Queer Places:
Saint Josephs Roman Catholic Cemetery
Petersburg, Petersburg City, Virginia, USA
George Green (1833 - March 2, 1902) was a mid-to-late 1860s trans man. He married Mary Biddle in Erie, Pennsylvania. It appears that George Green was born in England in 1833 and immigrated to the United States in 1865 at the age of thirty-two. However, what is clear is that when Mary and George tied the knot around 1867, they both were above the average age of first marriage (Mary being twenty-six and George being thirty-four). It is unclear where George and Mary lived immediately following their Pennsylvania marriage, but at some point in the 1870s the couple moved to the rural countryside seventy miles outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. The couple lived in this poor, racially mixed area for about twenty years, and by 1900 they were listed as having a mortgage on their own farm. At some point between 1900 and 1902, the couple moved 140 miles to the north, to the small town of Ettrick, Virginia, likely to be with family who lived in the area. However, in the spring of 1902, George passed away after a brief illness. Given how seamlessly the couple had blended into the Ettrick community, their neighbors and friends were very surprised when they arrived to help prepare George’s body for burial, as it was only then that they realized his body lacked the anatomical components generally associated with masculinity. Local newspapers suggest that the revelation of Green’s “true sex” was met not with condemnation, but rather with support for the fact that Green had been an honest and hardworking individual during his life. Mary Green made clear that she did not know of her husband’s anatomy before they married, and once she learned of it, she decided to keep the secret to avoid embarrassing her husband. Apparently others in the community also shared this opinion of Green, as Petersburg’s Index-Appeal reported that Green’s funeral was held at St. Joseph’s Catholic church, conducted by Rev. J. T. O’Ferrell and that Green’s body was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Petersburg.
My published books:
