The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell (37 page)

“Not to me, perhaps.” Lydia’s brow tightened as though thoughts were fighting inside her head.

Then it came. “I have seen Helen.”

I had no words.

“She lives near Galilee,” said Lydia, trying to explain. “On occasion, she comes into town. It was when she had her great trouble, that I discovered who she was, a shock to be sure. I thought I would never see you again, but then your daughter was in our midst and in need. I befriended her and looked out for her in the way an older woman can. She has no idea who I was to you. In my moments with her, Joseph, I found some peace about us, strange to say, and in this small way, you and I have shared a child. She is a beautiful woman and by all appearances happy now. I don’t know how much you know of her troubles.”

“I read about the attack,” I said. “How is she now? I heard of a young man named Stone. Are they still to marry?”

Lydia took a breath as though not knowing where to begin.

“No, she didn’t marry Mr. Stone, but she will have to tell you about that herself. What I can say is that six months ago she married a young man named James Crawson. I was at the wedding. And the last time she was in town she brought other news. She is with child. You should go to her.”

I was flooded with shame. “And present myself how? All I have ever given her is abandonment.”

Lydia gave a look of reproach. “Helen has known more than her share of sorrows, but she still manages to see the good in things. She has found the courage to face the world. You should find the courage to face her.” Lydia picked up her gloves.

“Thank you, Lydia,” I said, bowing slightly. “I know Marie would thank you as well.”

“Take care of her, Joseph. You are blessed to have her. Good-bye.”

I remained where I was and watched Lydia walk across the room. Soon, I heard a carriage door and then the sound of horses.

Lucy, Helen, and Marie After 1876

G
IVEN THE ERA, Lucy’s
*
temperament, and her declining state of mind, the chances were small that she and Marie Perry would live out their days unmolested. According to the
New York Times
:

In 1876 they were living in a cave in the Moosic Mountains, near Waymart, Penn. Lucy Ann continued her use of male garments. She was arrested one day while preaching in the above village, and lodged in the Wayne County Jail. She was kept there several weeks. Her companion finally prepared a petition to the court for the release of her “husband” from jail on account of “his” failing health. This document was a remarkable one, and is still in the records of the Wayne County Court. It was couched in language which was a model of clear and correct English, and was powerful in its argument. It was written with a pen made from a split stick, the ink being the juice of poke-berries. Lucy Ann Lobdell was released from jail.

The
Times
, in a separate article, reported that after Lucy’s release, she and Marie Perry encountered “a lady who was particularly charitable to the couple.” The story alleged that the unnamed benefactress “was years ago engaged to be married to Lucy Ann, the latter having spent some months near Bethany dressed as a man.” The
Times
also reported that Lucy Ann and Marie, after having lived much of their time together in barn lofts, caves, and shanties, and with some apparent help from the former betrothed, “went to Damascus, Penn, and in 1877 purchased a farm, which they occupied and worked together.”

Whether it was a farm, as the
Times
said, or a house with a garden, or just a piece of land upon which Lucy and Marie built a cabin, the idyll was not to last. In two years, Lucy Lobdell was again in trouble and in custody. According to Robert E. Pike in his 1959 article in
New York Folklore Quarterly,
“the result of the court proceedings was that the ‘husband’ was returned to Delaware County, New York, and once more became an inmate of the poorhouse at Delhi, and when the pauper insane of New York were removed by law from county to state asylums, she was sent to [Willard Asylum for the Insane], Seneca County, New York, where she died in 1889.” Pike’s account, while substantially correct, was in conflict with that of the
New York Times,
which claimed in its lengthy obituary that Lucy Lobdell died ten years earlier, in 1879, “after a brief illness.” The
New York Sun
published its obituary in 1885, claiming that “the Female Hunter of Long Eddy” had died in June of that year. As records show, none of these dates is correct, but Pike was right in asserting that Lucy had been placed in an asylum in Seneca County, New York.

Willard Asylum, it should be noted, was due south of Seneca Falls. Thus, in 1880, Lucy Lobdell found herself behind bars just a few miles from the Wesleyan chapel where the first American women’s rights convention had been held in 1848 under the direction of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. While an inmate at Willard, Lucy became the subject of two articles of presumed scholarship, both printed in the periodical
Alienist and Neurologist
. The first, by Doctor P.M. Wise, was published in January 1883 and titled “Case of Sexual Perversion.” The second, somewhat derivative, was by James G. Kiernan, published in April 1891, and titled “Psychological Aspects of Sexual Appetite.”

