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