Throughout U.S. history women of all races have lived and worked as men for various reasons. For many it was a way of gaining access to the social, financial, and sexual privileges denied them as women. By the eighteenth century, Anglo-American balladry abounded with tales of women who swapped skirts for trousers to follow their true love to war. Newspaper reports reveal, however, that many more dressed as men to enter "masculine" occupations. Elsa Jane Guerin, the illegitimate daughter of a plantation owner, was born in Louisiana about 1837. She married a river pilot at the age of twelve and when he died three years later, Elsa Jane became "Mountain Charley," working aboard steamships traveling between St. Louis and New Orleans. She was later employed as a brakeman on the Illinois Central Railroad and then headed west to become a gold prospector. She may also have served in the Iowa cavalry during the Civil War, along with an estimated four hundred other women soldiers. Sarah Emma Edmonds, who became a Union soldier after her career as Bible-salesman Franklin Thompson, wrote a best-selling book about her experiences and received a full military pension. Lesbians have also "passed," working in occupations ranging from politics to journalism, mining, and the theater. By the 1950s "passing" women protected themselves from prosecution for transvestism by wearing the legal requirement of at least three items of female clothing. The tradition has persisted; as recently as 1988, a Spokane jazz musician, Billy Tipton, who was married with three adopted sons, was revealed to be a female cross-dresser upon "his" death.
Julie Wheelwright
