Local lore:
Local residents were stunned to learn, after his death, that he was in fact a woman. She lived as a man for many years, registered to vote, and was the first woman to vote in Florida.
She "suffered a misstep" early in life, having a child out of wedlock. To save her daughter from the shame, she dressed and lived as a man.
Her daughter died in Tampa, and Hiram bought a plot there. Hiram died at the Orange County home and prior to death expressed her wishes to be buried next to her daughter in Tampa. The story is that friends collected funds and were able to move Hiram to Tampa to be buried with her daughter.
_____________________
Big question - was Sarah Calder the daughter - or the wife? Based upon the below articles and history of her identifying as male, it suggests wife.
______________________
Tampa Tribune 12 July 1914
ORLANDO, July 11 - (Special) - After residing here for nearly ten years dressing as a man and giving the name of Hiram E Calder, the supposed man now dying at the county home from pellagra was found by a local doctor to be a woman. She came from near Richmond, Va., in 1902, accompanied by a so-calle wife. The wife died in Tampa three years ago. Calder worked for several years in a bakery and had since made a living as best she could, being in feeble health and only able to work a few days out of the month, being dependent on the charity of others since last fall. The woman's real name is not known and the examining doctor could get no information as to why she had masqueraded as a man for so long a time.
Tampa Tribune 30 July 1914
"HIRAM" CALDER WAS BRIDEGROOM IN SKIRTS
WOMAN ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A MAN
Baltimore Paper Tells of Her Early History and marriage to Young Girl
(From Tueday' Daily, July 28)
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts."
This remark directed at Hannah E Calder, a woman who had "married" a girl of sixteen, impelled Hannah to don a man's suit, and she never returned to skirts. As Hiram J Calder, the woman lived in South Florida ten years as a man, associated with men, voted, and concealed her sex successfully until July 13 when she lay dying at Orlando of pellagra. Then it was discovered that Hiram E Calder was a woman.
"He as buried in the potter's field at Orlando, although "he" owns a lot in Woodlawn Cemetery in this city, where the remains of "his wife," Sarah E Calder, are interred. Records in the office of the City Clerk show that the "wife" died at Hampton's Sanitarium of paralysis, October 2. She was forty-seven years old. The remains were laid to rest in grave space, but later taken up and transferred to a handsome lot which Calder purchased from a well known Tampa woman. It was the desire of Calder to be buried beside "his wife".
Cherished "Wife's" Memory
The lot is a beautiful one. Shaded by a huge oak, a white tomb stone bears the inscription: "in Loving Memory of Sarah A Calder," and gives dates.
Calder told WD Burgess, the cemetery sexton, that nobody could ever know how much "he" loved "his wife." The sexton replied: "There are plenty more good looking girls on the carpet," but Calder could not be consoled.
Several month later Calder went to Virginia and wrote to the sexton frequently. "He" urged the sexton to see that the grave is well taken care of. After that Calder disappeared from this city, after having resided for several years at No. 1408 Nebraska Avenue. Nothing more is known of "him" until he reappeared in Orlando.
Rebelled Against Being Woman
The early history of the woman, who spent her life as a male citizen, who married, voted, chewed tobacco and engaged in business, is told by a Baltimore newspaper:
"New of the death of Hannah Calder, in Orlando, Fla., recalls to the minds of persons familiar with Harford County affairs the strange case of the daughter of a wealthy farmer there who, from her earliest childhood, rebelled as being girl or woman. She lived for years in Florida as a man, dressed as a man, associated with men, and lived with a woman who was supposed to be her wife. Only on her deathbed was her sex discovered. The "Wife" died four years ago.
"The same woman was a sensation in Baltimore twenty-five years ago, when she took a pretty Harford county girl before a clergyman in that part of the State, told the clergyman who knew her family, that she was a man in spite of the fact that she had dressed in feminine attire since she could walk and persuaded him to pronounce two persons, both of whom wore skirts, man and wife.
"Bride" Taken Away From Her
"After the marriage she came to Baltimore. A week later the family of her 'bride' took the bride away from her and the woman is now married and the mother of a happy brood of children. She is living in Harford County. There are persons living in Baltimore familiar with all the details of the story.
"Hanna Calder was about sixty years old at the time of her death. She was the daughter of Martin Calder, a well known and rich farmer of Federal Hill, near Rocks of Deer Creek, Harford County. Her brother, James Calder was Sheriff of the county at one time.
Didn't Like Feminine Society
"from her earliest girlhood, Hannah Calder manifested a distaste for feminine society, say those who knew her. She went to school with the other girls and she went about the country to dances and such things, but, in spite of the fact that she wore skirts, she wouldn't play the part of a woman.
"She died seek the society of men, but rather she avoided intimate association with anybody and preferred to be alone. When she was in her teens she began to use tobacco, both smoking and chewing it. She did not have to think of making her living, but she began when she was in her twenties to be known as the "Harford County Barber" and would drive from farmhouse to farmhouse to shave the men and cut their hair and that of their children.
