Lucy Ann "Joseph" Lobdell & Marie Louise Perry

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Lucy Ann Lobdell was born on December 2, 1829 on a farm in upstate New York. The first child, Lucy was taught by her father to ride a horse, shoot a rifle, and hunt. In her teens Lucy went to live with her aunt in Coxsackie, NY to attend the academy there. Having received a better education than most rural girls, Lucy then joined her family on their new land along the upper Delaware River. There she accepted the bended knee proposal of George Slater, who, once married, abused her and then abandoned her, leaving her pregnant. Lucy gave birth to a daughter and then spent the next few years trying to find paying work. When those attempts failed, she settled upon another plan. Leaving her daughter with her parents, Lucy changed clothes, cut her hair, and went off to live her life as a man.

Lucy lived at a time when women did not commonly carry a rifle, sit down in bars, or have romantic liaisons with other women. Lucy did these things in a personal quest—to work and be paid, to wear what she wanted and to love whomever she cared to. The New York Times thought her escapades worthy of a huge send off. “DEATH OF A MODERN DIANA” trumpeted the headline, “Dressed in Man’s Clothing She Win’s a Girl’s Love.” And the obituary would have been larger still if the Times had known of Lucy’s years disguised as man on the western frontier, her arrest and trial for the crime of wearing men’s clothes, or her jailbreak, engineered by her wife Marie Louise Perry, whom she met in 1868 and to whom she’d been married by an unsuspecting judge—the first same-sex marriage in America.


Lucy Ann Lobdell in braids, beads, and feathers, circa 1853. Photo courtesy of Crawson family of Basket Creek

Lucy Ann Lobdell died in Binghamton, NY in 1912.

Source: www.oneonta.edu/library/dailylife/family/1883lucywar.html

Further Readings:

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Comments

[tizi17.livejournal.com]

life writes the best stories....

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

It does, and you realize that nothing is new and that men and women already did it ;-)