Was Lucy Lobdell Truly Transgender?
http://www.bilerico.com/2013/07/was_lucy_lobdell_truly_transgender.php7/23/13
One day in 1855, Lucy Ann Lobdell cut her hair, changed clothes and went off to live the rest of her life as a man, making gender history at every turn.
In frontier Minnesota she was put on trial for the crime of wearing men's clothes, "falsely impersonating a man, to the great scandal of the community, and against the peace and dignity of the state of Minnesota!" In Pennsylvania she was married to Marie Perry by an unsuspecting judge, as reported by the NY Sun, likely the first recorded same-sex marriage in America. In 1879 she was given a huge obituary in the New York Times: "Death of a Modern Diana, Wearing Man's Clothing She Wins a Girl's Love."
In 1891, in the journal Alienist and Neurologist, Dr. P.M. Wise referred to Lucy's relationship with Marie Perry as "lesbian love," that reference credited as the first time the term "lesbian" was applied to an American woman.
But was Lucy truly a lesbian? Or was she, perhaps, transgender?
