Names Unrecorded aka Papa, c. 1879 United States
gouache on paper
11 x 7 inches
2023
A short report in The Tarborough Southerner out of Kinston, NC from September 20, 1879, reads:
“There is a colored woman here who was raised as a boy; does not recollect when she began wearing male clothing; still dresses and acts like a man; does man's work and bears a man's name. She has an aversion to being with women, or doing their kind of work, and says she would go to the penitentiary before she would wear a bonnet. She is a mother but not at all motherly, and her child calls her papa.”
Another brevity published in the Wilmington Morning Star three years earlier mentions the arrest of a “woman dressed in male attire” from Johnston County. They had a three-month-old child with them, and upon arrest they were sent to the Poor House.
Sources:
The Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, NC), March 24, 1877.
"A Strange Woman.” The Tarborough Southerner 25 Sept 1879.
“A Child Who Calls its Mother ‘Papa.’” The Times 2 Oct 1879.