America's Answer to Anne Lister?

The book opens with a description of a pair of cut silhouettes, framed with a lock of hair and labeled with the names of the two women. There follows an overview of their lives (which are then covered in much more detail in the chapters). Both women had determined not to marry. Both came from large families, though of different character. They met in 1807 and set up a household together where the continued as an acknowledged couple for 44 years. All their neighbors and relatives knew they were a couple and used the language of marriage for them, though the law treated them as two single women, e.g., for tax purposes. They lived gender-coded roles, with Charity taking on the husband-coded activities and Sylvia the wife-coded ones. After death, their relatives buried them together with a single headstone.

The author asserts that their sexuality must have been an “open secret” as “marriage was considered an inherently sexual institution.” In small communities, social harmony relied on people quietly overlooking facts that would disrupt society. And it may be noteworthy that female couples of that era usually dreamed of rural retreats rather than longing for urban anonymity. Charity and Sylvia’s lives were deeply intertwined with their families and community. They were accepted even when not entirely approved of. They were active with church and charities, supported their relations in sickness and hardship, and supported the local economy in the structure of their tailoring business. They were considered pillars of the community. Their remarkable union was even documented in a newspaper during their lifetimes, though without giving their names.

Charity (the elder) had numerous romantic relationships with women before meeting Sylvia, and her earlier life was the subject of gossip and rumor. Perhaps for that reason, she arranged for most of her writings, memoirs, and letters written to intimate friends to be destroyed. Sylvia, who survived her, had no such attitude and preserved all their documents after Charity’s death, though some items may have been weeded out. After Sylvia’s death, their papers were given to a local historian.

Stories like this one emphasize how spotty the historic record is for f/f couples, as so many women did destroy their papers (or their surviving relatives destroyed them out of a concern for the family’s reputation).

This introductory chapter concludes with a review of the available documentation.

[Note: A couple of observations that apply to the entire book. The chapters are numerous but very short, which is why I’ll be clustering them for the blog. Cleves often assigns thoughts, feelings, reactions, and actions to her subjects that are note cited to specific documentation, but neither are they explicitly framed as rooted in the author’s imagination. It is sometimes difficult to tell when she is speculating and when she may be summarizing actual data that isn’t supported by quoted material. She brings in contextual material about female same-sex relationships that are more explicit regarding sexuality, such as details from the lives of Anne Lister and from Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus, then speculates that Charity and her various intimate friends may have engaged in similar practices. These approaches make for better storytelling and provide a richer picture of what their lives may have been, but at the expense of historical clarity. The undiscerning reader can easily come away with the impression that these various interpolations are factual rather than imaginative.]