Courted a Girl
"suddenly she manifested an interest in the girl with whom she managed the mock marriage. Hannah was about thirty years old then and the girl sixteen, just blossoming into womanhood and one of the beauties of the neighborhood. Her parents were not so well to do as were those of her woman suitor. When Hannah Calder told her that she was a man and that she wanted to marry her the young girl is said to have been flattered.
"After the 'marriage' the couple came to Baltimore and going to a house on North Gilmore Street, where a male connection of the Calder lived, Hannah Calder dumbfounded this man's wife by announcing that she was not a woman, but a man, and that the pretty creature who accompanied her was her bride.
Becomes a "Man"
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts," the relative's wife said. And Hannah went forthwith and bought her a suit of men's clothes. She never went back to skirts after that, it is said. For a week or two after her 'bride' had been torn from her Hannah Calder was on exhibition at the Masonic Temple. Then she disappeared.
:Her relatives had heard nothing from her from the time of her disappearance until the news of her death came. It is supposed that she became a barber in earnest after her departure from Baltimore. The report from Florida says she always associated with men there and voted regularly at each election.
The Orlando Sentinel. 14 July 1914
The final chapter in the mysterious life of "Hiram E.' Calder came to a close yesterday morning about nine o'clock at the County Home, the woman who had passed herself off as a man for so many years, answering to the death summons. She passed away without giving any explanation of her reasons for posing as a man, and no reason has been advanced other than mere guesswork.
Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected that she was a woman, her actions being decidedly masculine at all times. Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, not failing to contribute her part.
As a man she registered and voted in Orlando a number of times, being perhaps the first woman in Florida to exercise the franchise.
The body of the woman will be buried by the county, Undertaker Hand having charge of the funeral.
___________
From digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com not dated, posted here 9 Jul 2019
Was Calder first female to vote in Florida?
Some answers aren’t as simple as they seem. Just ask Hiram Calder.
Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
He’s buried in an unmarked grave at Orlando’s old pauper’s cemetery. But Calder is the subject of this week’s Ask Orlando question.
A reader noted this is the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote after it was ratified by the states.
“I read somewhere about a lady dressed as a man who voted in Orlando? Is it true?”
He was asking if the legend is true, that Calder was a woman who beat the voting system by pretending to be a man.
In 2019, the answer is no. A few years ago, some people would have answered, “It depends.”
In 1902, almost everybody in Orlando would probably have screamed “yes” if they’d known Calder’s secret.
That’s the year Calder moved here with his wife, Sarah. Calder got a job at Hungerford’s bakery on Orange Avenue and apparently went through life like your average Hiram.
“Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, nor failing to contribute her part,” the Orlando Morning Sentinel wrote when Calder died in 1914.
All seemed well in Calder’s life until his wife died in 1910. They had bought adjoining burial plots at a Tampa cemetery.
The newspaper said Sarah’s death left Calder “heartbroken and frantic with grief, even spending hours at the grave.”
He never recovered and died four years later of pellagra, a severe niacin deficiency. On his death bed at the county home for indigents, a doctor uncovered Calder’s secret.
“Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected she was a woman,” the Morning Sentinel reported.
Calder’s last wish was to be laid to rest by Sarah, but he was quickly buried in an $8.50 casket in what is now Orange Hill Cemetery.
His story made newspapers around the country.
“Gained Suffrage by Subterfuge,” the Tampa Tribune wrote.
Everybody wanted to unravel the mystery of “Orlando’s Beardless Man.”
If they’d had Google, they might have found an 1889 article in the New York World about Hanna Calder, “the wildest tomboy who ever lived.
“When Hanna reached the years of womanhood she failed to take on the characteristics with which the very name of womankind is pregnant,” the article said.
Calder married a teenage girl who lived on a nearby farm. He told the priest, “I am a man, but my good parents brought me up as a girl.”
The couple moved to Baltimore, but the marriage dissolved when the girl’s family took her back. Calder stayed in Baltimore, working as a bartender.
He eventually met Sarah Kemp. They fell in love, but finding a bakery to make a wedding cake was the least of their worries.
“She is a monster ineffable,” the World wrote in its exposé on Calder.
Monsters.
That’s what society considered anyone in the LGBTQ spectrum back then. Orlando wasn’t exactly waving rainbow flags, but it offered a fresh start for the Calders.
Hiram almost managed to take his secret to the grave. But the tale of the “First Woman to Vote in Florida” became Orlando lore.
But Hiram wasn’t pretending to be a man. By today’s standards, he was a transgender man.
As for registering to vote, it’s unclear what the rules were in 1902. These days, a driver’s license or state-issued identification card or U.S. passport is usually used.
Until 2011, a transgender person had to have undergone gender-reassignment surgery in order to change their gender marker on state-issued IDs.
Now they need only documentation they are undergoing “clinical treatment.”
So was Hiram Calder really the first woman to vote in Florida?
It depends on whether you apply 2019 laws to 1902, or vice versa.
But this week’s Ask Orlando inquiry raised another question — should we even answer?
“He’s been dead a long time,” Gillian Branstetter said. “There are concerns addressing in death what he didn’t want to address while alive.”
She’s a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality. Her concern was that we’d be outing Calder by writing about him.
