December

17 Sunday

Deborah Sampson, who, excommunicated from the First Baptist Church of Middleborough, Massachusetts, for wearing men's clothing, joined the Continental Army as "Robert Shurtleff" and became a hero of the Revolutionary War, born in Plymton, Massachusetts, 1760.

18 Monday

In Phoenix, Arizona, one Nicholai de Raylan dies at thirty-three of tuberculosis and is discovered to be a woman who, with the help of "a very elaborately constructed artificial penis," managed to convince two wives of "his" masculinity, 1906.

19 Tuesday

Horace Traubel, who played Boswell to Walt Whitman's Dr. Johnson, and to whom we can be grateful for having recorded the poet's opinions of Symonds, Carpenter, Stoddard, and other gay "disciples," born in Camden, New Jersey, 1858.

20 Wednesday

English playwright Nicholas Udal, who as headmaster of Eton was tried for having had sexual relations with student Thomas Cheney, dies at Westminister, 1556.

21 Thursday

Violet Florence Martin ("Martin Ross''), who with her lover Edith Somerville wrote An Irish Cousin and other works, dies in County Cork, 1915.

22 Friday

DEBORAH SIMPSON PRESENTING THE LETTER TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.

This day marks the death of Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino (1666), and the birth of American minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823), who was passionately in love with journalist William Hurlbert.

23 Saturday

The Revered John Cotton, who, in drawing up laws for the young colony of Massachusetts Bay, recommended (unsuccessfully) that homosexuality "bee punished with deathe," dies in Boston, 1652.

Deborah Sampson:

As "Robert Surtlieff" she aided General Washington.