July 31, 2013 • 21 mins
Charley Parkhurst was a stagecoach whip who spent almost 20 years handling teams of horses over treacherous terrain at high speeds. After his death in 1879, his friends who came to lay out his body discovered that Charley was anatomically female.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. And they
were going to talk about Charlie park First, he was
a stagecoach whip who spent almost twenty years handling teams
(00:24):
of horses over treacherous to reign at very high speeds.
And then after his death in eighteen seventy nine, his
friends who came to lay out his body discovered that
he was anatomically female. And a note about the pronouns,
because Charlie presented himself for his whole life as a man,
were going to use masculine pronouns when talking about him.
(00:45):
That seems fair to me. Yes. Charlie was born in Lebanon,
New Hampshire, in eighteen twelve and was probably named Charlotte
Darky Parkhurst. This is almost universally cited as true, but
that name isn't really documented anywhere. It's also not clear
what happened to Charlie's family, but he lived in an orphanage,
probably either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, until escaping dressed
(01:09):
as a boy at age ten. It probably would not
have taken much to make this work at the time,
especially in that kind of institutional setting. Boys and girls
would have been wearing similar clothing, probably overalls, and everyone's
hair probably would have been cut short for the sake
of both maintenance and louse control. Charlie's work with horses
(01:31):
started right away. He got a job as a stable
boy for a man named ebenee'z or Balch in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In in addition to mucking out the stalls, feeding and
grooming the horses, he started to learn how to handle
teams of horses, and when Ebene's removed to Providence, Charlie
went with him. Charlie's training as a driver started with
the one horse buggy, and he worked his way up
(01:53):
to handling teams at six horses, which is a little
difficult actually. That is a lot of animal to be
in control of, and horses are very large and they
don't always realize how large and powerful they are, so
handling it a team of six required a lot of
skill and finesse uh and he he developed a reputation
(02:14):
for being a really skilled and reliable driver um and
that was known at the time as a whip uh
and in Providence he became a very popular driver to
carry people to balls and other social events. But after
a while Charlie moved south and he worked in a
number of other states, including Georgia and Iowa. But all
the while continuing is a stage coach whip. So let's
(02:36):
talk a little bit about stage coach life for a minute,
all right. So the stage coach made its debut in
England in the mid seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century,
stage coaches were the primary way to travel long distances
in the United States and parts of Europe. They continued
to be really the like, the main way of going
a long distance until they were gradually overtaken by rail roads.
(03:00):
And while the railroads were being built, stage coaches would
still carry people from the end of the line to
the less accessible areas. And as we said, driving a
stage coach was really, you know, quite a job. It
was very demanding. Stagecoach drivers had to be able to
deal with both the horses and the coaches, along with passengers, mail,
any other cargo they were carrying, and all of the
(03:23):
myriad of threats that would reveal themselves, including wild animals
and outlaws and everything in between. So if you think
of those things you've seen in westerns or on Little
House on the Prairie, like runaway teams, ambushes, dangerous terrain,
attacks from people of all sorts, those things all really
happened to stage coaches. They were not exclusive to the
(03:43):
fictional record. So even though stage coaches were a really
common way of moving people from place to place all
over the United States and Europe, they became this iconic
part of the Old West because traveling by stage coach
in the Old was so inherently dangerous because the territory
was so much different from the more industrialized areas that
(04:08):
stage coaches were traveling in other parts of the world.
Um stage coach driving was also physically grueling. One of
the reasons that visits to family and friends lasted so
long at the time was because getting there was really hard.
Even on coaches that were outfitted with springs and suspensions,
the ride was full of rocking and jostling, and it
(04:28):
took about twenty four hours to go a hundred miles,
and that was only if you had a good driver
and places to change horses along the way. So whips
had to be tough and nimble, and trustworthy with people
and cargo. Charlie developed a reputation for being one of
the fastest and safest whips, and for being skilled with
a whip itself, in that whip the cigar out of
(04:51):
a man's mouth kind of way, like a marksman of
the whip world sort of yes. He also had a
reputation for being a hard drinking gambler, with the mouth
that was always stained with chewing tobacco. He was shorter
than most of the other drivers, but he could stand
his ground and hold his own and he didn't talk much,
but when he did it was reported to be laced
(05:12):
with profanity. So we have a character who was memorable
to many of the people who met him. Indeed, he
generally wore thick gloves, a buffalo overcoat, and blue jeans
over trousers, layers that were offering physical protection while also
concealing the body. He also earned a few nicknames during
(05:32):
his time as a whip, including Mountain, cock eyed, and
one eyed Charlie. These last two came from an injury.