According to Dr. Wise, “Lucy Ann Slater, alias, Rev. Joseph Lobdell, was admitted to the Willard Asylum, October 12
^th
, 1880; age 56 [actually, 51], widow, without occupation and a declared vagrant … She was dressed in male attire throughout and declared herself to be a man, giving her name as Joseph Lobdell, a Methodist minister; and said she was married and had a wife living. She appeared in good physical health … and gave responsive answers to questions … Her sexual inclination was perverted.”

In reviewing Lucy’s history to explain her condition, Wise asserts, “She was peculiar in girlhood, in that she preferred masculine sports and labor; had an aversion to attentions from young men and sought the society of her own sex.” From what is known of Lucy’s girlhood, this characterization seems to be an error or an invention. Nevertheless, Dr. Wise proceeds to take the enlightened position of the day that persons such as Lucy should not be subject to criminal punishment. “It would be more charitable and just,” he concludes, “if society would protect them from ridicule and aspersion they must always suffer … by recognizing them as the victims of a distressing mono-delusional form of insanity. It is reasonable to consider true sexual perversion as always a pathological condition and a peculiar manifestation of insanity.”

In his article, Dr. Wise tells of Lucy’s relationship with a “young woman of good education.” Wise doesn’t name the woman, who was surely Marie Louise Perry, but says that the two of them, “strange as it may seem,” formed an attachment of mutual affection, which he called “Lesbian love.” It is unlikely that Wise coined the term, but
Swade’s Lesbian Tribal Chant History
claims that the Wise reference is “the first time Lesbian is used to denote woman loving woman as opposed to an inhabitant of the Isle of Lesbos.” Jonathan Katz in
Gay American History
characterizes Wise’s article as “one of the earliest American reports of Lesbianism.”

The doctor’s log at Willard Asylum records that Lucy’s mental state deteriorated while she was there. Entries like “dementia increasing” and “perversion of sexual inclination continues” are typical. They go on until 1890. The final entry says: “Continues in good bodily health. Has improved somewhat and says she has gotten over her old ideas.” Improved or not, records show that a year later she arrived at the state psychiatric hospital in Binghamton, New York, where she stayed until she died in 1912, at the age of eighty-three, after thirty-two years as an inmate in state mental institutions.

* * *

After having been abandoned by her father and surrendered by her mother, Lucy’s daughter Helen spent a major portion of her youth in the almshouse in Delhi, New York. Then she found a home. According to Professor Robert Pike, “a rich but childless farmer named David Fortman [Fortnam], of Tyler Hill, Pa., happened to be in Delhi and with a friend he visited the almshouse. Lucy’s little daughter was then 8 years old [more likely 12], a bright and pretty child. Fortman took her home with him to live with his family, and he and his wife became so fond of her that they legally adopted her.”

Again, Pike’s account is accurate in substance but not detail. Fortnam was not childless. Helen’s true status in the household may be indicated by the 1870 Wayne County census, which lists David Fortnam and his wife Emiline living in Tyler Hill with their children Thomas, 21; Lavina, 10; and Iona, 8; and Helen Slater, “domestic servant.” “Adoption” of children out of the almshouse as a source of unpaid labor was a common practice of the day and not considered demeaning. Helen’s indentured employment brought her out of the institution and into society and thus, as a trade, was fair for its time. Beyond that, it also appears that Fortnam tried to look after Helen like a father and protect her, though in this he was not successful. Also employed on the Fortnam farm was a man named Thomas Kent, who saw Helen as an easy mark. Helen already had a romantic attachment to a young man named David Stone. She found Kent crude and rejected his advances. According to the
New York Times,
Mr. Fortnam then found it necessary to discharge Kent “for certain base proposals made to the girl … [Kent] then commenced circulating injurious reports against Miss Slater.”

