Queer, There, and Everywhere

by Sarah Prager

  But men of their age were also expected to marry—marry women, that is—and Abraham and Joshua were both years past the usual age for getting hitched. They talked to each other all the time about being freaked out about the prospect of getting married. Abraham was flirting with the idea of proposing to his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mary Todd, but wouldn’t commit.

  In the end, it was Joshua who took the plunge first.

  Wedding Worries

  * * *

  Abraham’s months of misery and suicidal urges began after Joshua left for Kentucky to find a wife. When he finally wrote Abraham that life-saving letter, it was an invitation to visit—an invitation Abraham jumped to accept. He bolted off to Kentucky to stay with Joshua, who nursed him back to health. Abraham even helped Joshua court his target, Fanny Henning, by distracting her overprotective uncle so the would-be couple could talk.

  Once Abraham returned to Illinois (in considerably better shape than when he’d left), he and Joshua continued writing back and forth. They often wrote about that pesky issue of marriage, including Joshua’s claim that his wedding night had been “indescribably horrible.” Abraham was honest about being jealous of Josh’s relationship with Fanny and worried that he’d be forgotten now that his friend was wed. But he also admitted being glad to hear that Joshua was “far happier than [Joshua had] ever expected to be.” Months later Abraham asked Joshua if he actually felt happy as a married man and wasn’t just happy that he’d made the choice to go through with it. Whatever Joshua said in his reply letter must have been reassuring, because days after receiving it, Abraham married Mary. Then again, one wedding guest said, “Lincoln looked and acted as if he was going to the slaughter.”

  Maybe Abraham had a touch of clairvoyance, because he and Mary were indeed miserable as a couple. He avoided spending time at home, and they fought whenever they were together. She threw anything in reach at him (potatoes, books, firewood, hot coffee) and once chased him out of the house with a knife. Though, they did manage to accomplish one of the main goals of marriage at the time: nine months after their wedding night, Mary gave birth to their first child.

  The White House

  * * *

  Things between Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln weren’t any better once they moved to Washington after Abraham won the presidency in 1860. Joshua and Abraham had drifted apart, and Abraham and Mary didn’t even sleep in the same bed. Virginia Woodbury Fox, wife to the assistant secretary of the navy, kept a diary of all the hot DC gossip and confided in one entry: “Tish says, ‘There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.’ What stuff!” The president had found someone else to warm his sheets: David Derickson.

  David, with his intense eyes and dark-black beard, was a career military man. Rugged-looking, David was a member of the Bucktail Brigade from Pennsylvania, so nicknamed for the fur they wore on their hats. One day the president asked David to ride with him on his commute to the White House from his summer cottage, and they were inseparable for the next four months. Fellow soldier and historian Thomas Chamberlin wrote about David that: “In Mrs. Lincoln’s absence he frequently spent the night at [Abraham’s] cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and—it is said—making use of his Excellency’s night-shirt! Thus began an intimacy which continued until the following spring.” Abraham and David did everything together for a while, from attending church to touring battlefields.

  But no one ever compared to Joshua.

  Surprisingly, it was the Civil War that eventually brought the two back together. Joshua was a slave owner and had disagreed politically with the president on this issue for a long time. But after years of chilly silence between them, Joshua dropped everything and hightailed it from Kentucky to Washington to assist the North’s cause, even though he was against the abolition of slavery. He helped General Sherman secure resources for the Union directly from the White House—putting him in Abraham’s path once again. The president’s secretaries commented that “Speed and Lincoln poured their souls out to each other” throughout the war.

  Another Kind of Love

  * * *

  Joshua and David both lived on with their wives after President Lincoln’s assassination. Abraham had never done much to hide who he spent his time with, either because he didn’t care or because people didn’t suspect there was anything going on between him and these men—or because intimate male friendships were just accepted back then. It really was a whole different world when it came to same-sex relationships just a couple hundred years ago; sex between men was more hated and outlawed, but a certain shared intimacy was just fine—even for the president.

  ALBERT CASHIER

  1843–1915

  tl;dr A transgender soldier keeps his identity a secret throughout the Civil War

  With their siege against Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Union soldiers were hoping to take down the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. But for one Union soldier, Private Albert Cashier, things were not going as planned.

  . . . Okay, more like they were a major disaster: Albert had been captured by a Confederate soldier while staking out Vicksburg and was being held by enemy forces. Fearless as always, Albert wanted more than anything to get back in the fight.

  In a moment of quick thinking, Albert grabbed a musket from one of his guards and used the butt of it to knock the man down. He made a run for it and managed to find his way back to his unit . . . but not to safety. Albert had left safety behind many years ago—along with his assigned female identity.

  America

  * * *

  Albert’s life had never exactly been what you’d call safe and secure. He grew up in Ireland during the Great Potato Famine and, like many of his fellow countrymen, had always planned to escape to the land of opportunity. Ships bound for America left frequently, and all Albert had to do was walk from his small town to the nearest harbor a few miles away. Getting on a ship was no guarantee you’d make it to America, though, and sinking into the Atlantic or dying on board of disease were so common that the vessels carrying would-be immigrants were called “coffin ships.”