He was kicked in the face by a horse he
was shoeing and lost an eye, and from then on
he wore an eye patch and while very skilled at
least once Charlie was robbed on the road, and after
that he started carrying a forty four. Reportedly, the next
(05:54):
time he was faced with the robber, he shot him
without stopping. Yes, which is I mean, that's a movie moment.
We just keep going and take aim and firing. Well,
and we've we've talked before, how how often like the
Old West really does prove to be a whole lot
like westerns that we think of as fictional, there was
really a lot that was It was. It was called
(06:14):
the Wild West for a reason. Yes. So here's an
account by major A and Judd, reported in the Santa
Cruz surf in v and found thanks to the Santa
Cruz Public Library. It recounts Charlie's application to drive a
stage coach for ben Holiday of Council Bluffs, Iowa, where
the treacherous terrain scared more whips off the job than
(06:35):
robbers and the threat of attacks by Native Americans did.
Judd made this report long after Charlie's death and the
discovery of his biological sex. There were perhaps fifty applicants
for the position that were open on the stage line.
Ever driven stage how long? How near. Could you drive
to the edge of a bluff with a sheer drop
(06:56):
of a thousand feet with perfect safety to yourself, your
team and passengers. These were some of the questions fired
at the prospective drivers by Holiday. Many answered until nearer
and nearer they got to the edge. Finally one was
willing to take a chance with half the tire over
the edge on one wheel. About this time Charlie's turn
came around, and by this time he she was getting uneasy.
(07:21):
After putting between her jaws a fresh shoe, she closed
her jack knife that had done duty for years, not
only for cutting tobacco, but for mending harness or skinning
a deer. She got up and had almost reached the
door before saying over her shoulder, I wouldn't do it
all for you, Mr Holiday. I'd stay as far away
from the edge of that cliff as the hubs would
let me, and you are just the one I want,
(07:44):
said Holiday. So that was major a and Judd's written account.
It may be somewhat apocryphal, but Charlie worked that job
for three years without an incident. Yeah, And we should
note that because it was his account that we were
reading verbatim. That's why the pronouns, that's why pronounce female
on that one. But we will continue to refer to
Charlie as a heat. In eighteen fifty one, Charlie moved
(08:06):
to California, making the trip by ship with a land
crossing at Panama. Stagecoach work was really booming in California
at that time due to the gold rash. A lot
of people needed to be moved around and to get
from place to place. But at the same time, there
were also a lot of people who were looking to
be whips because they were you know, miners who were
out of work because their their attempts to mine had failed. Uh. Fortunately,
(08:32):
skilled and experienced whips were still really sought after, so
Charlie's skill and reputation put him in a really high
demand as a stage coach whip. In particular, Charlie moved
to take a job with Jim Burch and Frank Stevens,
who were starting the California Stage Company. This became one
of the largest stagecoach companies in the US. It maintained
twenty eight coach lines and covered almost two thousand miles
(08:55):
of roads. Charlie also worked for Wells Fargo, which was
founded in eighteen fifty you, and he became known as
one of its best whips, and he also worked for
most of the other stagecoach companies in California. At some point,
sometime late in his driving career, Charlie Sex was nearly discovered.
He became drunk while making a delivery of liquor to
(09:17):
Andrew Jackson Clark at Pleasant Valley Ranch. And Andrew's son
put Charlie to bed and then reported back to his
father that Charlie was in back a woman. Andrew told
his son not to tell lies about other people, and
the story did not go any further, which is fortunate
and surprising. Yes, it's stopped there um. In the late
(09:38):
eighteen sixties, due to the physical demands of being a whip,
combined with complaints of rheumatism and a general drop in
stagecoach demand due to the increasing prevalence of railroads, Charlie
retired from stagecoach driving. For a little while, he ran
a stagecoach stop where drivers could change out their horses.
Then he ran a ranch and raised chickens and cattle,
(10:00):
working with a partner named Frank Woodward. Charlie and Frank
would also occasionally work cutting in haulling Wood too when
they need a little extra money. In eighteen sixty eight,
Charlie registered to vote under the name Charlie Parkhurst, although
he registered and presumably voted using a male name. He
is often cited as the first woman to vote in California,
(10:22):
and while he is occasionally cited as the first woman
to vote in the US, there were definitely women who
voted in other states prior to that time because varying
state laws had allowed them to Yeah, there are examples
of women who were able to vote because they owned
property which met a criterion for voting, or for other
reasons that he may have been the first woman to
(10:44):
vote in California. He died outside of Santa Cruz at
the age of sixty seven from cancer of the mouth,
possibly brought on by that long history of chewing tobacco.
