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One-Eyed Charley 1st California Woman to Vote

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Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we're adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.
Charley Parkhurst was a legendary driver of six-horse stagecoaches during California's Gold Rush - the "best whip in California," by one account.

Some historians say that had Parkhurst lived today, she might well have identified as gay or transgender. "Being gay at that time was seen as negative," said Mark Jarrett, a textbook publisher who included Parkhurst in a new book intended to comply with a California law requiring social studies curriculums to recognize the historical role of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Even in the 19th century, however, there was admiration for Parkhurst's feat of disguise.

"The only people who have occasion to be disturbed by the career of Charley Parkhurst are the gentlemen who have so much to say about 'woman's sphere' and 'the weaker vessel,' " The Providence Journal wrote. "It is beyond question that one of the soberest, pleasantest, most expert drivers in this State, and one of the most celebrated of the world-famed California drivers was a woman. And is it not true that a woman had done what woman can do?"

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Overlooked No More: Charley Parkhurst, Gold Rush Legend With a Hidden Identity

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Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked , we're adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times. Charley Parkhurst was a legendary driver of six-horse stagecoaches during California's Gold Rush - the "best whip in California," by one account.

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Orphaned at birth, Charley Parkhurst first donned male clothing to escape an orphanage in Massachusetts. In 1851, he moved to California following the opportunities that opened up with the gold rush and soon earned a reputation as being among the safest and fastest stagecoach drivers, easily handling the reins for a team of six. According to one source looking back over Parkhurst's career "...in more than twenty years no highwayman had dared to hold up a stagecoach with Charley Parkhurst on the box, for the first two who tried it had been shot dead in their tracks." No stranger to injury, he was nick-named "One-eyed Charley" after losing his left eye while shoeing a horse. Eventually rheumatism began taking a physical toll and the railroad expansion took more and more of the overland business. Never one to remain idle, the former stagecoach driver, then past 60 years of age, turned to lumber-jacking, raising cattle and occasionally hauling freight for neighbors. The discovery after his death that Parkhurst was assigned female at birth came as a complete surprise to everyone who knew him- especially his business partner. A memorial in Soquel Village, California marks the site where he is believed to have been the first woman to cast a ballot in an American presidential election (though no one knew it at the time) on November 3, 1868 - 52 years before the Women's Suffrage Movement produced the 19th Amendment. He is buried in Watsonville, California.

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Charley Parkhurst | Legacy Project Chicago

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Orphaned at birth, Charley Parkhurst first donned male clothing to escape an orphanage in Massachusetts. In 1851, he moved to California following the opportunities that opened up with the gold rush and soon earned a reputation as being among the safest and fastest stagecoach drivers, easily handling the reins for a team of six.

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Woman Suffrage Timeline (1840-1920) - History of U.S. Woman's Suffrage

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A timeline of the woman's rights movement from 1849 until 1920 including the women's suffrage movement.

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Women's Suffrage

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Kids learn about the history of Women’s Suffrage and the fight for the right for women to vote from the Seneca Falls Convention to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.