Shortly thereafter, on the evening of July 16, 1871, Helen Slater was set upon by four men, beaten, raped, and then thrown off the Cochecton Bridge into the Delaware River where, presumably, she was supposed to die. But Helen washed up on a sand bar and was discovered the next day near death, but alive. The
Wayne Citizen
called the attack “the most atrocious piece of villainy ever perpetrated in Wayne County.” More specific words denoting rape were not acceptable in print, so the preferred term for the crime was “outrage,” although some accounts solved the problem by using the words “roughly treated.” For a time, Helen’s condition was critical. It was said that she had been forced to inhale chloroform, which, along with the beating and time in the cold river, rendered her unable to identify her attackers.

“Suspicion fell upon those who had been circulating reports to her discredit …” said the
Herald,
“[Kent] hastily crossed to the New York side of the river.” The
Wayne Citizen
picks up the chase: “On Saturday evening, circumstances justifying the measure, two young men named Thomas Kent and John Geers were arrested in Cochecton, on the charge of abducting the girl, outraging her, and attempting to murder her subsequently … more arrests will probably be made.” Two others were arrested, but as Helen was slow in her recovery, they had to be released for lack of evidence. They disappeared. “Kent, the fiendish abductor,” reported the
New York Times
, “managed to escape the justice he deserved.”

In time, Helen regained her senses and her health. She then resumed the affectionate relationship she had with David Stone, and the two let it be known that they wished to marry. Helen’s foster father, David Fortnam, gave his approval, but David Stone’s widowed mother would not. Helen Slater was in for yet another, almost unbelievable, cruelty of fate.

According to the 1877 account of A.C. Smith, “Stone’s affection was undiminished. He still pressed his claim for her hand. At length, when their marriage seemed certain, Mrs. Stone revealed a state of affairs which fully accounted for her opposition. She told her son that she was not a widow, and that [George] Slater was his father as well as the father of [Helen].” The
New York Times
also reported this story saying, “She in time recovered her mental and bodily health only to learn that the young man she was to marry was her half-brother, being the illegitimate son of her father, [George] Slater, according to the testimony of people who professed to know.”

After abandonment, servitude, rape, attempted murder, and shocking disappointment, one might wonder what the world looked like to Helen Slater. What is known is that after a few seasons had passed, Helen met a young man named James Crawson, and they were married. A year or so later, they moved to Sayville, Long Island, where she gave birth to two sons, James and Bruce.

When James was only two, he was, for reasons now unknown, sent up to Basket Creek to live with Helen’s aunt Sarah, who lived at the head of the valley. In her later years, Helen returned to Basket Creek and lived by herself but within easy distance of James and his wife Minnie. James and Minnie had three children: Myrtle Mae, Mildred, and Vincent. These children had children and, to this day, descendents of Lucy Ann Lobdell live along Basket Creek.

* * *

When Lucy Lobdell was arrested for the final time, Marie Louise Perry followed her to Delhi as she had done before. This time there was no daring escape. According to Robert Pike, “The Delaware County authorities refused to provide further for Marie Louise Perry … To get rid of her they told her Joe was dead.” This was probably the impetus that led to the obituary in the
New York Times
that bore the dateline “Delhi, N.Y.” Marie may have known or suspected that her husband was still alive, but she participated in the fiction that he was not. William B. Guinnip had contact with Perry during this time, and forty years later, in 1924, his recollections were published in the
Wayne Independent
:

Nothing more was heard from them for some time; then Maria Perry appeared saying that her husband, Joe, was dead. Maria picked berries to sell, and slept during the summer wherever night overtook her. The people of the locality were kind to her and she did not find it hard to find someone to take her in when winter came. Her baggage she kept for a long time at the home of Rueben Comfort, and she stayed for as long as a week at a time at our house.

Guinnip’s account is in accord with another notice that appeared in the
Honesdale Herald
in 1882:

The Female Hunter’s wife was in town today, selling wintergreen berries. In all the fact or fiction that has come before us, we have found nothing more strange than the strange companionship or relationship, as they claim, of these two women. Both educated, the wife exceptionally so, asking odds of no one, living by themselves, one in male attire and the other in her proper dress, seeking with earnestness a living in the few avenues left open to them, always consistent, always true to each other in trials and adversity, their strange conduct may well excite more than a passing interest. Old age is creeping upon them, yet they resist its ravages as stoutly and as successfully as the most favored. Always gentle, always quiet, defrauding no one, striving in humble yet honest ways to care for and protect themselves so they may be left alone to work out their own “problem of life.”