Marcia Provenzano

2016-10-09 17:18:41 -0400

While I’m of the opinion that trans behavior today is exaggerated because of our depraved modern culture, there were occasional reports in times, bygone, of people who didn’t fit the mould. I originally read this, years ago, in “Son of the Morning Star” by Evan S Connell, a book about the life and times of General George A Custer:

“Then there was Mrs.Nash, who joined the Seventh in Kentucky and followed the regiment north to Fort Lincoln. Invariably she wore a veil, or a shawl pinned beneath her chin, and she is described as being rather peculiar looking. John Burkman, Custer’s orderly, said she was a good laundress, a good nurse, and a good midwife, always in demand to “chase the rabbit” when a woman was expecting. Her next-to-last husband, a quartermaster clerk named Clifton, was known as a jolly fellow until he got married. After the ceremony, however, Clifton seldom laughed and a few days before his term of enlistment expired he deserted.

Her last husband was a private named Noonan. They lived together in obvious bliss on Suds Row east of the Fort Lincoln parade grounds, but while he was away on a scouting expedition she sickened and died. Just before graduating to a better world she asked her friends to bury her without the usual cleaning and dressing. They refused. They would not hear of such a thing. Lo and behold, when two of them set about this mournful task they perceived that the much-married laundress, seamstress, nurse, baker of delicious pies, and popular midwife was not female. Burkman and several other troopers were gathering flowers on the prairie so Elizabeth could make a funeral wreath when a laundress hurried out of the Noonan quarters with this extraordinary bit of information. Said Burkman “We was flabbergasted.”

Pvt. Noonan did not say much when he got back, but he turned pale and he twitched. He quit playing poker with the boys, he took long walks alone, he began to lose weight. One day when he entered the blacksmith shop a trooper remarked, “Say, you and Mrs. Noonan never had no children, did you?”

The Army and Navy Journal, which often incorporated material scavenged from other periodicals, reprinted from the Bismarck Tribune:

Corporal Noonan, of the 7th Cavalry, whose “wife” died some weeks ago, committed suicide in one of the stables of the lower garrison. It was reported some days ago that he had deserted, but no one this side of the river had seen him. It now appears that the man had kept himself out of the way as well as he could for several days. His comrades had given him a sort of cold shake since the return of the regiment from the chase after the Sioux, and this, and the shame that fell on him in the discovery of his wife’s sex, undermined his desire for existence, and he crawled away lonely and forsaken and blew out the life that promised nothing but infamy and disgrace. The suicide was committed with a pistol, and Noonan shot himself through the heart. The affair created almost as intense excitement at the post as did the announcement of the death of Mrs. Noonan, but there was a sigh of relief on the corporate lips of the 7th Cavalry when its members heard that Noonan by his own hand had relieved the regiment of the odium which the man’s presence cast upon them.

The gossipy Journal went on to say that Pvt. Noonan had continued to insist right up until the end, despite certain protruding evidence, that the light of his life was female. The Journal also transmitted this tidbit: “There is no explanation of the unnatural union except that the supposed Mexican woman was worth $10,000 and was able to buy her husband’s silence.”

So, despite the monotonous drama of frontier life there might be startling intermissions."

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