"Same-sex marriage is hardly new."

Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm

 Neilson Browsing Room, Smith College

Rachel Hope Cleves of the University of Victoria, British Columbia will speak on her book, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.

Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age twenty. She spent the next decade of her life traveling throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends, and becoming the subject of gossip wherever she lived. At age twenty-nine, still defiantly single, Charity visited friends in Weybridge, Vermont.

There she met a pious and studious young woman named Sylvia Drake. The two soon became so inseparable that Charity decided to rent rooms in Weybridge. In 1809, they moved into their own home together, and over the years, came to be recognized, essentially, as a married couple. Revered by their community, Charity and Sylvia operated a tailor shop employing many local women, served as guiding lights within their church, and participated in raising their many nieces and nephews. Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of their extraordinary forty-four year union. Drawing on an array of original documents including diaries, letters, and poetry, Cleves traces their lives in sharp detail.

Sponsored by Historic Northampton, the Smith College American Studies Program, the Smith College History Department, the Smith College Department of the Study of Women and Gender and
the Smith College Lecture Committee.

The event is free and open to the public. Neilson Browsing Room is located in Neilson Library on the campus of Smith College.