Second Feminine-to-Masculine Transition in Brattleboro, VT
Returning to Vermont from New York City, Rollin was coerced into using his birth name and a feminine gender, but this did not last long.[1] He made a second feminine-to-masculine transition in June 1903. From Heartwellville, he traveled to Brattleboro, Vermont, the most populous community in neighboring Windham County.
On June 18, Rollin appeared, sopping wet from the rain, at the offices of Henry Brown.[2] Brown, a liveryman, owned a harness store and carriage storage facility on Brattleboro’s Main Street.[3] Playing on Brown’s sympathies, Rollin called himself Allie Orton and said he had been looking for work to no avail.[4] In fact, he had just eighteen cents to his name. Brown paid for Rollin’s stay at an inn for the night and hired him the next morning as a stable worker.
Rollin acquitted himself admirably. He braved heavy rains and washed-out roads to drive passengers from Brattleboro to Chester. He drove a hearse at the head of a funeral procession. In the words of the Windham County Reformer, Brown himself said that Rollin “could put more hay in the mow and pack it better than any man he ever had in his employ.”[5]
Besides impressing his supervisor, Rollin also won popularity among his coworkers. He became a favorite in the stables for his readiness to exchange work and clean out the stalls for other men. They reportedly put up with his incessant borrowing of tobacco, both for chewing and smoking, because they liked him so much. Eventually Rollin moved to haying at Brown’s Chesterfield farm.[6]
Finding Rollin gone once again, his mother Mary made some panicked phone calls. After about ten days of searching, she arrived at Brown’s. The Windham County Reformer described a tense reunion between Mary and Rollin. Brown transported Mary to his farm and presented her to Rollin, asking, “Who is this?”
“My mother,” responded Rollin. He fainted in shock. He refused to accompany his mother and Brown back into town in their carriage. Instead, he borrowed a bike from one of the men working in the field and pedaled back independently.[7]
Afterward, Rollin was again forced to resume women’s clothes and a feminine identity. This time, he also left the state, going with his mother to New York City. Even so, he threatened suicide if he was prevented from living as he chose.[8]
Again, papers across Vermont picked up the news of Rollin’s second feminine-to-masculine transition.[9] As in 1901, articles showed that the public was both fascinated and threatened by Rollin’s deeds. The Windham County Reformer employed scare quotation marks around masculine pronouns and Rollin’s alias to suggest that his identity was uncertain, suspicious, and spurious.[10] The Deerfield Valley Times included Rollin’s failed searches for clothes—he “went to another store for hose, [size] No. 8, and was told that No. 7 was the smallest that they carried”—and invited readers to amuse themselves at the idea that such a small person could be a man.[11] The Vermont Tribune (Ludlow, VT) called Rollin’s Brattleboro transition “10 days masquerading as a man,” using the same derisive allusion to playacting that news coverage had in 1901.[12]
Even as Vermont papers mocked Rollin, they also described him as unsettling. The Reformer, for example, gave a capsule summary of Rollin’s activities, concluding, “No wonder Mr. Brown is astonished. And what shall be said of the rest of the help, who regarded the new comer [sic] as a ‘bully good fellow,’ up to snuff and a first rate companion on any stable boy’s lark?”[13] The question connoted a worry about how his colleagues would be discussed and judged by those around him. The article put “‘bully good fellow’” in quotation marks to assert that Rollin was neither “bully good” nor a “fellow,” and the article’s open-ended question allowed readers to condemn Rollin’s colleagues for their poor judgment in assuming that he was. Rollin’s Brattleboro transition was seen both as a social transgression that wronged all those who treated him like a man and as a potential threat to the fundamental standards by which people evaluated each other.
Notes
[1] In December 1901, he attended a dance in Jacksonville, Vermont, with family members and was referred to by his birth name. Mrs. H. E. Parsons, “Readsboro and Bennington County. Readsboro,” Deerfield Valley Times, 5 December 1902, 5.
[2] The date of Rollin’s arrival comes from “Found in Disguise as a Man,” Vermont Tribune (Ludlow, VT), 10 July 1903, 7.
[3] See, for example, Henry R. Brown, “A New Harness and Carriage Repository [advertisement],” Vermont Phoenix (Brattleboro, VT), 6 April 1900, 7.
[4] “Found in Disguise,” Vermont Tribune, 10 July 1903, 7.
[5] “Mr. Brown’s Hired Man,” Windham County Reformer, 3 July 1903, 1.
[6] This detail is from “In Boys Attire,” Deerfield Valley Times, 3 July 1903, 1.
[7] “Mr. Brown’s Hired Man,” Windham County Reformer, 3 July 1903, 1.
[8] “Found in Disguise,” Vermont Tribune, 10 July 1903, 7.
[9] “Girl Wearing Male Attire,” St. Albans Daily Messenger, 30 June 1903, 4; “Mr. Brown’s Hired Man,” Windham County Reformer, 3 July 1903, 1; “In Boys Attire,” Deerfield Valley Times, 3 July 1903, 1; “Wanted to Wear Men’s Clothes,” Vergennes (VT) Enterprise and Vermonter, 9 July 1903, 6; “Found in Disguise,” Vermont Tribune, 10 July 1903, 7.
[10] “Mr. Brown’s Hired Man,” Windham County Reformer, 3 July 1903, 1.
[11] “In Boys Attire,” Deerfield Valley Times, 3 July 1903, 1.
[12] “Found in Disguise,” Vermont Tribune, 10 July 1903, 7.
[13] “Mr. Brown’s Hired Man,” Windham County Reformer, 3 July 1903, 1.