But Hiram has been effectively outed for more than a century. My guess is he’d be tired of being known as the woman who voted before it was legal.
He’d rather be remembered as a man who was married to his wife, and their love was such that he could not live without her.
That doesn’t sound much like a monster.
Local residents were stunned to learn, after his death, that he was in fact a woman. She lived as a man for many years, registered to vote, and was the first woman to vote in Florida.
She "suffered a misstep" early in life, having a child out of wedlock. To save her daughter from the shame, she dressed and lived as a man.
Her daughter died in Tampa, and Hiram bought a plot there. Hiram died at the Orange County home and prior to death expressed her wishes to be buried next to her daughter in Tampa. The story is that friends collected funds and were able to move Hiram to Tampa to be buried with her daughter.
_____________________
Big question - was Sarah Calder the daughter - or the wife? Based upon the below articles and history of her identifying as male, it suggests wife.
______________________
Tampa Tribune 12 July 1914
ORLANDO, July 11 - (Special) - After residing here for nearly ten years dressing as a man and giving the name of Hiram E Calder, the supposed man now dying at the county home from pellagra was found by a local doctor to be a woman. She came from near Richmond, Va., in 1902, accompanied by a so-calle wife. The wife died in Tampa three years ago. Calder worked for several years in a bakery and had since made a living as best she could, being in feeble health and only able to work a few days out of the month, being dependent on the charity of others since last fall. The woman's real name is not known and the examining doctor could get no information as to why she had masqueraded as a man for so long a time.
Tampa Tribune 30 July 1914
"HIRAM" CALDER WAS BRIDEGROOM IN SKIRTS
WOMAN ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A MAN
Baltimore Paper Tells of Her Early History and marriage to Young Girl
(From Tueday' Daily, July 28)
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts."
This remark directed at Hannah E Calder, a woman who had "married" a girl of sixteen, impelled Hannah to don a man's suit, and she never returned to skirts. As Hiram J Calder, the woman lived in South Florida ten years as a man, associated with men, voted, and concealed her sex successfully until July 13 when she lay dying at Orlando of pellagra. Then it was discovered that Hiram E Calder was a woman.
"He as buried in the potter's field at Orlando, although "he" owns a lot in Woodlawn Cemetery in this city, where the remains of "his wife," Sarah E Calder, are interred. Records in the office of the City Clerk show that the "wife" died at Hampton's Sanitarium of paralysis, October 2. She was forty-seven years old. The remains were laid to rest in grave space, but later taken up and transferred to a handsome lot which Calder purchased from a well known Tampa woman. It was the desire of Calder to be buried beside "his wife".
Cherished "Wife's" Memory
The lot is a beautiful one. Shaded by a huge oak, a white tomb stone bears the inscription: "in Loving Memory of Sarah A Calder," and gives dates.
Calder told WD Burgess, the cemetery sexton, that nobody could ever know how much "he" loved "his wife." The sexton replied: "There are plenty more good looking girls on the carpet," but Calder could not be consoled.
Several month later Calder went to Virginia and wrote to the sexton frequently. "He" urged the sexton to see that the grave is well taken care of. After that Calder disappeared from this city, after having resided for several years at No. 1408 Nebraska Avenue. Nothing more is known of "him" until he reappeared in Orlando.
Rebelled Against Being Woman
The early history of the woman, who spent her life as a male citizen, who married, voted, chewed tobacco and engaged in business, is told by a Baltimore newspaper:
"New of the death of Hannah Calder, in Orlando, Fla., recalls to the minds of persons familiar with Harford County affairs the strange case of the daughter of a wealthy farmer there who, from her earliest childhood, rebelled as being girl or woman. She lived for years in Florida as a man, dressed as a man, associated with men, and lived with a woman who was supposed to be her wife. Only on her deathbed was her sex discovered. The "Wife" died four years ago.
"The same woman was a sensation in Baltimore twenty-five years ago, when she took a pretty Harford county girl before a clergyman in that part of the State, told the clergyman who knew her family, that she was a man in spite of the fact that she had dressed in feminine attire since she could walk and persuaded him to pronounce two persons, both of whom wore skirts, man and wife.
"Bride" Taken Away From Her
"After the marriage she came to Baltimore. A week later the family of her 'bride' took the bride away from her and the woman is now married and the mother of a happy brood of children. She is living in Harford County. There are persons living in Baltimore familiar with all the details of the story.
"Hanna Calder was about sixty years old at the time of her death. She was the daughter of Martin Calder, a well known and rich farmer of Federal Hill, near Rocks of Deer Creek, Harford County. Her brother, James Calder was Sheriff of the county at one time.
Didn't Like Feminine Society
"from her earliest girlhood, Hannah Calder manifested a distaste for feminine society, say those who knew her. She went to school with the other girls and she went about the country to dances and such things, but, in spite of the fact that she wore skirts, she wouldn't play the part of a woman.
"She died seek the society of men, but rather she avoided intimate association with anybody and preferred to be alone. When she was in her teens she began to use tobacco, both smoking and chewing it. She did not have to think of making her living, but she began when she was in her twenties to be known as the "Harford County Barber" and would drive from farmhouse to farmhouse to shave the men and cut their hair and that of their children.