  Then there was still another hitch: Albert wasn’t yet “Albert”; he’d been raised as Jennie Hodgers.

  When the day finally arrived to board a ship bound for America, Jennie decided to ditch the skirt and petticoats on the way to the harbor, start using the name Albert D. J. Cashier, and live as a man from then on. Whether Jennie chose to take on this identity in that moment or had been thinking about it for a while is anyone’s guess. Lots of women passed as men during this era for all kinds of reasons, like safety while traveling alone. But most women didn’t then continue to live as men. Albert was different; his transformation ran deeper than mere convenience, and he stayed in his assumed identity for more than fifty years. Though the word “transgender” didn’t yet exist, Albert clearly felt that his true gender didn’t match what everyone assumed it was. Leaving Ireland was the perfect chance to start living life as the man he was.

  At the port, Albert discovered the price of a ticket: the equivalent of three hundred dollars today. Coming up with that much was about as likely as an iPhone falling from the sky in the 1850s. He decided he would sneak aboard and stow away.

  Albert pretended to bid a sad good-bye to a group of people standing on the dock (P.S.: they were actually complete strangers), then walked boldly onto the ship like he belonged there—though he didn’t have a ticket. His bravado did the trick, and the two-month journey passed without incident. Albert arrived in Boston a new man. Literally.

  “A Right Feisty Little Bastard”

  * * *

  The streets in America weren’t exactly paved with gold, as the rumors in Ireland had claimed. There was no work, which meant no money, which meant no food. Plus there was that whole living-as-a-man-for-the-first-time thing on top of it all. So Albert started making his way west, working odd jobs as a handyman along the way. He settled in Illinoi
s, but not for long, since an opportunity as close to golden as he’d heard in his nineteen years presented itself seemingly out of the blue: a steady job with food and clothing provided. On August 3, 1862, Albert D. J. Cashier enlisted in the army. The medical exam was a joke; the Union was desperate for soldiers, so Albert had no problem getting in and never had to show more than his hands and feet to be admitted. He was the smallest in his company, and his comrades-in-arms teased him about it on the reg—but they had no reason to suspect he’d been assigned female at birth.

  Albert had no problem keeping up with the other men in Company G of the Ninety-Fifth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, not even when they marched from Illinois to Kentucky to Tennessee to Mississippi to Louisiana to Alabama (ten thousand miles in three years!). Albert largely kept to himself, but whenever he did interact with the other soldiers, they loved him. While he was shy and private around camp, he was battle thirsty. He’d taunt Confederate soldiers into the open so he could shoot at them, and everyone wanted to be by his side during missions. A fellow soldier remembered: “He was a right feisty little bastard. Sooner fight than eat!”

  One day, the troop’s flagpole broke, sending the Union colors into the dirt. Albert ran out through heavy fire, picked up the flag, climbed a tree with it, and waved it back and forth for all to see. His captain tried to scold him for taking such a risk, but Albert shot back, “Those colors should be flying free!” Later, his sergeant commented, “He might be the littlest Yankee in the company, but by golly, he sure carries his share of the fight!”

  Miraculously, while many others died in battle and of disease, Albert made it through three years of war unscathed. An injury would have led to the discovery of his secret, but his assigned-female body was never revealed. Conveniently, soldiers rarely changed in front of each other and always slept in their baggy uniforms, which didn’t show much of a body’s shape. He was just one of the guys—albeit one who didn’t grow any facial hair.

  A Life in Illinois

  * * *

  After the war, Albert settled down in Belvidere, Illinois, working again as a handyman and then as a farmhand. He wore his military uniform every day, probably because he couldn’t afford to buy any other clothes. Out of battle, he went back to being his shy-but-charming self. Each night he’d light the kerosene streetlamps in town, then pass by later to put them all out. It was a quiet life, especially compared to his time in the war.

  Things took a turn for the worse one day when Albert was working as a mechanic. His employer, not very skilled at maneuvering newfangled contraptions called automobiles, ran over Albert’s leg with a car.

  After all those years, a doctor finally discovered Albert’s secret.

  But in an age when the word “transgender” didn’t exist, those who knew Albert accepted him as the man they knew he was. His employer, the doctor, and others who helped care for Albert while he healed kept what they knew about his body to themselves. Still, Albert’s health declined. After a few months it became clear he needed more help than they could give, and Albert was admitted to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home.

  Albert was checked in as Jennie Hodgers, but the small group of staff who tended to his baths guarded the secret. Albert was able to live as a man at the home, receiving visits from fellow veterans to reminisce about war stories. And he still wore his uniform every day.

