Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. And they
Speaker 1: were going to talk about Charlie park First, he was
Speaker 1: a stagecoach whip who spent almost twenty years handling teams
Speaker 1: of horses over treacherous to reign at very high speeds.
Speaker 1: And then after his death in eighteen seventy nine, his
Speaker 1: friends who came to lay out his body discovered that
Speaker 1: he was anatomically female. And a note about the pronouns,
Speaker 1: because Charlie presented himself for his whole life as a man,
Speaker 1: were going to use masculine pronouns when talking about him.
Speaker 1: That seems fair to me. Yes. Charlie was born in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, in eighteen twelve and was probably named Charlotte
Speaker 1: Darky Parkhurst. This is almost universally cited as true, but
Speaker 1: that name isn't really documented anywhere. It's also not clear
Speaker 1: what happened to Charlie's family, but he lived in an orphanage,
Speaker 1: probably either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, until escaping dressed
Speaker 1: as a boy at age ten. It probably would not
Speaker 1: have taken much to make this work at the time,
Speaker 1: especially in that kind of institutional setting. Boys and girls
Speaker 1: would have been wearing similar clothing, probably overalls, and everyone's
Speaker 1: hair probably would have been cut short for the sake
Speaker 1: of both maintenance and louse control. Charlie's work with horses
Speaker 1: started right away. He got a job as a stable
Speaker 1: boy for a man named ebenee'z or Balch in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: In in addition to mucking out the stalls, feeding and
Speaker 1: grooming the horses, he started to learn how to handle
Speaker 1: teams of horses, and when Ebene's removed to Providence, Charlie
Speaker 1: went with him. Charlie's training as a driver started with
Speaker 1: the one horse buggy, and he worked his way up
Speaker 1: to handling teams at six horses, which is a little
Speaker 1: difficult actually. That is a lot of animal to be
Speaker 1: in control of, and horses are very large and they
Speaker 1: don't always realize how large and powerful they are, so
Speaker 1: handling it a team of six required a lot of
Speaker 1: skill and finesse uh and he he developed a reputation
Speaker 1: for being a really skilled and reliable driver um and
Speaker 1: that was known at the time as a whip uh
Speaker 1: and in Providence he became a very popular driver to
Speaker 1: carry people to balls and other social events. But after
Speaker 1: a while Charlie moved south and he worked in a
Speaker 1: number of other states, including Georgia and Iowa. But all
Speaker 1: the while continuing is a stage coach whip. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about stage coach life for a minute,
Speaker 1: all right. So the stage coach made its debut in
Speaker 1: England in the mid seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: stage coaches were the primary way to travel long distances
Speaker 1: in the United States and parts of Europe. They continued
Speaker 1: to be really the like, the main way of going
Speaker 1: a long distance until they were gradually overtaken by rail roads.
Speaker 1: And while the railroads were being built, stage coaches would
Speaker 1: still carry people from the end of the line to
Speaker 1: the less accessible areas. And as we said, driving a
Speaker 1: stage coach was really, you know, quite a job. It
Speaker 1: was very demanding. Stagecoach drivers had to be able to
Speaker 1: deal with both the horses and the coaches, along with passengers, mail,
Speaker 1: any other cargo they were carrying, and all of the
Speaker 1: myriad of threats that would reveal themselves, including wild animals
Speaker 1: and outlaws and everything in between. So if you think
Speaker 1: of those things you've seen in westerns or on Little
Speaker 1: House on the Prairie, like runaway teams, ambushes, dangerous terrain,
Speaker 1: attacks from people of all sorts, those things all really
Speaker 1: happened to stage coaches. They were not exclusive to the
Speaker 1: fictional record. So even though stage coaches were a really
Speaker 1: common way of moving people from place to place all
Speaker 1: over the United States and Europe, they became this iconic
Speaker 1: part of the Old West because traveling by stage coach
Speaker 1: in the Old was so inherently dangerous because the territory
Speaker 1: was so much different from the more industrialized areas that
Speaker 1: stage coaches were traveling in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Um stage coach driving was also physically grueling. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons that visits to family and friends lasted so
Speaker 1: long at the time was because getting there was really hard.