Courted a Girl
"suddenly she manifested an interest in the girl with whom she managed the mock marriage. Hannah was about thirty years old then and the girl sixteen, just blossoming into womanhood and one of the beauties of the neighborhood. Her parents were not so well to do as were those of her woman suitor. When Hannah Calder told her that she was a man and that she wanted to marry her the young girl is said to have been flattered.
"After the 'marriage' the couple came to Baltimore and going to a house on North Gilmore Street, where a male connection of the Calder lived, Hannah Calder dumbfounded this man's wife by announcing that she was not a woman, but a man, and that the pretty creature who accompanied her was her bride.
Becomes a "Man"
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts," the relative's wife said. And Hannah went forthwith and bought her a suit of men's clothes. She never went back to skirts after that, it is said. For a week or two after her 'bride' had been torn from her Hannah Calder was on exhibition at the Masonic Temple. Then she disappeared.
:Her relatives had heard nothing from her from the time of her disappearance until the news of her death came. It is supposed that she became a barber in earnest after her departure from Baltimore. The report from Florida says she always associated with men there and voted regularly at each election.
The Orlando Sentinel. 14 July 1914
The final chapter in the mysterious life of "Hiram E.' Calder came to a close yesterday morning about nine o'clock at the County Home, the woman who had passed herself off as a man for so many years, answering to the death summons. She passed away without giving any explanation of her reasons for posing as a man, and no reason has been advanced other than mere guesswork.
Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected that she was a woman, her actions being decidedly masculine at all times. Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, not failing to contribute her part.
As a man she registered and voted in Orlando a number of times, being perhaps the first woman in Florida to exercise the franchise.
The body of the woman will be buried by the county, Undertaker Hand having charge of the funeral.
___________
From digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com not dated, posted here 9 Jul 2019
Was Calder first female to vote in Florida?
Some answers aren’t as simple as they seem. Just ask Hiram Calder.
Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
He’s buried in an unmarked grave at Orlando’s old pauper’s cemetery. But Calder is the subject of this week’s Ask Orlando question.
A reader noted this is the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote after it was ratified by the states.
“I read somewhere about a lady dressed as a man who voted in Orlando? Is it true?”
He was asking if the legend is true, that Calder was a woman who beat the voting system by pretending to be a man.
In 2019, the answer is no. A few years ago, some people would have answered, “It depends.”
In 1902, almost everybody in Orlando would probably have screamed “yes” if they’d known Calder’s secret.
That’s the year Calder moved here with his wife, Sarah. Calder got a job at Hungerford’s bakery on Orange Avenue and apparently went through life like your average Hiram.
“Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, nor failing to contribute her part,” the Orlando Morning Sentinel wrote when Calder died in 1914.
All seemed well in Calder’s life until his wife died in 1910. They had bought adjoining burial plots at a Tampa cemetery.
The newspaper said Sarah’s death left Calder “heartbroken and frantic with grief, even spending hours at the grave.”
He never recovered and died four years later of pellagra, a severe niacin deficiency. On his death bed at the county home for indigents, a doctor uncovered Calder’s secret.
“Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected she was a woman,” the Morning Sentinel reported.
Calder’s last wish was to be laid to rest by Sarah, but he was quickly buried in an $8.50 casket in what is now Orange Hill Cemetery.
His story made newspapers around the country.
“Gained Suffrage by Subterfuge,” the Tampa Tribune wrote.
Everybody wanted to unravel the mystery of “Orlando’s Beardless Man.”
If they’d had Google, they might have found an 1889 article in the New York World about Hanna Calder, “the wildest tomboy who ever lived.
“When Hanna reached the years of womanhood she failed to take on the characteristics with which the very name of womankind is pregnant,” the article said.
Calder married a teenage girl who lived on a nearby farm. He told the priest, “I am a man, but my good parents brought me up as a girl.”
The couple moved to Baltimore, but the marriage dissolved when the girl’s family took her back. Calder stayed in Baltimore, working as a bartender.
He eventually met Sarah Kemp. They fell in love, but finding a bakery to make a wedding cake was the least of their worries.
“She is a monster ineffable,” the World wrote in its exposé on Calder.
Monsters.
That’s what society considered anyone in the LGBTQ spectrum back then. Orlando wasn’t exactly waving rainbow flags, but it offered a fresh start for the Calders.
Hiram almost managed to take his secret to the grave. But the tale of the “First Woman to Vote in Florida” became Orlando lore.
But Hiram wasn’t pretending to be a man. By today’s standards, he was a transgender man.
As for registering to vote, it’s unclear what the rules were in 1902. These days, a driver’s license or state-issued identification card or U.S. passport is usually used.
Until 2011, a transgender person had to have undergone gender-reassignment surgery in order to change their gender marker on state-issued IDs.
Now they need only documentation they are undergoing “clinical treatment.”
So was Hiram Calder really the first woman to vote in Florida?
It depends on whether you apply 2019 laws to 1902, or vice versa.
But this week’s Ask Orlando inquiry raised another question — should we even answer?