He willed some of his possessions to a boy named
George Harmon, who had looked after him and his last
week's When the body was being laid out, it was discovered,
as we said at the top of the episode, that
(11:05):
he was anatomically a woman. This was a surprise to everyone,
including Frank, who had known Charlie for twenty years. Upon
this revelation, he quote wext profane, everyone was astonished. Um.
There there are two astonishing things about this, uh, this
particular story, and and one of them is having been
(11:26):
able to keep that secret for so long. We've talked
about people who have, Like in our Sarah Emma Edmunds episode,
we talked about all the various ways that Sarah Emma
Edmunds was able to adopt a disguise and keep it
up for a few years during a time of war.
This was a lifelong living as a gender different from
(11:48):
what he had been born as, which a lot of
people have noted at the time is is would have
been extremely hard, not only from just being able to
do that with the discovery and then just psychologically hard.
Uh would have been a very lonely life. Yes. Uh.
From a tombstone that was erected by the Paharo Valley
(12:11):
Historical Association, quote Charlie Darky Parkhurst eighteen twelve to eighteen
seventy nine drove stage over Mountain Madonna in early days
of valley last run San Juan to Santa Cruz. Death
in cabin near seven Mile House revealed one nine Charlie,
a woman, the first woman to vote in the US
November three, eighteen sixty eight. There's also a historical marker
(12:35):
in the so Cal, California fire station which says on
this site, on November three, eight sixty eight, was cast
the first vote by a woman in California, a ballot
by Charlotte quote Charlie Parkhurst, who disguised herself as a man.
Following his death, all kinds of rumors spread about who
Charlie was and his history. Newspapers carried stories that were
(12:57):
somewhere between unflattering and cruel, with an undertone of deviance.
Some of the conjectures about what had led Charlie to
live his life as a man included the jilted lover
or rape victim conjecture, and one person who examined the
body claimed to find evidence that Charlie had given birth
to a child at one point, as well as a
(13:18):
child's dress and shoes among Charlie's possessions. But all of
this is conjecture and speculation. Yeah, a lot of it
was real and really vicious and seems to be you know,
the role of a stage coach whip, uh was kind
of like being a star athlete. Right. If somebody was
a really good stage coach whip and had made a
(13:39):
name for himself, then this was somebody that that people
knew of and and respected for all kinds of prowess.
And so a lot of the news reports that came
about after his death were really targeted at undermining that
whole idea yea. So another complete speculation is Charlie's once
(14:00):
for living as as a man. We don't know if
he did so because he felt himself to be a man,
or if living as a man just presented him with
freedoms that he would not have had as a woman.
But either way, this choice was a really dangerous one um,
which is actually not very different from it is today
when people who live their lives differently from their biological sex,
(14:22):
whether they identify as transgender or in some other way,
are really at personal physical risk if this difference is discovered. Yeah,
I mean, as you said, it's really quite remarkable that
Charlie managed to maintain the main identity throughout his life
for pretty much his whole adulthood as far as we know,
(14:42):
from about age ten. Uh. And then she said that
had to have been such a lonely life. Yeah, that
one of them. There are many many historical novels about um, Charlie,
and uh, they really they all seem to assume different
things about his life. Um. There are like novels that
sort of assume and I want to be clear, I
(15:03):
have not read them, more read synoptis of them and
read the author's accounts of having written them. Some of
them sort of assume that Charlie was a woman who
wanted freedom that she would not have had, so she
disguised as a man. And then there are other writers
who assume, um that Charlie uh felt himself to be
(15:24):
a man and so he lived as a man, and
we don't actually know. Uh. Yeah, those are all guests.
These are all complete guesses. Um. But a couple of
the writers who have talked about the story have have
mentioned that, um, you know, we have had several episodes
that have come up about people who have lived a
celibate life. Judging by how shocked everyone was to discover
(15:46):
that Charlie was anatomically a woman, Charlie probably also did
live a celibate life for many many years, which uh,
many people would consider to be a very lonely existence.