Speaker 1: Even on coaches that were outfitted with springs and suspensions,
Speaker 1: the ride was full of rocking and jostling, and it
Speaker 1: took about twenty four hours to go a hundred miles,
Speaker 1: and that was only if you had a good driver
Speaker 1: and places to change horses along the way. So whips
Speaker 1: had to be tough and nimble, and trustworthy with people
Speaker 1: and cargo. Charlie developed a reputation for being one of
Speaker 1: the fastest and safest whips, and for being skilled with
Speaker 1: a whip itself, in that whip the cigar out of
Speaker 1: a man's mouth kind of way, like a marksman of
Speaker 1: the whip world sort of yes. He also had a
Speaker 1: reputation for being a hard drinking gambler, with the mouth
Speaker 1: that was always stained with chewing tobacco. He was shorter
Speaker 1: than most of the other drivers, but he could stand
Speaker 1: his ground and hold his own and he didn't talk much,
Speaker 1: but when he did it was reported to be laced
Speaker 1: with profanity. So we have a character who was memorable
Speaker 1: to many of the people who met him. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: generally wore thick gloves, a buffalo overcoat, and blue jeans
Speaker 1: over trousers, layers that were offering physical protection while also
Speaker 1: concealing the body. He also earned a few nicknames during
Speaker 1: his time as a whip, including Mountain, cock eyed, and
Speaker 1: one eyed Charlie. These last two came from an injury.
Speaker 1: He was kicked in the face by a horse he
Speaker 1: was shoeing and lost an eye, and from then on
Speaker 1: he wore an eye patch and while very skilled at
Speaker 1: least once Charlie was robbed on the road, and after
Speaker 1: that he started carrying a forty four. Reportedly, the next
Speaker 1: time he was faced with the robber, he shot him
Speaker 1: without stopping. Yes, which is I mean, that's a movie moment.
Speaker 1: We just keep going and take aim and firing. Well,
Speaker 1: and we've we've talked before, how how often like the
Speaker 1: Old West really does prove to be a whole lot
Speaker 1: like westerns that we think of as fictional, there was
Speaker 1: really a lot that was It was. It was called
Speaker 1: the Wild West for a reason. Yes. So here's an
Speaker 1: account by major A and Judd, reported in the Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz surf in v and found thanks to the Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz Public Library. It recounts Charlie's application to drive a
Speaker 1: stage coach for ben Holiday of Council Bluffs, Iowa, where
Speaker 1: the treacherous terrain scared more whips off the job than
Speaker 1: robbers and the threat of attacks by Native Americans did.
Speaker 1: Judd made this report long after Charlie's death and the
Speaker 1: discovery of his biological sex. There were perhaps fifty applicants
Speaker 1: for the position that were open on the stage line.
Speaker 1: Ever driven stage how long? How near. Could you drive
Speaker 1: to the edge of a bluff with a sheer drop
Speaker 1: of a thousand feet with perfect safety to yourself, your
Speaker 1: team and passengers. These were some of the questions fired
Speaker 1: at the prospective drivers by Holiday. Many answered until nearer
Speaker 1: and nearer they got to the edge. Finally one was
Speaker 1: willing to take a chance with half the tire over
Speaker 1: the edge on one wheel. About this time Charlie's turn
Speaker 1: came around, and by this time he she was getting uneasy.
Speaker 1: After putting between her jaws a fresh shoe, she closed
Speaker 1: her jack knife that had done duty for years, not
Speaker 1: only for cutting tobacco, but for mending harness or skinning
Speaker 1: a deer. She got up and had almost reached the
Speaker 1: door before saying over her shoulder, I wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: all for you, Mr Holiday. I'd stay as far away
Speaker 1: from the edge of that cliff as the hubs would
Speaker 1: let me, and you are just the one I want,
Speaker 1: said Holiday. So that was major a and Judd's written account.
Speaker 1: It may be somewhat apocryphal, but Charlie worked that job
Speaker 1: for three years without an incident. Yeah, And we should
Speaker 1: note that because it was his account that we were
Speaker 1: reading verbatim. That's why the pronouns, that's why pronounce female
Speaker 1: on that one. But we will continue to refer to
Speaker 1: Charlie as a heat. In eighteen fifty one, Charlie moved
Speaker 1: to California, making the trip by ship with a land
Speaker 1: crossing at Panama. Stagecoach work was really booming in California
Speaker 1: at that time due to the gold rash. A lot
Speaker 1: of people needed to be moved around and to get
Speaker 1: from place to place. But at the same time, there
Speaker 1: were also a lot of people who were looking to
Speaker 1: be whips because they were you know, miners who were
Speaker 1: out of work because their their attempts to mine had failed. Uh. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: skilled and experienced whips were still really sought after, so
Speaker 1: Charlie's skill and reputation put him in a really high
Speaker 1: demand as a stage coach whip. In particular, Charlie moved
Speaker 1: to take a job with Jim Burch and Frank Stevens,
Speaker 1: who were starting the California Stage Company. This became one
Speaker 1: of the largest stagecoach companies in the US. It maintained
Speaker 1: twenty eight coach lines and covered almost two thousand miles
Speaker 1: of roads. Charlie also worked for Wells Fargo, which was
Speaker 1: founded in eighteen fifty you, and he became known as
Speaker 1: one of its best whips, and he also worked for
Speaker 1: most of the other stagecoach companies in California. At some point,
Speaker 1: sometime late in his driving career, Charlie Sex was nearly discovered.