“He’s been dead a long time,” Gillian Branstetter said. “There are concerns addressing in death what he didn’t want to address while alive.”
She’s a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality. Her concern was that we’d be outing Calder by writing about him.
But Hiram has been effectively outed for more than a century. My guess is he’d be tired of being known as the woman who voted before it was legal.
He’d rather be remembered as a man who was married to his wife, and their love was such that he could not live without her.
That doesn’t sound much like a monster.
Local lore:
Local residents were stunned to learn, after his death, that he was in fact a woman. She lived as a man for many years, registered to vote, and was the first woman to vote in Florida.
She "suffered a misstep" early in life, having a child out of wedlock. To save her daughter from the shame, she dressed and lived as a man.
Her daughter died in Tampa, and Hiram bought a plot there. Hiram died at the Orange County home and prior to death expressed her wishes to be buried next to her daughter in Tampa. The story is that friends collected funds and were able to move Hiram to Tampa to be buried with her daughter.
_____________________
Big question - was Sarah Calder the daughter - or the wife? Based upon the below articles and history of her identifying as male, it suggests wife.
______________________
Tampa Tribune 12 July 1914
ORLANDO, July 11 - (Special) - After residing here for nearly ten years dressing as a man and giving the name of Hiram E Calder, the supposed man now dying at the county home from pellagra was found by a local doctor to be a woman. She came from near Richmond, Va., in 1902, accompanied by a so-calle wife. The wife died in Tampa three years ago. Calder worked for several years in a bakery and had since made a living as best she could, being in feeble health and only able to work a few days out of the month, being dependent on the charity of others since last fall. The woman's real name is not known and the examining doctor could get no information as to why she had masqueraded as a man for so long a time.
Tampa Tribune 30 July 1914
"HIRAM" CALDER WAS BRIDEGROOM IN SKIRTS
WOMAN ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A MAN
Baltimore Paper Tells of Her Early History and marriage to Young Girl
(From Tueday' Daily, July 28)
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts."
This remark directed at Hannah E Calder, a woman who had "married" a girl of sixteen, impelled Hannah to don a man's suit, and she never returned to skirts. As Hiram J Calder, the woman lived in South Florida ten years as a man, associated with men, voted, and concealed her sex successfully until July 13 when she lay dying at Orlando of pellagra. Then it was discovered that Hiram E Calder was a woman.
"He as buried in the potter's field at Orlando, although "he" owns a lot in Woodlawn Cemetery in this city, where the remains of "his wife," Sarah E Calder, are interred. Records in the office of the City Clerk show that the "wife" died at Hampton's Sanitarium of paralysis, October 2. She was forty-seven years old. The remains were laid to rest in grave space, but later taken up and transferred to a handsome lot which Calder purchased from a well known Tampa woman. It was the desire of Calder to be buried beside "his wife".
Cherished "Wife's" Memory
The lot is a beautiful one. Shaded by a huge oak, a white tomb stone bears the inscription: "in Loving Memory of Sarah A Calder," and gives dates.
Calder told WD Burgess, the cemetery sexton, that nobody could ever know how much "he" loved "his wife." The sexton replied: "There are plenty more good looking girls on the carpet," but Calder could not be consoled.
Several month later Calder went to Virginia and wrote to the sexton frequently. "He" urged the sexton to see that the grave is well taken care of. After that Calder disappeared from this city, after having resided for several years at No. 1408 Nebraska Avenue. Nothing more is known of "him" until he reappeared in Orlando.
Rebelled Against Being Woman
The early history of the woman, who spent her life as a male citizen, who married, voted, chewed tobacco and engaged in business, is told by a Baltimore newspaper:
"New of the death of Hannah Calder, in Orlando, Fla., recalls to the minds of persons familiar with Harford County affairs the strange case of the daughter of a wealthy farmer there who, from her earliest childhood, rebelled as being girl or woman. She lived for years in Florida as a man, dressed as a man, associated with men, and lived with a woman who was supposed to be her wife. Only on her deathbed was her sex discovered. The "Wife" died four years ago.
"The same woman was a sensation in Baltimore twenty-five years ago, when she took a pretty Harford county girl before a clergyman in that part of the State, told the clergyman who knew her family, that she was a man in spite of the fact that she had dressed in feminine attire since she could walk and persuaded him to pronounce two persons, both of whom wore skirts, man and wife.
"Bride" Taken Away From Her
"After the marriage she came to Baltimore. A week later the family of her 'bride' took the bride away from her and the woman is now married and the mother of a happy brood of children. She is living in Harford County. There are persons living in Baltimore familiar with all the details of the story.
"Hanna Calder was about sixty years old at the time of her death. She was the daughter of Martin Calder, a well known and rich farmer of Federal Hill, near Rocks of Deer Creek, Harford County. Her brother, James Calder was Sheriff of the county at one time.
Didn't Like Feminine Society
"from her earliest girlhood, Hannah Calder manifested a distaste for feminine society, say those who knew her. She went to school with the other girls and she went about the country to dances and such things, but, in spite of the fact that she wore skirts, she wouldn't play the part of a woman.
