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