So simultaneously a rare accomplishment and also kind of sad
to me and a bit of a mystery. Yes, if
(16:09):
we ever been a time machine, that thought I would
like to make. Although I don't know how you approach
someone and go, hey, no, your secret? Why are you
keeping that? Yeah, especially someone who works as a stagecoach whip,
that would be you would keep going? That would be
a rude question, now would be a read question any time. Yes,
I figure out a really, really smart and respectful gambit
(16:31):
at that point, right right. But you know, if this
is a story that interests you, there are many many
historical novels to choose from that have different angles on
this story. I simultaneously like the idea of driving stage
coach and do not like the idea of constantly jostling. Yeah, don't.
I don't have stagecoach romance with maybe rattlesnakes and bears
(16:54):
and stuff. That part is less upsetting to me than
just jostling discomfort. Yeah, not a very comp of a
way to get around. Yeah, do you also buy chance
have some listener mail for us? I do so my
listener mail. I wish I had asked this listener how
to pronounce this name if I'm going to guess either
Juna or Wanna, and here's the letter. Dear Tracy and Holly.
(17:19):
I love the podcast and for the most part find
it extremely accurate. Thank you. Now we're going to talk
about some time that we were not accurate. However, on
this occasion, I have found that you made a slight
mistake when talking about Horace Fletcher and his famous or
infamous Fletcherism. I recently listened to your podcast on John
Harvey Kellogg in which you briefly mentioned Fletcherism. In the podcast,
(17:40):
you say that Horace Fletcher came up with the thirty
two cheese per bite. This is a common misconception. In fact,
it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who said that
Horace Fletcher believed in masticating bites of food until they
were completely liquefied to get all the nutrients possible from
the food. Fletcher claimed that he wants shoot a bite
of Shallotte seven it in twenty two times before quote
(18:01):
involuntarily swollowing it. Of course, his theory has no scientific evidence,
as you said in the podcast. As you can imagine,
flectorizing food is rather tedious, which is why John Harvey
Kellogg hired a quartet to sing a chewing song to
the patients in his sanitarium during their lengthy and otherwise
silent dinners. One stanza of the chewing song goes like,
(18:24):
so I choose to chew because I wish to do
the sort of thing that nature had in view before
bad Cook's invented savory stew, when the only way to
eat was to chew, chew, chew. I think there is
a rendition of that song in the Roads a Wale Bill.
I think to remember it. I give vaguely do as well. Yeah,
so the letter goes on. I thought this was incredibly
(18:45):
entertaining and certainly worth sharing. Mary Roach includes an outrageous
chapter about Fletcherism in her book Gulp Adventures on the
Alimen Freak. Now again, I love the podcast. I feel
a little bit smarter every time I listened to it.
Please keep up the good work. So, first of all,
thank you so much for sending this letter. Uh. The
second of all, Yeah, we did totally make that mistake,
and that misconception is so widespread that m material a lot.
(19:10):
Multiple of my sources repeated that mistake, so they just
they're similar in idea and they get conflated in the
in the research for a lot of people. Yes, but yes,
this letter is absolutely right. William glad Soon is the
person who came up with, or at least it is
known for coming up with Choose for by seven hundreds
Choose its terrible. I don't have that kind of time,
(19:34):
and it sounds gross to me. That's to be cute,
Like if I have a certain relationship with food and
I love it, I think I wouldn't love it so
much anymore if I approached it that way. If a
quartet had to be hired to say to you about
chewing um so uh. I. Also, when I wrote back,
I said that I now feel extra bad that our
colleagues um from Stuff to Blow Your Mind actually interviewed
(19:56):
Mary Roach on their podcast and they offered to let
me borrow a copy of Gulp. When I said that
we were talking about John Harvey Kellogg because he's mentioned
in that book, we just ran out of time before
it was time to record, and so I missed. I
would have had it right had I read the book.
Older and Wiser, yep, Older and Wiser and not requiring
(20:17):
people to sing to me while my food I know
don't like that idea at all. If you would like
to write to us about this or any other topic,
we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history plasta,
on Twitter at Miston History and at Miston History dot
(20:38):
tumbler dot com. And we are still painting away on
our mist in History penboard if you go search for that.
If you would like to learn more about this and
other related topics, you can come to our website and
search for the word wild West. You're going to find
the article twelve Renowned Women of the wild West, which
does include a page on Charlie Parker's You can find
(21:00):
all of this in a whole lot more at our website,
which is how stuff Works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
works dot com. Audible dot com is the leading provider
(21:24):
of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible
has more than one thousand titles to choose from to
be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player. Go
to audible podcast dot com slash history to get a
free audio book download of your choice. When you sign
up today,
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. And they
were going to talk about Charlie park First, he was
a stagecoach whip who spent almost twenty years handling teams
(00:24):
of horses over treacherous to reign at very high speeds.