"She died seek the society of men, but rather she avoided intimate association with anybody and preferred to be alone. When she was in her teens she began to use tobacco, both smoking and chewing it. She did not have to think of making her living, but she began when she was in her twenties to be known as the "Harford County Barber" and would drive from farmhouse to farmhouse to shave the men and cut their hair and that of their children.
Courted a Girl
"suddenly she manifested an interest in the girl with whom she managed the mock marriage. Hannah was about thirty years old then and the girl sixteen, just blossoming into womanhood and one of the beauties of the neighborhood. Her parents were not so well to do as were those of her woman suitor. When Hannah Calder told her that she was a man and that she wanted to marry her the young girl is said to have been flattered.
"After the 'marriage' the couple came to Baltimore and going to a house on North Gilmore Street, where a male connection of the Calder lived, Hannah Calder dumbfounded this man's wife by announcing that she was not a woman, but a man, and that the pretty creature who accompanied her was her bride.
Becomes a "Man"
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts," the relative's wife said. And Hannah went forthwith and bought her a suit of men's clothes. She never went back to skirts after that, it is said. For a week or two after her 'bride' had been torn from her Hannah Calder was on exhibition at the Masonic Temple. Then she disappeared.
:Her relatives had heard nothing from her from the time of her disappearance until the news of her death came. It is supposed that she became a barber in earnest after her departure from Baltimore. The report from Florida says she always associated with men there and voted regularly at each election.
The Orlando Sentinel. 14 July 1914
The final chapter in the mysterious life of "Hiram E.' Calder came to a close yesterday morning about nine o'clock at the County Home, the woman who had passed herself off as a man for so many years, answering to the death summons. She passed away without giving any explanation of her reasons for posing as a man, and no reason has been advanced other than mere guesswork.
Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected that she was a woman, her actions being decidedly masculine at all times. Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, not failing to contribute her part.
As a man she registered and voted in Orlando a number of times, being perhaps the first woman in Florida to exercise the franchise.
The body of the woman will be buried by the county, Undertaker Hand having charge of the funeral.
___________
From digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com not dated, posted here 9 Jul 2019
Was Calder first female to vote in Florida?
Some answers aren’t as simple as they seem. Just ask Hiram Calder.
Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
He’s buried in an unmarked grave at Orlando’s old pauper’s cemetery. But Calder is the subject of this week’s Ask Orlando question.
A reader noted this is the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote after it was ratified by the states.
“I read somewhere about a lady dressed as a man who voted in Orlando? Is it true?”
He was asking if the legend is true, that Calder was a woman who beat the voting system by pretending to be a man.
In 2019, the answer is no. A few years ago, some people would have answered, “It depends.”
In 1902, almost everybody in Orlando would probably have screamed “yes” if they’d known Calder’s secret.
That’s the year Calder moved here with his wife, Sarah. Calder got a job at Hungerford’s bakery on Orange Avenue and apparently went through life like your average Hiram.
“Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, nor failing to contribute her part,” the Orlando Morning Sentinel wrote when Calder died in 1914.
All seemed well in Calder’s life until his wife died in 1910. They had bought adjoining burial plots at a Tampa cemetery.
The newspaper said Sarah’s death left Calder “heartbroken and frantic with grief, even spending hours at the grave.”
He never recovered and died four years later of pellagra, a severe niacin deficiency. On his death bed at the county home for indigents, a doctor uncovered Calder’s secret.
“Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected she was a woman,” the Morning Sentinel reported.
Calder’s last wish was to be laid to rest by Sarah, but he was quickly buried in an $8.50 casket in what is now Orange Hill Cemetery.
His story made newspapers around the country.
“Gained Suffrage by Subterfuge,” the Tampa Tribune wrote.
Everybody wanted to unravel the mystery of “Orlando’s Beardless Man.”
If they’d had Google, they might have found an 1889 article in the New York World about Hanna Calder, “the wildest tomboy who ever lived.
“When Hanna reached the years of womanhood she failed to take on the characteristics with which the very name of womankind is pregnant,” the article said.
Calder married a teenage girl who lived on a nearby farm. He told the priest, “I am a man, but my good parents brought me up as a girl.”
The couple moved to Baltimore, but the marriage dissolved when the girl’s family took her back. Calder stayed in Baltimore, working as a bartender.
He eventually met Sarah Kemp. They fell in love, but finding a bakery to make a wedding cake was the least of their worries.
“She is a monster ineffable,” the World wrote in its exposé on Calder.
Monsters.
That’s what society considered anyone in the LGBTQ spectrum back then. Orlando wasn’t exactly waving rainbow flags, but it offered a fresh start for the Calders.
Hiram almost managed to take his secret to the grave. But the tale of the “First Woman to Vote in Florida” became Orlando lore.
But Hiram wasn’t pretending to be a man. By today’s standards, he was a transgender man.
As for registering to vote, it’s unclear what the rules were in 1902. These days, a driver’s license or state-issued identification card or U.S. passport is usually used.
Until 2011, a transgender person had to have undergone gender-reassignment surgery in order to change their gender marker on state-issued IDs.