  Respect at the End

  * * *

  As Albert’s health deteriorated, at the age of seventy he was transferred to a less accepting institution: the women’s ward at a psychiatric institution. They forced him to wear a dress, against his protests. Walking with a skirt around his feet was foreign to him, and he tripped over it one day, falling hard and hurting his hip. He was bedridden after that and never recovered.

  After such a horrible turn of events at the end of such an extraordinary life, something wonderful happened. At Albert’s funeral, soldier after soldier from the Ninety-Fifth came forward to make sure he was buried as the man he’d lived as—the man he was. The town of Belvidere welcomed him back, and Albert was given a full military burial in his uniform with an American flag over his casket. And the name Albert Cashier was engraved on his headstone.

  GERTRUDE “MA” RAINEY

  1886–1939

  tl;dr The sexually empowered Mother of the Blues blazes a trail for future VMA winners

  The women in the room were buck naked. Every last one of them.

  When the Chicago police received the noise complaint and drove over to Ma’s apartment, they hadn’t expected . . . well, this: women, all women, all completely naked, scrambling for their clothes. They were making a run for it, disappearing into the night. An arrest for a female orgy wouldn’t be good on anyone’s record—especially in 1925.

  Many of the ladies, grasping at garments, made it out the back door before the police could arrest them. Ma wasn’t so lucky. She was caught after falling down the stairs, and she proceeded to spend the night in jail. But Ma would have even further to fall—and higher to climb—before long.

  Mother of the Blues

  * * *

  Way before Ma was hosting orgies, she was developing an ear for music. She learned to sing from her grandmother, who’d been a stage performer after being freed from slavery on a Southern plantation. Ma, born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia, first heard the blues at a traveling tent show when she was a teenager. She was instantly hooked and joined a minstrel show later that year. While minstrel shows did rely on dehumanizing racist stereotypes, through them, Ma and other black performers were able to make their own living and travel around the country. “Touring with the band” might not seem like much of a bold move now, but in Ma’s time, the echoes of slavery still reverberated loudly through America’s culture, and seemingly simple acts of freedom were a huge deal.

  Ma was a natural performer and quickly gained popularity on the traveling musician circuit. She soon met William “Pa” Rainey, a seasoned performer who turned his charm way, way up on Ma. It wasn’t long before Gertrude became “Ma” to William’s “Pa,” and they made it big as Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. They even had their own furnished train, today’s equivalent of a private G6.

  Like so many showmances, Ma and Pa’s relationship couldn’t stand the test of time. A dozen years after they got together, Ma left Pa—both their musical act and their marriage. She hadn’t hesitated to sleep with other men and women while she was married, but now she was really free.

  Ma had always been able to fill a room when she entered it, and her popularity quickly exploded as a solo act. You could always hear her coming as she made her way to the stage, her heavy jewelry jangling. This short, round black woman glittered gold from her teeth to her signature gold-coin necklace. And up on stage, the sequins from her dress and headband would shimmer in the lantern light.

  Back then, no blues songs had ever been formally recorded and few people outside the South had even heard of the blues. Traveling performers like Ma made the rounds in former slave states, playing segregated shows (white on the left, black on the right) where “colored” audience members spent a good share of what they had earned in fields or factories that week on a ticket. They wanted to hear about the struggles they knew too well, and if they wanted original music about real life, Ma’s show was the place to go.

  Ma was singing about physical labor, inequality, grief, cheating, and domestic violence at a time when most mainstream music was about perfect hetero relationships and how pretty the moon was. Ma was Beyoncé singing about black lives mattering while other pop stars are writing songs about the dance floor—tackling raw, human issues from the stage even when her peers were playing it safe. Her songs weren’t only about the struggle of being black in America; she was also among the first to sing about women having their own sexual desire. The women in Ma’s songs didn’t see marriage to men as a given: she sang about having a husband and a lover at the same time, and how she’d take any man who could pay her bills. Femal
e musicians who top the Billboard charts now, singing about having sex and liking it, owe a serious debt to Ma Rainey.

  Prove It

  * * *

  Ma was bailed out of jail the morning after being arrested for hosting her “indecent party”—the only orgy of Ma’s to make the record books (though of course there could have been others). Since the police hadn’t actually seen any sex acts taking place, just the nudity, they couldn’t charge her with anything else. The arrest could easily have been career ending (around the same time the publisher of The Well of Loneliness, the first modern lesbian novel, was on trial for obscenity). But instead of sweeping the incident under the rug, Ma played it up by releasing the song “Prove It on Me Blues.” Her record label’s newspaper ad for the single showed Ma in a men’s suit flirting with two flapper women. Scandalous!

  Went out last night with a crowd of my friends

  They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men

  It’s true I wear a collar and tie . . .

  Talk to the gals just like any old man . . .

  They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me

  Sure got to prove it on me

  After ten more years of incredible success, Ma eventually retired from a music industry hit hard by the Great Depression. Popular music was moving on from her “down-home” style as jazz gained momentum. After Ma passed away a few years later, a fellow female blues singer sang, “People it sure look lonesome since Ma Rainey’s been gone.”