And then after his death in eighteen seventy nine, his
friends who came to lay out his body discovered that
he was anatomically female. And a note about the pronouns,
because Charlie presented himself for his whole life as a man,
were going to use masculine pronouns when talking about him.
(00:45):
That seems fair to me. Yes. Charlie was born in Lebanon,
New Hampshire, in eighteen twelve and was probably named Charlotte
Darky Parkhurst. This is almost universally cited as true, but
that name isn't really documented anywhere. It's also not clear
what happened to Charlie's family, but he lived in an orphanage,
probably either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, until escaping dressed
(01:09):
as a boy at age ten. It probably would not
have taken much to make this work at the time,
especially in that kind of institutional setting. Boys and girls
would have been wearing similar clothing, probably overalls, and everyone's
hair probably would have been cut short for the sake
of both maintenance and louse control. Charlie's work with horses
(01:31):
started right away. He got a job as a stable
boy for a man named ebenee'z or Balch in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In in addition to mucking out the stalls, feeding and
grooming the horses, he started to learn how to handle
teams of horses, and when Ebene's removed to Providence, Charlie
went with him. Charlie's training as a driver started with
the one horse buggy, and he worked his way up
(01:53):
to handling teams at six horses, which is a little
difficult actually. That is a lot of animal to be
in control of, and horses are very large and they
don't always realize how large and powerful they are, so
handling it a team of six required a lot of
skill and finesse uh and he he developed a reputation
(02:14):
for being a really skilled and reliable driver um and
that was known at the time as a whip uh
and in Providence he became a very popular driver to
carry people to balls and other social events. But after
a while Charlie moved south and he worked in a
number of other states, including Georgia and Iowa. But all
the while continuing is a stage coach whip. So let's
(02:36):
talk a little bit about stage coach life for a minute,
all right. So the stage coach made its debut in
England in the mid seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century,
stage coaches were the primary way to travel long distances
in the United States and parts of Europe. They continued
to be really the like, the main way of going
a long distance until they were gradually overtaken by rail roads.
(03:00):
And while the railroads were being built, stage coaches would
still carry people from the end of the line to
the less accessible areas. And as we said, driving a
stage coach was really, you know, quite a job. It
was very demanding. Stagecoach drivers had to be able to
deal with both the horses and the coaches, along with passengers, mail,
any other cargo they were carrying, and all of the
(03:23):
myriad of threats that would reveal themselves, including wild animals
and outlaws and everything in between. So if you think
of those things you've seen in westerns or on Little
House on the Prairie, like runaway teams, ambushes, dangerous terrain,
attacks from people of all sorts, those things all really
happened to stage coaches. They were not exclusive to the
(03:43):
fictional record. So even though stage coaches were a really
common way of moving people from place to place all
over the United States and Europe, they became this iconic
part of the Old West because traveling by stage coach
in the Old was so inherently dangerous because the territory
was so much different from the more industrialized areas that
(04:08):
stage coaches were traveling in other parts of the world.
Um stage coach driving was also physically grueling. One of
the reasons that visits to family and friends lasted so
long at the time was because getting there was really hard.
Even on coaches that were outfitted with springs and suspensions,
the ride was full of rocking and jostling, and it
(04:28):
took about twenty four hours to go a hundred miles,
and that was only if you had a good driver
and places to change horses along the way. So whips
had to be tough and nimble, and trustworthy with people
and cargo. Charlie developed a reputation for being one of
the fastest and safest whips, and for being skilled with
a whip itself, in that whip the cigar out of
(04:51):
a man's mouth kind of way, like a marksman of
the whip world sort of yes. He also had a
reputation for being a hard drinking gambler, with the mouth
that was always stained with chewing tobacco. He was shorter
than most of the other drivers, but he could stand
his ground and hold his own and he didn't talk much,
but when he did it was reported to be laced
(05:12):
with profanity. So we have a character who was memorable
to many of the people who met him. Indeed, he
generally wore thick gloves, a buffalo overcoat, and blue jeans
over trousers, layers that were offering physical protection while also
concealing the body. He also earned a few nicknames during
(05:32):
his time as a whip, including Mountain, cock eyed, and
one eyed Charlie. These last two came from an injury.
