Gender and its presentation has always had more variations than some people are comfortable with. This was as true in early 19th-century America as it is now.

It’s clear from early-19th-century American newspapers that the image of the meek, mild, submissive 19th-century female American that some 21st-century Americans hold dear was no more universal than it would be today. Girls in the 1860s rode horses bareback and sledded and skated, just as boys did. In 1862, fervent secessionist Mary Jane Green was “noted for her profanity.” Some young women took comfort in a cozy life at home; others didn’t. Some young men fit the image of generic masculinity; others didn’t.

And sometimes they found their activities detailed in newspapers—usually because they had been found breaking a law. Charles Williams stole a pig. James Walker got a little too drunk. Ellen Atwell started a fistfight. Mary Goldsborough was a thief. Some appeared to officers of the law to be about to break the law, either by appearing to be a sex worker or by appearing to be pretending to be other than the gender assigned at birth. Some cities had laws against women wearing men’s clothing; others didn’t.

The press often had a field day with the individuals being written about, making jokes at the person’s expense or including sympathetic interviews as part of the writeup. Emma Snodgrass became a viral sensation, her exploits appearing in newspapers across the country; another individual claimed to be her friend. Some individuals played to the prejudices of newspapers and the judicial system, creating harrowing stories: a sailor imprisoned by the British during the War of 1812 claimed to have adopted male clothing in desperation as the sole survivor of a shipwreck; others asserted that they were pursuing a perfidious lover. When Sophia Cryder turned out to be less a romantic heroine following a lover to war than a young woman following her own path, the Harrisburg Patriot and Union got sulky.

Not all women who wore the clothing of men were disparaged by the press. Deborah Sampson’s exploits as a soldier in the American Revolution were praised by nineteenth-century editors, as was an unnamed German woman who daily donned men’s clothing to work and provide for her children and disabled husband. Frances Louise Siegel was honored as a veteran of the Civil War. Billy McGee was presented by a Pleasantville, Ohio, newspaper as an admirable entrepreneur; Jane Anderson’s situation gave editors a chance to attack the judicial system in Cincinnati, Ohio. The story of a Minnesota woman who found that she could earn more money as a man than she could as a woman is presented with sympathy not only by the original correspondent, but by later editors reprinting it.

The pieces collected here follow some standard patterns: a detailed description of the individual and an estimation of their attractiveness; details of the person’s wardrobe; a description of the female-bodied person as a “handsome boy” or a “good-looking boy.” Young women doing the work usually done by young men are always described as good and competent workers, though there’s often an insistence that they should now retake their position as young women. More women appear to have voted than might be expected; in the 1850s, newspapers around the time of major elections often had a paragraph about a woman found to be dressed as a man in order to cast a vote. One wonders how many succeeded. Early in the Civil War, almost every week there was a paragraph about a woman attempting to enlist; certainly there were a large number who were successful. (Those interested in female Civil War soldiers should consult the very readable book by DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook: They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.)

How did the individuals who appear in these pieces identify? Some appear to have been pursuing lesbian relationships: the Slaters lived quite happily together as husband and wife in 1866; a couple lived richly for a time in 1862; A. Guelph committed serial monogamy, the last spouse refusing to give up a satisfying relationship. A dressmaker died in 1853 as a transwoman. Probably others would today regard themselves as transmen; Charley of a thousand names had a lifetime of experiences as a charismatic young man before being sent to California to live as a young woman—and to pop up again in New Orleans just over three months later, as a young man.

This collection of pieces on individuals not presenting publicly as the gender they were assigned at birth is taken from contemporary newspapers. I began by looking for stories including the phrases “male clothing” and “male attire;” this called up pieces that included both “male clothing” and “female clothing,” etc. I then pursued stories about each individual in digitized periodicals. I also attempted to find information about the person in genealogical sources. Newspapers are fearfully ephemeral, and sometimes the transcription has of necessity been taken from a reprint of the original piece.

The emphasis of this collection is on presentation in newspapers, rather than an academic study of gender identity and its presentation in 19th-century America. Because these transcriptions originally appeared as entries at a blog (remember those?), the tone often is more casual than many might expect.

A list of the web pages in this online collection, a chronological list of the individuals in the pieces, and a chronological list of the pieces transcribed are on a separate page.