Earl Lind, 1870-1950: Researching the Author

An overview of a research project in progress, created by a group effort to identify the birth name and other information about the pioneering author who went by the names Jennie June, Ralph Werther, and Earl Lind. Published originally on OutHistory in 2018; updated in 2022.

For the most recent exhibit, which concludes that Jennie June was most likely the journalist Mowry Saben (1870-1950), see Who Was Jennie June?, by Channing Gerard Joseph, published in 2022.

Jennie June-Earl Lind-Ralph Werther: ARCHIVES, BIBLIOGRAPHY

Last edit June 9, 2021

ARCHIVES

Columbia University
Columbia published an annual catalogue that provided information about all the schools and programs of instructions, lists of students, lists of graduates, etc. These are freely available through the HathiTrust.
The 1895 graduates are listed in the 1895/96 catalogue (divided by school).
There is a table of contents, so you can see where to look in the volume for the lists of names:
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924064686557
Columbia also published volumes with lists of the graduates. Look here:http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112111856172 or here:
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t12n51z5h See also: New York University; University of the City of New York

New York Academy of Medicine

New York City, New York State Archives. List provided by Timothy Gilfoyle. As for archives, the first place you should look is the Municipal Archives of New York at 30 Chambers Street, especially if you have a date. Start with the Police Court or Magistrates' Court index and see if you can find any of the names. Then check the District Attorney Indictment Papers. If he was prosecuted, he should be found somewhere in there. The Mayors' Papers might be useful because some mayors had extensive correspondence with the police, but it was inconsistent among different mayors over time. The collections that might be of use to you are:

Almshouse Collection, Admission, Discharge, and Male Registration Records, Workhouse, Blackwell's Island
District Attorney Indictment Papers, Court of General Sessions.
District Attorney Indictment Papers, New York Supreme Court (unprocessed collection)
Minutes, New York County Court of General Sessions, 1857-1887.New York County District Attorney Record of Cases.
New York County District Attorney Scrapbooks, 1882-1901.
Mayors' Papers, 1870-1910.
New York City Department of Buildings, Block and Lot Folders.
New York City Police Court Docket Books.

If he was ever convicted and sent to a New York penitentiary, the New York State ARchives in Albany has the Admissions Registers for Sing Sing, Blackwell's Island Penitentiary and any other New York facility. That 1897 date might warrant looking at the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane which opened in 1896. Here are the records I've used in my own research:

Executive Clemency Application Status Ledgers, 1883-1899 (A0626).
Executive Clemency and Pardon Application Ledgers and Correspondence, 1849-1903 (A0629).
Executive Investigation Case Files of Charges Against Public Officials (A0531).
Executive Journals of Governors' Actions and Decisions, 1859-1916 (A0607).
Executive Register of Commitments to Prisons, 1842-1908 (A0603).
Executive Reports of Deduction of Sentences by Prison Agents, 1863-1883 (A0601).
Executive Register of Discharges of Convicts by Commutation of Sentences, 1883-1916 (A0604).
Clinton Prison, Outgoing Correspondence of Agent and Warden, 1845-1912 (B0118).
Clinton Prison, Admission Registers (B0098).
Clinton Prison, Diary of the Principle Keeper, 1868-84 (B0115).
Clinton Prison Chaplain's Office Statistical Register, 1889-97 (B0105).
Clinton Prison, Physician's Register of Inmates, 1890-1918 (B0100).
New York Court of Appeals, Minutes of Causes, 1847-1940 (J2006).
Department of State, Executive Clemency and Pardon Records, Executive Pardons, 1799-1931 (B0042).
Matteawan State Hospital Inmate Case Files, 1880-1960 (A1500).
Sing Sing Inmate Admission Registers, 1865-1971 (B0143).

New York University: If you think he graduated from NYU (which was in the process of shifting from the University of the City of New York), you can see the volume which contains their catalogue (also with lists of students, prizes, etc.) from the time period in which Werther would have been a student here: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112112221277 The volume above has several years together, so it takes some looking to get to the year that you want, but the 1895 graduates are all listed.

University of the City of New York. Any archive of graduates? (cum laude graduates in 1894?) See also Columbia University and New York University.

U.S. Post Office archives?: There are a number of archival collections for the US Postal Service (at the National Archives and Records Administration, at LC, at the US Postal Service itself, which has a historian, at the Postal Museum). Here’s a basic list of resources: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/research-sources.htm See also Comstock, Anthony.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY SOURCES

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. (Discusses Werther.)

Douglas, Don. "The Gay,;Gay 90s.'" Gay Scene (New York, NY), April 1975, Issue 11, p.Four (1478 words) Accessed through Cengage/Gale database by JNK, March 12, 2016.

Douglas, Don. "The Gay, 'Gay 90s'." Gay Scene (New York, NY), April 1975, Issue 11, p. 4. (1478 words). Early story in the gay press retelling Ralph Werther's history. Gale, Centage Learning [electronic database].

Eskridge, Jr., Wililiam N. "Law and the Construction of the Closet: American Regulation of Same-Sex Intimacy, 1880-1946." 82 Iowa L. Rev. 1007 1996-1997 (Without citing a source, Eskridge says "Ralph Werther's double life was literally lived in two different spaces: he was a schleppy if somewhat effeminate man at the uptown university and a girlish fairy downtown." 1105)

Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commericialization of Sex, 1780-1920. NY: W. W. Norton, 1994. (Mentions Ralph Werther-Jennie June.)

Herring, Scott. "Introduction" in Ralph Werther, Autobiography of an Androgyne, ed. Scott Herring (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008),

Kahan, Benjamin. Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).

——. "The Walk-in Closet: Situational Homosexuality and Homosexual Panic in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour," Criticism 55.2 (2013): 177-201.

Looby, Christopher. “Sexuality’s Aesthetic Dimension: Kant and the Autobiography of an Androgyne,” in American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions, ed. Cindy Weinstein and Christopher Looby (Columbia Univ. Press, 2012), 156-77.

Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Thinking Sex with an Androgyne” GLQ 17.1 (2011): 97-105.

Neihart, Ben. Rough Rough Amusements: The True Story of A'Lelia Walker… (Kindle Edition). NY; Bloomsbury, 2003. (Jennie June is a character in this fictional recreation.)

Sheehan, Aaron. “Strolling through the Slums of the Past: Ralph Werther’s Love Affair with Victorian Womanhood in Autobiography of an Androgyne,” PMLA 128.4 (2013): 923-937.

Stein, Melissa Norelle. A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Mia Bay and approved by Mia Bay, Nancy Hewitt, Ann Fabian, Keith Wailoo, Marc Stein, New Brunswick, New Jersey [May, 2008] (Analyses Werther's self-presentation.)

White, Edmund. Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel. NY HarperCollins, 2007. (Jennie June appears as a character in this fiction.)