New Colonial Williamsburg Reenactments Will Bring Queer History To Life
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Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living history museum in the country, will begin including slivers of gay and transgender American history to life beginning this fall.
According to the Washington Examiner: “Starting in October, a new musical called Ladies of Llangollen will be featured, based on diary entries, letters, and poetry of two women who ran away from Ireland and eloped in Wales during the 18th century.
The Colonial Williamsburg foundation created a Gender and Sexuality Diversity Committee in 2019 with the purpose of researching gay and transgender issues in the colonies. The result of the committee found multiple instances of lesbian and transgender people in the early years of America’s founding.
“Human beings who operate outside of sexual and gender expectations have always existed within and contributed to our history,” Beth Kelly, vice president of the Education, Research and Historical Interpretation Division at the foundation, wrote in an internal memo about the plans said the Washington Post in 2019. “Sharing this history is vital if we are committed to telling a holistic narrative of our past.”
The foundation’s efforts are part of a growing effort across the country to include LGBTQ history in educational settings. At least five states, including Maryland earlier this year, have taken steps to require public schools to teach lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. About five years ago, the National Park Service also launched a project exploring and preserving the legacy of LGBTQ people. “I think gradually we’re seeing this woven into the fabric of American education,” said Michael Bronski, a Harvard University professor and author of A Queer History of the United States for Young People. An important part of that effort, he said, will be incorporating these stories in museums, exhibits, libraries and historical sites such as Colonial Williamsburg.
The Virginia Gazette: While reading through 18th-century historical records, Colonial Williamsburg’s Gender and Sexuality Diversity Committee researcher Ren Tolson discovered something telling buried within the hundreds of pages of land requisitions and court filings. It was a pair of marriage license requests. The document told of an affluent landowning Virginian woman. On her first attempt, she filed a marriage license to be wed to a woman who worked at her post office. It was denied, citing marriages were solely between a man and a woman. The following day, Tolson said the woman returned, dressed in traditionally male clothing and sporting a short haircut. Her request was approved, granting her the right to marry a woman. For Tolson, it is a glimpse into how Americans viewed gender and sexuality in the 17th and 18th centuries. “It’s not that the information isn’t there, it’s that it hasn’t been properly researched and a lot of other groups are overrepresented in the historic record,” Tolson said. “We just assumed that people had similar ideas as current day and moved on but that’s not entirely the case.”
According to Tolson, at the time, LGBTQ people were more widely accepted than they’d expected. As Western Europe underwent a sexual revolution in the 1740s, there are numerous accounts of modern-day transgender people.
Another example was of an indentured servant named Thomas Hall, who was born Thomasine in England. At the age of 22, Hall joined the British Army and moved to Virginia under the name of Thomas. Hall wore both men’s and women’s clothing, and when suspicion arose from neighbors, there was a court case. The verdict of the case was that Hall was both a man and a woman.
The research is still ongoing, and Williamsburg said they have plans to introduce other gay and transgender programs to their itinerary.
