suspicion that she was not a man. The cause of the woman’s death is a mystery. On Wednesday night she took two tablets for throat affection, and died in fifteen minutes. The medicine was sent from Wellsville, this State, where relatives reside. The authorities are completely mystified as to all matters touching upon the woman’s life. They do not know her right name. Two men, claiming to be half brothers, attended the funeral, but refused to divulge any information. An inquest is to be held, and some light may be thrown upon this strange case.41

In this account, both Howard’s life and death are cast as mysterious, and very little context is given to readers to help them understand the story. Even though Howard and his wife had been lifelong residents of the region, they are here produced as relative strangers, without anyone to speak on their behalf, other than former employers of Howard’s, whose only insights were that Howard’s “true sex” had eluded them. Additionally, Howard’s story is fashioned as a mystery because of the strange circumstances surrounding his death. Although precious few details about his death are revealed, those that are provided suggest that distant family members might have sent Howard poisoned tablets. Indeed, throughout the brief account, readers are encouraged to consider the story as one that is “strange” and “mysterious”—two of the most common words used in the headlines that accompanied the article (e.g., “A Strange Story” or “Mysterious Death Comes to a Mysterious Woman”).

Another remarkable aspect of the national coverage of Howard’s story is the (almost) complete lack of connection that journalists drew between his case and George Green’s, despite the numerous similarities between the two. Both individuals passed as men for decades, lived with wives in rural areas, and died within days of each other, and yet national newspapers fell silent regarding these similarities. For example, the Chicago Tribune published an article discussing Green’s “deathbed discovery” on March 22, 1902.42 When the paper reported Howard’s death the very next day, its coverage opened as follows: “History fails to record a stranger case of deceit in sex than that which came to light here today when it was proven beyond dispute that ‘William C. Howard,’ for years the ‘husband’ of Mrs. Dwyer Howard.”43 At no point in the article did the Tribune acknowledge that they had published a very similar story the day before, nor was there any discussion of the similarities between the two cases. Similarly, the Washington Post opened their coverage of George Green’s story as follows: “One of the most remarkable cases that has ever been known in this section is alleged to have come to light in Ettrick, Chesterfield County to-day.” Yet the following day, when the paper reported on William Howard’s story, no reference was made to the similarities.44 The Chicago Tribune and Washington Post were two of at least ten newspapers nationwide that reported the stories of both Green and Howard, and, like the Tribune and Post, most of these newspapers made no connection between the two cases.45

What can be made of this lack of connection, of this seemingly willful refusal to link these two cases? Perhaps it reveals the reality of the fast-paced newsroom of the early twentieth century, where editors were not allowed the time to step back and think about the day’s news (especially news that appeared as a simple reproduction of an AP newswire) in relation to what they had printed just days before. However, the stories were so similar that it seems like perhaps the lack of connection was deliberate.

By characterizing the stories of both Green and Howard each as “one of the most remarkable cases that has ever been known,” newspaper editors of metropolitan newspapers were able to present the rural countryside as the bastion of wholesome “American” value, untainted by the corrupting influence of the city. As such, they maintained the constructed binary of rural/urban, whereby rural spaces were pure, and urban areas were potentially corrupting of innocence. This binary—which became even more visible during the 2016 presidential election, with constant discussions of coastal cities constituting “bubbles” out of touch with “real America”—was also an effective structuring device in the early twentieth century. At the time, U.S. cities were changing rapidly in both economic terms (e.g., industrialization and the increased inequities of wealth it brought with it) and demographic terms (e.g., fast-paced immigration). In the context of such swift change, it is perhaps unsurprising that newspaper editors sought to utilize the symbol of the “rural” to represent the nation’s past, as the space wherein “American” values remained unchanged by the tides that were reshaping the nation’s urban centers.46 Further, with anxiety surrounding the “New Women” and the woman’s suffrage movement, perhaps it is unsurprising that newspaper editors might want to imagine gender transgressions as a phenomenon isolated to urban centers.

However, the local coverage of George Green and William Howard reminds us, once again, that binaries are often constructed and incomplete representations of reality. In Howard’s case, the newspaper accounts published in the local context provide us with clear evidence that the rural communities of western New York afforded William, Edith, and their children a supportive environment, both during William’s life and after his death. In fact, the Ontario County Journal even reported that Howard’s gender expression was respected after his passing, as the paper stated that his body was buried in male clothing.47 Thus, just as George Green’s community found it acceptable for his funeral to be held at the Catholic church and his body to be laid to rest in the adjacent Catholic cemetery, William Howard’s community was willing to tolerate the queer choices of their community member, even in death. These cases both suggest that rural communities had more elastic understandings of masculinity and the relationship between sex and gender than have previously been understood. For both the people of Ettrick, Virginia, and Canandaigua, New York, the behavior of Green and Howard mattered more than their genitalia.

Of course, some might dismiss these two examples as evidence of a tendency to not to want to speak ill of the dead, or a reflection of a respect for one’s elders (both George Green and William Howard being older than fifty). No doubt, the fact that both men were dead rendered them less of a threat to their community, and their age likely allowed their actions (particular with regard to sexual encounters) to be seen as harmless. Nevertheless, the fact remains that both George Green and William Howard chose to live their lives in rural communities, and those choices must be taken seriously. Both men moved several times throughout their adult life, and neither one chose to relocate to an urban area.48 These deliberate choices, I argue, reveal to us a side of queer history that has been obscured by an over-emphasis on metropolitan areas and urban enclaves. In order to prove this point a bit more forcefully, the following case study provides an opportunity to explore the aftermath of a “true sex” revelation on an individual who was still living. Indeed, the case of Willie Ray provides an opportunity to assess the level of acceptance afforded to individuals who transgressed gender expectations in the early twentieth century.

