Billy McGee earns a fortune, 1870
Nineteenth-century American women were very conscious that their earnings as women would be much less than their earnings as men; a woman in Minnesota in 1853 realized that “[s]he could command, as a woman, about four dollars a month” and worked as a male cook in a logging camp for six weeks, earning “nearly as much … as she would have received in somebody’s kitchen in St. Paul’s for a whole year.” [“A Female Adventurer.” Alexandria Gazette [Alexandria, Virginia] 24 June 1853; p. 2]
So it was, perhaps, no surprise that an unnamed young woman in Ohio would go out to work as a young man in the Pennsylvania oil fields, in order to support her financially bankrupt parents. The story appeared in the Pleasantville, Ohio, Gaslight, unavailable to me.
“Respect for Parents—Striking Contrast.” Gaslight [Pleasantville, Ohio]; reprinted in Reading Times [Reading, Pennsylvania] 30 June 1870; p. 2.
The Pleasantville, (Ohio) Gaslight is responsible for the following story: There is a young lady in Cleveland, the only child of a bankrupt Syracuse, N. Y., merchant, who is now supporting her parents in affluence on a small fortune she made in the Venango oil region. When misfortune overtook her parents—that was in 1866—and she saw her father, whom she fondly loved, bending under the weight of want and declining health, she secretly resolved that with her own fair hands she would earn a competence for his declining years. With that thought pervading her whole being and in full possession of her faculties, she provided herself with male attire, severed the beautiful locks which had been the pride and the admiration of numerous beaux, stained her face and hands to the bronze color of a farmer boy, and with a small sum of money which she realized from the sale of trinkets, she made her way to Pioneer [R]un, where, under the name of Billy McGee she soon ingratiated herself into the good will of a crew of drillers, who first learned her to turn a drill, and then secured her position on a drilling well. From drilling for wages, she went to drilling for small working interests, by which she became owner of interests in several fair wells. Having accumulated a little money she ventured to put down a well on her own account, succeeded, tried another, again succeeded, and at the end of two years she left Shamburg with $13,000, retired to Cleveland, provided a good home from her profits, resumed female attire, and now with hands and feet enlarged by toil, she passes in her promenades the worthless butterflies of fashion, with a proud consciousness of her superior worth.
What an inspiring story! ($13,000 in 1870 would be about $318,375 in 2024.) Was it true? It certainly sounds suspiciously too perfect to be entirely accurate. It does work, however, as a moral tale, contrasting the devoted daughter giving her all in order to support her parents with the “worthless butterflies of fashion” unwilling to make similar sacrifices. (“Who is she? our Cleveland people will ask as they read the following paragraph,” the Cleveland, Ohio, Plain Dealer pointed out, introducing its reprinting. “We know we have thousands of snappy, wide-awake, beautiful and industrious girls in our city, but we never before have heard of this one, whose fictitious name was ‘Billy McGee’ ”. [“An Oil Romance.” Plain Dealer 25 June 1870; p. 3])
What’s interesting for 21st-century readers is the contrast between the individual as female and the individual as male. The daughter cuts her hair and darkens her skin—that skin darkened by toil in the sun was considered masculine appears in a number of these stories. Afterward, the daughter’s hands and feet are “enlarged by toil”; large hands often appear in descriptions of female bodies wearing men’s clothes.
The New York Times got even more moralistic, warning women that success wasn’t assured and contrasting the energetic young Cleveland woman with a woman less lucky.
Female assumptions of men’s clothes. New York Times [New York, New York] 3 July 1870; p. 3.
Female assumptions of men’s clothes in order to earn the reward of masculine work, are not attended with uniformly good fortune. The Pleasantville Gaslight tells a romantic story of the daughter of a bankrupt merchant of Syracuse, N. Y., who, in 1866, when misfortune overtook her parents, started for the Venango oil region, and donning male attire, began, under the euphonious pseudonym of Billy McGee, the career of a driller, from which she gradually obtained working interests in sundry wells, and at the end of two years retired with a fortune of $13,000, which enabled her to support her parents in comfort. A less fortunate heroine was brought before the Mayor of Richmond the other day. This lady was a native of Virginia, and had come from Washington in search of employment as a seamstress. Unable to obtain this, she assumed the appropriate garb and found employment as a journeyman tailor. After some time her sex was suspected, and being convicted on her own avowal, she was brought before the Mayor. Her conduct had been most exemplary; and, as her case excited much compassion, she was leniently dealt with.
Was either story anything other than fiction? I haven’t found anything in a newspaper about a seamstress turned tailor being arrested in Richmond, Virginia, in 1870. Surely the New York Times seemed to feel that young women needed to know that, yes, a woman working as a man might have good fortune, but it was just as likely that she wouldn’t. So they shouldn’t assume that assuming men’s clothing would solve any of their problems.
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