Speaker 1: He became drunk while making a delivery of liquor to
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson Clark at Pleasant Valley Ranch. And Andrew's son
Speaker 1: put Charlie to bed and then reported back to his
Speaker 1: father that Charlie was in back a woman. Andrew told
Speaker 1: his son not to tell lies about other people, and
Speaker 1: the story did not go any further, which is fortunate
Speaker 1: and surprising. Yes, it's stopped there um. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, due to the physical demands of being a whip,
Speaker 1: combined with complaints of rheumatism and a general drop in
Speaker 1: stagecoach demand due to the increasing prevalence of railroads, Charlie
Speaker 1: retired from stagecoach driving. For a little while, he ran
Speaker 1: a stagecoach stop where drivers could change out their horses.
Speaker 1: Then he ran a ranch and raised chickens and cattle,
Speaker 1: working with a partner named Frank Woodward. Charlie and Frank
Speaker 1: would also occasionally work cutting in haulling Wood too when
Speaker 1: they need a little extra money. In eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Charlie registered to vote under the name Charlie Parkhurst, although
Speaker 1: he registered and presumably voted using a male name. He
Speaker 1: is often cited as the first woman to vote in California,
Speaker 1: and while he is occasionally cited as the first woman
Speaker 1: to vote in the US, there were definitely women who
Speaker 1: voted in other states prior to that time because varying
Speaker 1: state laws had allowed them to Yeah, there are examples
Speaker 1: of women who were able to vote because they owned
Speaker 1: property which met a criterion for voting, or for other
Speaker 1: reasons that he may have been the first woman to
Speaker 1: vote in California. He died outside of Santa Cruz at
Speaker 1: the age of sixty seven from cancer of the mouth,
Speaker 1: possibly brought on by that long history of chewing tobacco.
Speaker 1: He willed some of his possessions to a boy named
Speaker 1: George Harmon, who had looked after him and his last
Speaker 1: week's When the body was being laid out, it was discovered,
Speaker 1: as we said at the top of the episode, that
Speaker 1: he was anatomically a woman. This was a surprise to everyone,
Speaker 1: including Frank, who had known Charlie for twenty years. Upon
Speaker 1: this revelation, he quote wext profane, everyone was astonished. Um.
Speaker 1: There there are two astonishing things about this, uh, this
Speaker 1: particular story, and and one of them is having been
Speaker 1: able to keep that secret for so long. We've talked
Speaker 1: about people who have, Like in our Sarah Emma Edmunds episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about all the various ways that Sarah Emma
Speaker 1: Edmunds was able to adopt a disguise and keep it
Speaker 1: up for a few years during a time of war.
Speaker 1: This was a lifelong living as a gender different from
Speaker 1: what he had been born as, which a lot of
Speaker 1: people have noted at the time is is would have
Speaker 1: been extremely hard, not only from just being able to
Speaker 1: do that with the discovery and then just psychologically hard.
Speaker 1: Uh would have been a very lonely life. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: From a tombstone that was erected by the Paharo Valley
Speaker 1: Historical Association, quote Charlie Darky Parkhurst eighteen twelve to eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine drove stage over Mountain Madonna in early days
Speaker 1: of valley last run San Juan to Santa Cruz. Death
Speaker 1: in cabin near seven Mile House revealed one nine Charlie,
Speaker 1: a woman, the first woman to vote in the US
Speaker 1: November three, eighteen sixty eight. There's also a historical marker
Speaker 1: in the so Cal, California fire station which says on
Speaker 1: this site, on November three, eight sixty eight, was cast
Speaker 1: the first vote by a woman in California, a ballot
Speaker 1: by Charlotte quote Charlie Parkhurst, who disguised herself as a man.