Willie Ray

Willie Ray first emerges in the public record on the 1900 federal census, which lists Ray as a twenty-five year-old white male born in Tennessee. At the time the census was taken, he was living as a boarder and working as a farm laborer in Booneville, Mississippi, a town of about one thousand people in the northwest corner of Mississippi in the predominantly rural Prentiss County.49 There are no known records of Willie Ray’s life prior to 1900; it is likely that he moved to the Prentiss County area between 1890 and 1900, and perhaps it was during this time that he began living as a man (although it is more certain that it was in this period that he began living under the name Willie Ray). The facts surrounding Willie Ray’s life in Mississippi become a bit clearer in 1903, when he was part of a lawsuit that received attention in newspapers across the nation.

In July 1903, Willie Ray filed charges against a man named James Gatlin, who allegedly “got after Ray with a horsewhip.”50 According to the newspaper reports of the trial, Gatlin was upset with Ray for being “too attentive to Mrs. Gatlin.” Thus the stage was set for a classic love triangle that certainly would have attracted attention in at least the local papers, which frequently covered such interpersonal dramas. However, a startling revelation that emerged in Willie Ray’s cross-examination ensured that the story would be covered in newspapers across the South.

During the trial, Willie Ray was placed on the stand and cross-examined by the defense lawyer. The lawyer asked Ray to comment on the accusation that he had maintained an improper relationship with Mr. Gatlin’s wife. In response, Ray revealed to the courtroom that he was biologically female. Now, why would Willie Ray choose this moment to reveal his “true sex”? The Jackson Evening News reported that Ray revealed his “true sex” “when it was necessary … to deny an allegation.”51 This account suggests that once the Prentiss County court realized that Ray was biologically female, the idea that he was flirting with Mrs. Gatlin would be debunked because same-sex desire between two biological women was inconceivable. However, this logic relies on the idea that people in Prentiss County were ignorant of the possibility of same-sex desire, and that they were completely isolated from the nascent discourse of sexology or popular representations of gender and sexual transgressions that appeared in the national press.52 While it is probable that some people in Prentiss County were unaware of sexology, to suggest that they had never conceived of affection between two members of the same sex is to discredit the savviness of individuals in rural communities.

Instead, it is more likely that Willie Ray chose to reveal his “true sex” on the stand as a way of incriminating Mr. Gatlin and avoiding punishment for having an improper relationship with his wife. Indeed, whereas Gatlin’s behavior (whipping Ray with a horsewhip) may have seemed justified to the court when it was done to protect his wife from an unscrupulous man, Ray was likely aware that the court would view the same action very differently if the victim of his attack were a woman. This calculation proved to be accurate; once Ray disclosed his “true sex,” Jackson’s Daily Clarion-Ledger reported that Gatlin was “was bound over to the circuit court under a bond of $250, which he was unable to give, and was sent to jail.”53 For his part, Ray was also arrested and held for a brief period of time—not for improper sexual conduct, but for masquerading in male attire. However, in 1903, there was no law in Booneville (or anywhere in Mississippi, for that matter) that prohibited wearing the clothes of the opposite sex, and Ray was quickly released from custody.54 Thus assured of the legality of his queer body, Willie Ray apparently continued to live in Booneville and dress in male attire.55

As Willie Ray’s story circulated away from the local context and onto the pages of national newspapers, the narrative remained strikingly similar to the one that appeared in the Mississippi press. The most common iteration, which appeared in newspapers such as the St. Louis Republic, Atlanta Constitution, and New York World, read:

The people of Prentiss county, Miss., are wondering how Miss Willie Ray managed to palm herself off upon them as a man for nearly eight years without her sex being suspected even by her most intimate friends and neighbors.

Miss Ray has lived in Prentiss county since 1895, and during the first five or six years worked for various farmers for wages. She dressed as an ordinary farm hand and made regular trips to Booneville, the county seat, each Saturday afternoon, riding horseback, to all appearances a neat-looking boy of quiet habits, although a steady chewer and smoker of tobacco.

Willie was known all over the country as a first-class field hand, a hard-worker and good for his debts. Last year the girl in masquerade decided to start out as an independent farmer and rented a small farm, bought a small store and began to run into debt, as all small farmers are expected to do.

Her sex was discovered last week at the court house in Booneville, where she was a party to a lawsuit, and since then Willie has had to wear skirts.

She came from Tennessee, is about twenty-five years of age, and when asked her reasons for posing as a man said that she did it in order to go out and do a man’s labor for a living.56

Just as in the national coverage of George Green and William Howard, Willie Ray’s story is depicted as an incredible and unusual tale. His case is cast as remarkable because of the success with which he passed as a man, and because of his ability to fulfill the demanding (masculine) tasks of farming for so many years without detection. Perhaps Ray’s story appealed to newspaper editors nationwide because it presented a narrative that appeared incredible—how could a woman pass as a man so successfully? In such iterations, the story was not “woman dresses as man and pursues women,” but rather “town was fooled for several years by woman masquerading in male clothes.”

The national coverage of Willie Ray’s story illustrates a clear investment, on the part of newspaper editors, in portraying the rural community of Prentiss County as entirely ignorant of the potential of same-sex desire, and intolerant of gender transgression moving forward. Ray’s alleged relationship with Mrs. Gatlin generally did not appear in the national press; when it did, the accounts made clear that Ray revealed his “true sex” in order to “disprove an allegation that had been lodged.”57 As explained above, this logic depends an understanding of rural spaces as ignorant of same-sex desire. While Prentiss County was portrayed in the national press as lacking all knowledge of nonnormative sexuality, one attribute the area did supposedly have was a legal regime to regulate gender expression.