Mysteries to Solve: Historical Detective Work You Can Do

Researchers have discovered fascinating documents of LGBTQH history about which many mysteries remain. Please help OutHistory solves these mysteries, and present new, original finds on the site.

OutHistory will be adding to this list of mysteries to solve, so check back here for further clues.

OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.

Casal, Mary (pseudonym)

Who was "Mary Casal"? The author of one of the earliest American lesbian autobiographies, The Stone Wall, provides so many details of her life, it should be possible to discover who she actually was. So far, no one has done that research. Discovering her identity should lead to lots of important new data on lesbian American history in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Legal Case Transcripts

Jonathan Ned Katz's Love Stories discusses many nineteenth-century sodomy, buggery, and crime against nature cases appealed to the highest state courts. His research showed that, in regard to the two earliest cases, the actual trial transcripts of these cases could be obtained from from state legal archives. The transcripts of these cases sometimes reveal more details than the brief, published accounts available on LEXUS or other legal databases. So researching these cases and writing for these transcripts should reveal important new details of of LGBTQ and heterosexual history. OutHistory would like to reproduce or transcribe all the court transcripts that can be found.

Lind, Earl (Ralph Werther/Jennie June) (pseudonyms)

Who was the man who called himself "Earl Lind," "Ralph Werther" and "Jennie June"? The author of two autobiographies provides so many details about his life, it should be possible to discover his true identity, and this should lead to many insights about transgender American history in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Stoddard, Charles Warren

Listing and studying all the social networking connections of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century journalist Charles Warren Stoddard should provide many leads to LGBTQ history in his time.

You may also be interested in helping with the open, collaborative entries in progress:

Collaborative Open Entries in Progress

Among the collaborative entries in progress are:

Abraham Lincoln, Sexuality and Intimacy: 1809-1865

Curtis Sittenfeld: "American Wife," September 2, 2008

James Buchanan: April 23, 1791-June 1, 1868

Lynne Cheney: "Sisters," November 1981

Walt Whitman, Sexuality, and Intimacy: 1819-1892

(this, the first active collaboration, began on July 3, 2008);

ZAP! Art and the Gay and Lesbian Revolution, 1969-present