Truth is often stranger than fiction, or at least just as strange.

In researching my first novel (about a young lady disguised as a boy), I learned there was a real woman who had lived as a man for decades.  She was living in California at the same time my story takes place.  I found her in a biography of notable Western women, but she has a page on Wikipedia now.

Charlotte Parkhurst was born in 1812 Vermont.  Her mother died that year, and her older brother Charles died in 1813.  At age 12, Charlotte ran away from the orphanage where she and her sister were raised.  Predictably (now that you’ve read my book, anyway) she renamed herself Charley, disguised herself as a boy, and reportedly went to work at a stable in Rhode Island.  While there, the boy Charley learned how to drive teams of horses.

The 1849 California Gold Rush found 37-year-old Charley crossing Panama to reach the frontier.  He landed a job driving wagons hauling cargo, and he lost sight in one eye when a horse kicked him.  That led to the nickname, “One-Eyed Charley.”  Moving on to work for a stage coach company, he developed a reputation as a “Jehu” (from 2 Kings 9:20: driving like “Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”)  His other nickname was “Six-Horse Charley,” which also speaks to his skill with a team.

The year 1871 is when my novel begins, and that same year would have found old Charley retired to a ranch outside Watsonville, California.  Railroads had begun to cut in on the stagecoach business, and his rheumatism would have made a more sedentary life attractive.  He died in 1879, and it was only then that the medical examiner discovered his secret identity.  Charlotte Parkhurst’s obituary from the San Francisco Call was reprinted in the New York Times, which gave him posthumous notoriety.

We can accurately predict that Charlotte became Charley in order to find work, because historically speaking, the 1820s didn’t offer women many employment opportunities.  There was also probably an element of disguise, at least at first, because she had run away from the orphanage.  We know her disguise was inadequate at least once in her 67 years: the coroner discovered she had given birth at some point, and a baby’s dress was found in her luggage.  Modern historians also credit her as the first American woman to cast a ballot in a Presidential election (1868).

c. 2011 Carolyn VanGorkom

I’m grateful to Charley Parkhurst for proving the premise of my novel is plausible.  I’m also glad the element of fiction lets me give my own heroine a happier ending.  If you’d like to read the preview on Amazon, here’s a link:

Thanks for reading!

 

 

(A note to my readers: I found Charley’s story long after my heroine’s alias was written.  The similarity was unintentional.)