He was kicked in the face by a horse he
was shoeing and lost an eye, and from then on
he wore an eye patch and while very skilled at
least once Charlie was robbed on the road, and after
that he started carrying a forty four. Reportedly, the next
(05:54):
time he was faced with the robber, he shot him
without stopping. Yes, which is I mean, that's a movie moment.
We just keep going and take aim and firing. Well,
and we've we've talked before, how how often like the
Old West really does prove to be a whole lot
like westerns that we think of as fictional, there was
really a lot that was It was. It was called
(06:14):
the Wild West for a reason. Yes. So here's an
account by major A and Judd, reported in the Santa
Cruz surf in v and found thanks to the Santa
Cruz Public Library. It recounts Charlie's application to drive a
stage coach for ben Holiday of Council Bluffs, Iowa, where
the treacherous terrain scared more whips off the job than
(06:35):
robbers and the threat of attacks by Native Americans did.
Judd made this report long after Charlie's death and the
discovery of his biological sex. There were perhaps fifty applicants
for the position that were open on the stage line.
Ever driven stage how long? How near. Could you drive
to the edge of a bluff with a sheer drop
(06:56):
of a thousand feet with perfect safety to yourself, your
team and passengers. These were some of the questions fired
at the prospective drivers by Holiday. Many answered until nearer
and nearer they got to the edge. Finally one was
willing to take a chance with half the tire over
the edge on one wheel. About this time Charlie's turn
came around, and by this time he she was getting uneasy.
(07:21):
After putting between her jaws a fresh shoe, she closed
her jack knife that had done duty for years, not
only for cutting tobacco, but for mending harness or skinning
a deer. She got up and had almost reached the
door before saying over her shoulder, I wouldn't do it
all for you, Mr Holiday. I'd stay as far away
from the edge of that cliff as the hubs would
let me, and you are just the one I want,
(07:44):
said Holiday. So that was major a and Judd's written account.
It may be somewhat apocryphal, but Charlie worked that job
for three years without an incident. Yeah, And we should
note that because it was his account that we were
reading verbatim. That's why the pronouns, that's why pronounce female
on that one. But we will continue to refer to
Charlie as a heat. In eighteen fifty one, Charlie moved
(08:06):
to California, making the trip by ship with a land
crossing at Panama. Stagecoach work was really booming in California
at that time due to the gold rash. A lot
of people needed to be moved around and to get
from place to place. But at the same time, there
were also a lot of people who were looking to
be whips because they were you know, miners who were
out of work because their their attempts to mine had failed. Uh. Fortunately,
(08:32):
skilled and experienced whips were still really sought after, so
Charlie's skill and reputation put him in a really high
demand as a stage coach whip. In particular, Charlie moved
to take a job with Jim Burch and Frank Stevens,
who were starting the California Stage Company. This became one
of the largest stagecoach companies in the US. It maintained
twenty eight coach lines and covered almost two thousand miles
(08:55):
of roads. Charlie also worked for Wells Fargo, which was
founded in eighteen fifty you, and he became known as
one of its best whips, and he also worked for
most of the other stagecoach companies in California. At some point,
sometime late in his driving career, Charlie Sex was nearly discovered.
He became drunk while making a delivery of liquor to
(09:17):
Andrew Jackson Clark at Pleasant Valley Ranch. And Andrew's son
put Charlie to bed and then reported back to his
father that Charlie was in back a woman. Andrew told
his son not to tell lies about other people, and
the story did not go any further, which is fortunate
and surprising. Yes, it's stopped there um. In the late
(09:38):
eighteen sixties, due to the physical demands of being a whip,
combined with complaints of rheumatism and a general drop in
stagecoach demand due to the increasing prevalence of railroads, Charlie
retired from stagecoach driving. For a little while, he ran
a stagecoach stop where drivers could change out their horses.
Then he ran a ranch and raised chickens and cattle,
(10:00):
working with a partner named Frank Woodward. Charlie and Frank
would also occasionally work cutting in haulling Wood too when
they need a little extra money. In eighteen sixty eight,
Charlie registered to vote under the name Charlie Parkhurst, although
he registered and presumably voted using a male name. He
is often cited as the first woman to vote in California,
(10:22):
and while he is occasionally cited as the first woman
to vote in the US, there were definitely women who
voted in other states prior to that time because varying
state laws had allowed them to Yeah, there are examples
of women who were able to vote because they owned
property which met a criterion for voting, or for other
reasons that he may have been the first woman to
(10:44):
vote in California. He died outside of Santa Cruz at
the age of sixty seven from cancer of the mouth,
possibly brought on by that long history of chewing tobacco.