Now they need only documentation they are undergoing “clinical treatment.”
So was Hiram Calder really the first woman to vote in Florida?
It depends on whether you apply 2019 laws to 1902, or vice versa.
But this week’s Ask Orlando inquiry raised another question — should we even answer?
“He’s been dead a long time,” Gillian Branstetter said. “There are concerns addressing in death what he didn’t want to address while alive.”
She’s a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality. Her concern was that we’d be outing Calder by writing about him.
But Hiram has been effectively outed for more than a century. My guess is he’d be tired of being known as the woman who voted before it was legal.
He’d rather be remembered as a man who was married to his wife, and their love was such that he could not live without her.
That doesn’t sound much like a monster.
Local residents were stunned to learn, after his death, that he was in fact a woman. She lived as a man for many years, registered to vote, and was the first woman to vote in Florida.
She "suffered a misstep" early in life, having a child out of wedlock. To save her daughter from the shame, she dressed and lived as a man.
Her daughter died in Tampa, and Hiram bought a plot there. Hiram died at the Orange County home and prior to death expressed her wishes to be buried next to her daughter in Tampa. The story is that friends collected funds and were able to move Hiram to Tampa to be buried with her daughter.
_____________________
Big question - was Sarah Calder the daughter - or the wife? Based upon the below articles and history of her identifying as male, it suggests wife.
______________________
Tampa Tribune 12 July 1914
ORLANDO, July 11 - (Special) - After residing here for nearly ten years dressing as a man and giving the name of Hiram E Calder, the supposed man now dying at the county home from pellagra was found by a local doctor to be a woman. She came from near Richmond, Va., in 1902, accompanied by a so-calle wife. The wife died in Tampa three years ago. Calder worked for several years in a bakery and had since made a living as best she could, being in feeble health and only able to work a few days out of the month, being dependent on the charity of others since last fall. The woman's real name is not known and the examining doctor could get no information as to why she had masqueraded as a man for so long a time.
Tampa Tribune 30 July 1914
"HIRAM" CALDER WAS BRIDEGROOM IN SKIRTS
WOMAN ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A MAN
Baltimore Paper Tells of Her Early History and marriage to Young Girl
(From Tueday' Daily, July 28)
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts."
This remark directed at Hannah E Calder, a woman who had "married" a girl of sixteen, impelled Hannah to don a man's suit, and she never returned to skirts. As Hiram J Calder, the woman lived in South Florida ten years as a man, associated with men, voted, and concealed her sex successfully until July 13 when she lay dying at Orlando of pellagra. Then it was discovered that Hiram E Calder was a woman.
"He as buried in the potter's field at Orlando, although "he" owns a lot in Woodlawn Cemetery in this city, where the remains of "his wife," Sarah E Calder, are interred. Records in the office of the City Clerk show that the "wife" died at Hampton's Sanitarium of paralysis, October 2. She was forty-seven years old. The remains were laid to rest in grave space, but later taken up and transferred to a handsome lot which Calder purchased from a well known Tampa woman. It was the desire of Calder to be buried beside "his wife".
Cherished "Wife's" Memory
The lot is a beautiful one. Shaded by a huge oak, a white tomb stone bears the inscription: "in Loving Memory of Sarah A Calder," and gives dates.
Calder told WD Burgess, the cemetery sexton, that nobody could ever know how much "he" loved "his wife." The sexton replied: "There are plenty more good looking girls on the carpet," but Calder could not be consoled.
Several month later Calder went to Virginia and wrote to the sexton frequently. "He" urged the sexton to see that the grave is well taken care of. After that Calder disappeared from this city, after having resided for several years at No. 1408 Nebraska Avenue. Nothing more is known of "him" until he reappeared in Orlando.
Rebelled Against Being Woman
The early history of the woman, who spent her life as a male citizen, who married, voted, chewed tobacco and engaged in business, is told by a Baltimore newspaper:
"New of the death of Hannah Calder, in Orlando, Fla., recalls to the minds of persons familiar with Harford County affairs the strange case of the daughter of a wealthy farmer there who, from her earliest childhood, rebelled as being girl or woman. She lived for years in Florida as a man, dressed as a man, associated with men, and lived with a woman who was supposed to be her wife. Only on her deathbed was her sex discovered. The "Wife" died four years ago.
"The same woman was a sensation in Baltimore twenty-five years ago, when she took a pretty Harford county girl before a clergyman in that part of the State, told the clergyman who knew her family, that she was a man in spite of the fact that she had dressed in feminine attire since she could walk and persuaded him to pronounce two persons, both of whom wore skirts, man and wife.
"Bride" Taken Away From Her
"After the marriage she came to Baltimore. A week later the family of her 'bride' took the bride away from her and the woman is now married and the mother of a happy brood of children. She is living in Harford County. There are persons living in Baltimore familiar with all the details of the story.
"Hanna Calder was about sixty years old at the time of her death. She was the daughter of Martin Calder, a well known and rich farmer of Federal Hill, near Rocks of Deer Creek, Harford County. Her brother, James Calder was Sheriff of the county at one time.