Speaker 1: Following his death, all kinds of rumors spread about who
Speaker 1: Charlie was and his history. Newspapers carried stories that were
Speaker 1: somewhere between unflattering and cruel, with an undertone of deviance.
Speaker 1: Some of the conjectures about what had led Charlie to
Speaker 1: live his life as a man included the jilted lover
Speaker 1: or rape victim conjecture, and one person who examined the
Speaker 1: body claimed to find evidence that Charlie had given birth
Speaker 1: to a child at one point, as well as a
Speaker 1: child's dress and shoes among Charlie's possessions. But all of
Speaker 1: this is conjecture and speculation. Yeah, a lot of it
Speaker 1: was real and really vicious and seems to be you know,
Speaker 1: the role of a stage coach whip, uh was kind
Speaker 1: of like being a star athlete. Right. If somebody was
Speaker 1: a really good stage coach whip and had made a
Speaker 1: name for himself, then this was somebody that that people
Speaker 1: knew of and and respected for all kinds of prowess.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the news reports that came
Speaker 1: about after his death were really targeted at undermining that
Speaker 1: whole idea yea. So another complete speculation is Charlie's once
Speaker 1: for living as as a man. We don't know if
Speaker 1: he did so because he felt himself to be a man,
Speaker 1: or if living as a man just presented him with
Speaker 1: freedoms that he would not have had as a woman.
Speaker 1: But either way, this choice was a really dangerous one um,
Speaker 1: which is actually not very different from it is today
Speaker 1: when people who live their lives differently from their biological sex,
Speaker 1: whether they identify as transgender or in some other way,
Speaker 1: are really at personal physical risk if this difference is discovered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as you said, it's really quite remarkable that
Speaker 1: Charlie managed to maintain the main identity throughout his life
Speaker 1: for pretty much his whole adulthood as far as we know,
Speaker 1: from about age ten. Uh. And then she said that
Speaker 1: had to have been such a lonely life. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: one of them. There are many many historical novels about um, Charlie,
Speaker 1: and uh, they really they all seem to assume different
Speaker 1: things about his life. Um. There are like novels that
Speaker 1: sort of assume and I want to be clear, I
Speaker 1: have not read them, more read synoptis of them and
Speaker 1: read the author's accounts of having written them. Some of
Speaker 1: them sort of assume that Charlie was a woman who
Speaker 1: wanted freedom that she would not have had, so she
Speaker 1: disguised as a man. And then there are other writers
Speaker 1: who assume, um that Charlie uh felt himself to be
Speaker 1: a man and so he lived as a man, and
Speaker 1: we don't actually know. Uh. Yeah, those are all guests.
Speaker 1: These are all complete guesses. Um. But a couple of
Speaker 1: the writers who have talked about the story have have
Speaker 1: mentioned that, um, you know, we have had several episodes
Speaker 1: that have come up about people who have lived a
Speaker 1: celibate life. Judging by how shocked everyone was to discover
Speaker 1: that Charlie was anatomically a woman, Charlie probably also did
Speaker 1: live a celibate life for many many years, which uh,
Speaker 1: many people would consider to be a very lonely existence.
Speaker 1: So simultaneously a rare accomplishment and also kind of sad
Speaker 1: to me and a bit of a mystery. Yes, if
Speaker 1: we ever been a time machine, that thought I would
Speaker 1: like to make. Although I don't know how you approach
Speaker 1: someone and go, hey, no, your secret? Why are you
Speaker 1: keeping that? Yeah, especially someone who works as a stagecoach whip,
Speaker 1: that would be you would keep going? That would be
Speaker 1: a rude question, now would be a read question any time. Yes,
Speaker 1: I figure out a really, really smart and respectful gambit
Speaker 1: at that point, right right. But you know, if this
Speaker 1: is a story that interests you, there are many many
Speaker 1: historical novels to choose from that have different angles on
Speaker 1: this story. I simultaneously like the idea of driving stage
Speaker 1: coach and do not like the idea of constantly jostling. Yeah, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have stagecoach romance with maybe rattlesnakes and bears
Speaker 1: and stuff. That part is less upsetting to me than
Speaker 1: just jostling discomfort. Yeah, not a very comp of a
Speaker 1: way to get around. Yeah, do you also buy chance
Speaker 1: have some listener mail for us? I do so my
Speaker 1: listener mail. I wish I had asked this listener how
Speaker 1: to pronounce this name if I'm going to guess either
Speaker 1: Juna or Wanna, and here's the letter. Dear Tracy and Holly.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast and for the most part find