He willed some of his possessions to a boy named
George Harmon, who had looked after him and his last
week's When the body was being laid out, it was discovered,
as we said at the top of the episode, that
(11:05):
he was anatomically a woman. This was a surprise to everyone,
including Frank, who had known Charlie for twenty years. Upon
this revelation, he quote wext profane, everyone was astonished. Um.
There there are two astonishing things about this, uh, this
particular story, and and one of them is having been
(11:26):
able to keep that secret for so long. We've talked
about people who have, Like in our Sarah Emma Edmunds episode,
we talked about all the various ways that Sarah Emma
Edmunds was able to adopt a disguise and keep it
up for a few years during a time of war.
This was a lifelong living as a gender different from
(11:48):
what he had been born as, which a lot of
people have noted at the time is is would have
been extremely hard, not only from just being able to
do that with the discovery and then just psychologically hard.
Uh would have been a very lonely life. Yes. Uh.
From a tombstone that was erected by the Paharo Valley
(12:11):
Historical Association, quote Charlie Darky Parkhurst eighteen twelve to eighteen
seventy nine drove stage over Mountain Madonna in early days
of valley last run San Juan to Santa Cruz. Death
in cabin near seven Mile House revealed one nine Charlie,
a woman, the first woman to vote in the US
November three, eighteen sixty eight. There's also a historical marker
(12:35):
in the so Cal, California fire station which says on
this site, on November three, eight sixty eight, was cast
the first vote by a woman in California, a ballot
by Charlotte quote Charlie Parkhurst, who disguised herself as a man.
Following his death, all kinds of rumors spread about who
Charlie was and his history. Newspapers carried stories that were
(12:57):
somewhere between unflattering and cruel, with an undertone of deviance.
Some of the conjectures about what had led Charlie to
live his life as a man included the jilted lover
or rape victim conjecture, and one person who examined the
body claimed to find evidence that Charlie had given birth
to a child at one point, as well as a
(13:18):
child's dress and shoes among Charlie's possessions. But all of
this is conjecture and speculation. Yeah, a lot of it
was real and really vicious and seems to be you know,
the role of a stage coach whip, uh was kind
of like being a star athlete. Right. If somebody was
a really good stage coach whip and had made a
(13:39):
name for himself, then this was somebody that that people
knew of and and respected for all kinds of prowess.
And so a lot of the news reports that came
about after his death were really targeted at undermining that
whole idea yea. So another complete speculation is Charlie's once
(14:00):
for living as as a man. We don't know if
he did so because he felt himself to be a man,
or if living as a man just presented him with
freedoms that he would not have had as a woman.
But either way, this choice was a really dangerous one um,
which is actually not very different from it is today
when people who live their lives differently from their biological sex,
(14:22):
whether they identify as transgender or in some other way,
are really at personal physical risk if this difference is discovered. Yeah,
I mean, as you said, it's really quite remarkable that
Charlie managed to maintain the main identity throughout his life
for pretty much his whole adulthood as far as we know,
(14:42):
from about age ten. Uh. And then she said that
had to have been such a lonely life. Yeah, that
one of them. There are many many historical novels about um, Charlie,
and uh, they really they all seem to assume different
things about his life. Um. There are like novels that
sort of assume and I want to be clear, I
(15:03):
have not read them, more read synoptis of them and
read the author's accounts of having written them. Some of
them sort of assume that Charlie was a woman who
wanted freedom that she would not have had, so she
disguised as a man. And then there are other writers
who assume, um that Charlie uh felt himself to be
(15:24):
a man and so he lived as a man, and
we don't actually know. Uh. Yeah, those are all guests.
These are all complete guesses. Um. But a couple of
the writers who have talked about the story have have
mentioned that, um, you know, we have had several episodes
that have come up about people who have lived a
celibate life. Judging by how shocked everyone was to discover
(15:46):
that Charlie was anatomically a woman, Charlie probably also did
live a celibate life for many many years, which uh,
many people would consider to be a very lonely existence.
