Newspaper Page Text
Afore City -Pages
cecdings upstairs. Afterwards, he told me,
“This place represents what I would call a
right livelihood.’ That’s what makes a great
Third Grade place.” (After Home and Work.)
“My daughter has a play tonight or I would
stay and partake with everyone."
The Athens Brewing Co. is located at 312
East Washington St. They are open seven
days a week. Prosit! (William Orten Carlton.)
Find Your Way
Around Qeorgia
With The Chunky
New Quidehook
Sold in one $20 paperback chunk and
modeled on the starving-writer guidebooks
of the Depression era, The New Georgia
Guide is ready to read. Noted Georgia writ
ers give their impressions of the various
areas of our state, followed up by itinerar
ies mapped out by more factual folk for your
touring pleasure.
The introductions are worth the price
of admission. Editorial Board Chairman
Tom Dye’s explanation
of how the whole project
came together puts it into
personal terms that make
you realize just how frag
ile such an undertaking
can be, even with some
encouragement and help
from the Governor and
some public spirited cor
porations, universities
and other government
agencies.
The short history of
Georgia at the begin
ning dispenses with the
balanced, juiceless over
view that characterizes
many such efforts and
weighs into the fray like
an elbow to the ribs. It’s
written by some guy
named Cobb, whose
only claim on the job is a doublewide in
Hart County and the ability to write his
tory with wit and wisdom as if his words
are watered with the blood, sweat, tears
and other bodily fluids of real, practicing
human beings — this one is guaranteed to
be controversial. Cobb doesn’t flinch from
stating categorically that the original set
tlers weren’t escapees from debtor’s prison
and that the State of Georgia and its’people
committed an abomination upon the
Cherokees in the worst way.
And then for the
meat of the book you
get the likes of Mary
Hood, Phillip Lee Wil
liams, Bill Hedgepeth,
Jim Kilgo and other
real Georgia writers
holding forth on their
assigned sections of the
state. Williams, for in
stance, puts you right
into the cab of his
pickup as he lights out
through middle Geor
gia (around here) while
trying to sip his coffee
and drive and get a golf
ball out from under his
accelerator— the kind
of stuff you’re going to
wind up with when you
contract with a bunch
of writers to write.
This New Georgia Guide is going to be
come a must-have companion. Published,
to its credit, by the University of Georgia
Press and available at fine bookstores near
you. Get yours before the Olympic visitors
buy them up and start asking you what it
all means. (PMc)
by John Ryan Seanjright
When Men Were Women and
Women Were Men:
19th-Century Cross-Dressers from Georgia and Elsewhere • HART 3
I n the past two weeks we have looked
at women disguised as men on the
battlefield and at men disguised as women
on the stage. This week we continue with
men and women dressed as each other in the
streets and saloons of the 19th-century
South.
Ollie Brackett was a nurse who came to
Jacksonville, Fla., in 1882. Her weakness for
liquor made it hard for her to find work and
she soon turned to one of the few other
careers open to poor women, prostitution.
“Big Six,” as she came to be known, became
a legend on Florida’s east coast. At six feet
three and 200 pounds she was one of the
biggest women in the state. When drunk her
favorite pastime was thrashing any police
man bold enough to try to arrest her.
In 1892 Big Six succumbed to her
tenderer impulses and entered into holy
wedlock with one William Patrick in Tampa,
but wedded bliss was to escape her; William
disappeared within 24 hours of the wedding
and the couple obtained a legal separation.
In November, 1894, Big Six fell ill with a
fever in Punta Gorda, and in her delirium
gave out the information that she was
actually George Asbell of Gadsden, Ala.
Upon her death a few weeks later, a
correspondent to the Atlanta Constitution
wrote that he, a doctor, and the mayor of
Punta Gorda had examined the body and
found that Big Six was indeed, in the
correspondent’s words, “a remarkably well
made man."
A few months before Big Six’s death the
Constitution ran a short article from
Georgia’s Cumberland Island:
A FEMALE IMPERSONATOR.—Mr.
Sam Stocking has been amusing the guests at
Cumberland with some lively antics in the surf.
Mr. Stocking has considerable histrionic ability,
and during his stay at Cumberland he has been
furnishing splendid amusement for the guests by
appearing in the surf in the role of a female.
1 have found no further information on
Sam Stocking or on his connection, if any,
with an Atlanta businessman of the same
name who was active in the affairs of the
Atlanta Cotton Factory in the early 1870s.
In a society where women’s roles were
prescribed and subservient, male cross
dressing was seen as a joke or a mental
aberration and treated with amusement or
contempt. Female cross-dressing was a more
serious matter, a criminal attempt to claim
economic, sexual and recreational privileges
reserved for men alone.
1877 was the third year of a severe
economic crisis and the nation’s roads were
filled with out-of-work men. In the early
summer of that year two young travelers
named Jim Winfrey and Pat Murphy passed
through the Dry Valley district of northwest
Georgia’s Gordon County looking for work.
J. B. Mashburn, a farmer and blacksmith,
took them in. Winfrey, the older of the two,
proved to be an able assistant in the smithy,
and Murphy was a good farmhand who was
also very handy around the house.
On the 4th of July Mashburn sent Pat
Murphy into Adairsville with the wagon to
run seme errands. Pat finished his work
promptly and began making the round of the
saloons. After several patriotic toasts Pat
informed a group of tipplers that, despite all
appearances, he was a woman. His claim
attracted no attention until he began
repeating it insistently, prompting his fellow
patrons to resort to the empirical method.
They held Pat Murphy down, stripped off his
trousers, and discovered, to their embarrass
ment and anger th?‘ Pat’s claim was true.
They ordered her to dress and told her that if
she would get into women’s clothes and be
have no further action would be taken. Pat
got right back in the wagon, went home, and
told Mr. Mashburn that she needed some
money right away to take the train to Acworth.
Still in the guise of a man, she left early
the next morning for the Adairsville depot
but had not gotten far when she was met by
a posse with a warrant for her arrest. She was
held in the Calhoun jail on suspicion of
being Kate Sothem, wanted for the murder
of another woman a few months earlier in
nearby Gilmer County. She was soon cleared
of this charge, but was promptly rearrested
for adultery, as was her partner Jim Winfrey.
Winfrey protested strenuously that he had
never had any idea that his traveling
companion was anything but a man. The
judge reduced his bail to $50, but kept Pat
Murphy’s at $100. Farmer Mashburn, weary
of entertaining angels unawares, did not go
their bond and the pair remained in jail till
trial. I have not found any account of how
their case was disposed.
Next Week: The Ungovernable Girls.
Copyright 1996, John Ryan Seawright.
*
*
&
*
&
*
fl * Underneath Flanagans
208-9712
Wr,|
! 4/24
Mr. Pitiful
Siii
4/25
Angie
Apicola
Sal
4/27
Dav Bv i
• •
the River
Sun
4/28
Brils last Sunday. Grt downB
here & send
him off right! |
A GUT
O'
MUD.
THAT'S US...SUNGIN' MORE MUD THAN
THE MISSISIPPI.
243W.WASH.ST.
6-1 Oam 1/2 Off Coffee
Everyday
April 24, 1996
E0