Partner Sarah Ann Briggs Chapman
Queer Places:
615 E 900 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84105
Salt Lake City Cemetery
Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, USA
Caroline Carline Monson (April 8, 1859 – December 26, 1941) was the great-aunt of Thomas S. Monson, a counsellor in the LDS First Presidency in 1996. The 1920 census listed 61 years old Carline as live-in servant of recently widowed Sarah Ann Briggs Chapman (1851-1923). One indication that the two older women were actually domestic partners is that Carline did not notify the city directories of her co-residence in the Chapman home until after Sarah Chapman’s death in 1923. In 1925, the city directory finally showed Carline Monson as a resident of the Chapman home. She listed herself as Mrs Monson, even though that was her maiden name. That same year, 25 years old Dorothy Graham joined Carline, Edith (Chapman’s daughter), and Mildred Berryman (Edith’s partner) in the house. Their friends nicknamed it Casa Lesbiana.
Edith M. Chapman had Carline Monson run the boarding house for Lesbians. Mildred moved out of Edith’s boarding house in 1929 and by 1931, Edith had grown tired of her limited romantic options in Salt Lake. While there were several bars in Salt Lake at the time (mostly on upper State Street) where Gay men could frequent, the Lesbian community resorted to home parties and making pilgrimages to San Francisco. Edith had joined some of these excursions to the Bay Area in the 1920s and fell in love with the social climate there. She signed over ownership of her home to Carline Monson in 1931 and moved to Berkeley, CA, where she continued teaching until her death.
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