So simultaneously a rare accomplishment and also kind of sad
to me and a bit of a mystery. Yes, if
(16:09):
we ever been a time machine, that thought I would
like to make. Although I don't know how you approach
someone and go, hey, no, your secret? Why are you
keeping that? Yeah, especially someone who works as a stagecoach whip,
that would be you would keep going? That would be
a rude question, now would be a read question any time. Yes,
I figure out a really, really smart and respectful gambit
(16:31):
at that point, right right. But you know, if this
is a story that interests you, there are many many
historical novels to choose from that have different angles on
this story. I simultaneously like the idea of driving stage
coach and do not like the idea of constantly jostling. Yeah, don't.
I don't have stagecoach romance with maybe rattlesnakes and bears
(16:54):
and stuff. That part is less upsetting to me than
just jostling discomfort. Yeah, not a very comp of a
way to get around. Yeah, do you also buy chance
have some listener mail for us? I do so my
listener mail. I wish I had asked this listener how
to pronounce this name if I'm going to guess either
Juna or Wanna, and here's the letter. Dear Tracy and Holly.
(17:19):
I love the podcast and for the most part find
it extremely accurate. Thank you. Now we're going to talk
about some time that we were not accurate. However, on
this occasion, I have found that you made a slight
mistake when talking about Horace Fletcher and his famous or
infamous Fletcherism. I recently listened to your podcast on John
Harvey Kellogg in which you briefly mentioned Fletcherism. In the podcast,
(17:40):
you say that Horace Fletcher came up with the thirty
two cheese per bite. This is a common misconception. In fact,
it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who said that
Horace Fletcher believed in masticating bites of food until they
were completely liquefied to get all the nutrients possible from
the food. Fletcher claimed that he wants shoot a bite
of Shallotte seven it in twenty two times before quote
(18:01):
involuntarily swollowing it. Of course, his theory has no scientific evidence,
as you said in the podcast. As you can imagine,
flectorizing food is rather tedious, which is why John Harvey
Kellogg hired a quartet to sing a chewing song to
the patients in his sanitarium during their lengthy and otherwise
silent dinners. One stanza of the chewing song goes like,
(18:24):
so I choose to chew because I wish to do
the sort of thing that nature had in view before
bad Cook's invented savory stew, when the only way to
eat was to chew, chew, chew. I think there is
a rendition of that song in the Roads a Wale Bill.
I think to remember it. I give vaguely do as well. Yeah,
so the letter goes on. I thought this was incredibly
(18:45):
entertaining and certainly worth sharing. Mary Roach includes an outrageous
chapter about Fletcherism in her book Gulp Adventures on the
Alimen Freak. Now again, I love the podcast. I feel
a little bit smarter every time I listened to it.
Please keep up the good work. So, first of all,
thank you so much for sending this letter. Uh. The
second of all, Yeah, we did totally make that mistake,
and that misconception is so widespread that m material a lot.
(19:10):
Multiple of my sources repeated that mistake, so they just
they're similar in idea and they get conflated in the
in the research for a lot of people. Yes, but yes,
this letter is absolutely right. William glad Soon is the
person who came up with, or at least it is
known for coming up with Choose for by seven hundreds
Choose its terrible. I don't have that kind of time,
(19:34):
and it sounds gross to me. That's to be cute,
Like if I have a certain relationship with food and
I love it, I think I wouldn't love it so
much anymore if I approached it that way. If a
quartet had to be hired to say to you about
chewing um so uh. I. Also, when I wrote back,
I said that I now feel extra bad that our
colleagues um from Stuff to Blow Your Mind actually interviewed
(19:56):
Mary Roach on their podcast and they offered to let
me borrow a copy of Gulp. When I said that
we were talking about John Harvey Kellogg because he's mentioned
in that book, we just ran out of time before
it was time to record, and so I missed. I
would have had it right had I read the book.
Older and Wiser, yep, Older and Wiser and not requiring
(20:17):
people to sing to me while my food I know
don't like that idea at all. If you would like
to write to us about this or any other topic,
we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history plasta,
on Twitter at Miston History and at Miston History dot
(20:38):
tumbler dot com. And we are still painting away on
our mist in History penboard if you go search for that.
If you would like to learn more about this and
other related topics, you can come to our website and
search for the word wild West. You're going to find
the article twelve Renowned Women of the wild West, which
does include a page on Charlie Parker's You can find
(21:00):
all of this in a whole lot more at our website,
which is how stuff Works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
works dot com. Audible dot com is the leading provider
(21:24):
of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible
has more than one thousand titles to choose from to
be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player. Go
to audible podcast dot com slash history to get a
free audio book download of your choice. When you sign
up today,
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!