Speaker 1: it extremely accurate. Thank you. Now we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about some time that we were not accurate. However, on
Speaker 1: this occasion, I have found that you made a slight
Speaker 1: mistake when talking about Horace Fletcher and his famous or
Speaker 1: infamous Fletcherism. I recently listened to your podcast on John
Speaker 1: Harvey Kellogg in which you briefly mentioned Fletcherism. In the podcast,
Speaker 1: you say that Horace Fletcher came up with the thirty
Speaker 1: two cheese per bite. This is a common misconception. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who said that
Speaker 1: Horace Fletcher believed in masticating bites of food until they
Speaker 1: were completely liquefied to get all the nutrients possible from
Speaker 1: the food. Fletcher claimed that he wants shoot a bite
Speaker 1: of Shallotte seven it in twenty two times before quote
Speaker 1: involuntarily swollowing it. Of course, his theory has no scientific evidence,
Speaker 1: as you said in the podcast. As you can imagine,
Speaker 1: flectorizing food is rather tedious, which is why John Harvey
Speaker 1: Kellogg hired a quartet to sing a chewing song to
Speaker 1: the patients in his sanitarium during their lengthy and otherwise
Speaker 1: silent dinners. One stanza of the chewing song goes like,
Speaker 1: so I choose to chew because I wish to do
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that nature had in view before
Speaker 1: bad Cook's invented savory stew, when the only way to
Speaker 1: eat was to chew, chew, chew. I think there is
Speaker 1: a rendition of that song in the Roads a Wale Bill.
Speaker 1: I think to remember it. I give vaguely do as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the letter goes on. I thought this was incredibly
Speaker 1: entertaining and certainly worth sharing. Mary Roach includes an outrageous
Speaker 1: chapter about Fletcherism in her book Gulp Adventures on the
Speaker 1: Alimen Freak. Now again, I love the podcast. I feel
Speaker 1: a little bit smarter every time I listened to it.
Speaker 1: Please keep up the good work. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sending this letter. Uh. The
Speaker 1: second of all, Yeah, we did totally make that mistake,
Speaker 1: and that misconception is so widespread that m material a lot.
Speaker 1: Multiple of my sources repeated that mistake, so they just
Speaker 1: they're similar in idea and they get conflated in the
Speaker 1: in the research for a lot of people. Yes, but yes,
Speaker 1: this letter is absolutely right. William glad Soon is the
Speaker 1: person who came up with, or at least it is
Speaker 1: known for coming up with Choose for by seven hundreds
Speaker 1: Choose its terrible. I don't have that kind of time,
Speaker 1: and it sounds gross to me. That's to be cute,
Speaker 1: Like if I have a certain relationship with food and
Speaker 1: I love it, I think I wouldn't love it so
Speaker 1: much anymore if I approached it that way. If a
Speaker 1: quartet had to be hired to say to you about
Speaker 1: chewing um so uh. I. Also, when I wrote back,
Speaker 1: I said that I now feel extra bad that our
Speaker 1: colleagues um from Stuff to Blow Your Mind actually interviewed
Speaker 1: Mary Roach on their podcast and they offered to let
Speaker 1: me borrow a copy of Gulp. When I said that
Speaker 1: we were talking about John Harvey Kellogg because he's mentioned
Speaker 1: in that book, we just ran out of time before
Speaker 1: it was time to record, and so I missed. I
Speaker 1: would have had it right had I read the book.
Speaker 1: Older and Wiser, yep, Older and Wiser and not requiring
Speaker 1: people to sing to me while my food I know
Speaker 1: don't like that idea at all. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us about this or any other topic,
Speaker 1: we are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history plasta,
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Miston History and at Miston History dot
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com. And we are still painting away on
Speaker 1: our mist in History penboard if you go search for that.
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about this and
Speaker 1: other related topics, you can come to our website and
Speaker 1: search for the word wild West. You're going to find
Speaker 1: the article twelve Renowned Women of the wild West, which
Speaker 1: does include a page on Charlie Parker's You can find
Speaker 1: all of this in a whole lot more at our website,
Speaker 1: which is how stuff Works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Audible dot com is the leading provider
Speaker 1: of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible
Speaker 1: has more than one thousand titles to choose from to
Speaker 1: be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player. Go
Speaker 1: to audible podcast dot com slash history to get a
Speaker 1: free audio book download of your choice. When you sign
Speaker 1: up today,