It was fairly easy for women in the 1800s and early 1900s to present themselves as a man. They would dress as men, take office as men, work like the men, and sometimes they would take a wife. Called female husbands, these women living as men were a popular subject in the newspapers. In the early 1800s, tales of these female husbands took up paragraphs within the papers. By the 1900s, though, these same female husbands rarely warranted more than a simple paragraph.
In the case of George Green, very little could be said. His true gender wasn’t publicly discovered until after his death, leaving no scandal to report. Instead, his tale is told in a simple paragraph found in The Bellefontaine Republican on March 25, 1902:
GEORGE Green, aged 74, died at Petersburg, Va., last week. He had been married for 35 years. He was a woman. He married a widow, who was so humiliated when she made the discovery that she had married a woman she was ashamed to disclose the fact. However, after living with her female husband so many years, a genuine attachment sprung up between them, and she now mourns the departed with genuine grief. [Source]
