Gender Benders, 1782-1920, by Jonathan Ned Katz

Primary documents about the lives of persons identified at birth as female, who later lived and sometimes identified as male. Documents reprinted from Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976). Published originally on OutHistory in 2008. Note by Jonathan Ned Katz added March 6, 2019 and revised March 4, 2022: In regard to people in the past, it seems to me now that we best honor them (and our own present desire to understand them) by trying to discover the changing historical terms and concepts by which they understood themselves over their lifetimes as well as the changing historical terms and concepts by which others understood them over time. It now also seems important to ask how all those terms and concepts expressed social judgments and were implicated in the power relations of individuals and classes, social systems, structures, and institutions.

Badger State Banner: Anna Morris/Frank Blunt and Gertrude Field, January 18, 1894

Field "fell upon the neck of the prisoner and wept for half an hour"

The Badger State Banner, published in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, carried the following news on January 18, 1894:

ANNA MORRIS GIVEN ONE YEAR

Anna Morris, alias Frank Blunt, the woman who has tried to be a man for the last fifteen years, was sentenced to the penitentiary for one year by Judge Gilson at Fond du Lac. She was arrested several months ago in Milwaukee charged with stealing $175 in Fond du Lac. It was then discovered that the prisoner was a woman, although she had worn masculine attire nearly all her life. A jury convicted her of larceny and a motion for a new trial was overruled. After the sentence had been passed Gertrude Field, a woman who claimed to have married the prisoner in Eau Claire, fell upon the neck of the prisoner and wept for half an hour. This woman has furnished all the money for Blunt's defense, and now proposes to carry the case to the Supreme Court.(1)

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976), page ?, citing: "Anna Morris Given One Year," Badger State Banner (Black River Falls, Wis.), Jan. 18, IB94, p. 3, col. 6. Jonathan Ned Katz wishes to thank the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for a copy of this document. This document is quoted in part by Michael Lesy in Wisconsin Death Trip (N.Y.: Pantheon, 1973), no pagination.