Didn't Like Feminine Society
"from her earliest girlhood, Hannah Calder manifested a distaste for feminine society, say those who knew her. She went to school with the other girls and she went about the country to dances and such things, but, in spite of the fact that she wore skirts, she wouldn't play the part of a woman.
"She died seek the society of men, but rather she avoided intimate association with anybody and preferred to be alone. When she was in her teens she began to use tobacco, both smoking and chewing it. She did not have to think of making her living, but she began when she was in her twenties to be known as the "Harford County Barber" and would drive from farmhouse to farmhouse to shave the men and cut their hair and that of their children.
Courted a Girl
"suddenly she manifested an interest in the girl with whom she managed the mock marriage. Hannah was about thirty years old then and the girl sixteen, just blossoming into womanhood and one of the beauties of the neighborhood. Her parents were not so well to do as were those of her woman suitor. When Hannah Calder told her that she was a man and that she wanted to marry her the young girl is said to have been flattered.
"After the 'marriage' the couple came to Baltimore and going to a house on North Gilmore Street, where a male connection of the Calder lived, Hannah Calder dumbfounded this man's wife by announcing that she was not a woman, but a man, and that the pretty creature who accompanied her was her bride.
Becomes a "Man"
"You are a pretty looking bridegroom in skirts," the relative's wife said. And Hannah went forthwith and bought her a suit of men's clothes. She never went back to skirts after that, it is said. For a week or two after her 'bride' had been torn from her Hannah Calder was on exhibition at the Masonic Temple. Then she disappeared.
:Her relatives had heard nothing from her from the time of her disappearance until the news of her death came. It is supposed that she became a barber in earnest after her departure from Baltimore. The report from Florida says she always associated with men there and voted regularly at each election.
The Orlando Sentinel. 14 July 1914
The final chapter in the mysterious life of "Hiram E.' Calder came to a close yesterday morning about nine o'clock at the County Home, the woman who had passed herself off as a man for so many years, answering to the death summons. She passed away without giving any explanation of her reasons for posing as a man, and no reason has been advanced other than mere guesswork.
Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected that she was a woman, her actions being decidedly masculine at all times. Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, not failing to contribute her part.
As a man she registered and voted in Orlando a number of times, being perhaps the first woman in Florida to exercise the franchise.
The body of the woman will be buried by the county, Undertaker Hand having charge of the funeral.
___________
From digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com not dated, posted here 9 Jul 2019
Was Calder first female to vote in Florida?
Some answers aren’t as simple as they seem. Just ask Hiram Calder.
Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
He’s buried in an unmarked grave at Orlando’s old pauper’s cemetery. But Calder is the subject of this week’s Ask Orlando question.
A reader noted this is the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote after it was ratified by the states.
“I read somewhere about a lady dressed as a man who voted in Orlando? Is it true?”
He was asking if the legend is true, that Calder was a woman who beat the voting system by pretending to be a man.
In 2019, the answer is no. A few years ago, some people would have answered, “It depends.”
In 1902, almost everybody in Orlando would probably have screamed “yes” if they’d known Calder’s secret.
That’s the year Calder moved here with his wife, Sarah. Calder got a job at Hungerford’s bakery on Orange Avenue and apparently went through life like your average Hiram.
“Instead of avoiding the company of men she always acted naturally with them, talking intelligently upon many subjects and greatly enjoying the gatherings of men where stories of all kinds are the chief amusement, nor failing to contribute her part,” the Orlando Morning Sentinel wrote when Calder died in 1914.
All seemed well in Calder’s life until his wife died in 1910. They had bought adjoining burial plots at a Tampa cemetery.
The newspaper said Sarah’s death left Calder “heartbroken and frantic with grief, even spending hours at the grave.”
He never recovered and died four years later of pellagra, a severe niacin deficiency. On his death bed at the county home for indigents, a doctor uncovered Calder’s secret.
“Not even the closest associates of Calder suspected she was a woman,” the Morning Sentinel reported.
Calder’s last wish was to be laid to rest by Sarah, but he was quickly buried in an $8.50 casket in what is now Orange Hill Cemetery.
His story made newspapers around the country.
“Gained Suffrage by Subterfuge,” the Tampa Tribune wrote.
Everybody wanted to unravel the mystery of “Orlando’s Beardless Man.”
If they’d had Google, they might have found an 1889 article in the New York World about Hanna Calder, “the wildest tomboy who ever lived.
“When Hanna reached the years of womanhood she failed to take on the characteristics with which the very name of womankind is pregnant,” the article said.
Calder married a teenage girl who lived on a nearby farm. He told the priest, “I am a man, but my good parents brought me up as a girl.”
The couple moved to Baltimore, but the marriage dissolved when the girl’s family took her back. Calder stayed in Baltimore, working as a bartender.
He eventually met Sarah Kemp. They fell in love, but finding a bakery to make a wedding cake was the least of their worries.
“She is a monster ineffable,” the World wrote in its exposé on Calder.
Monsters.
That’s what society considered anyone in the LGBTQ spectrum back then. Orlando wasn’t exactly waving rainbow flags, but it offered a fresh start for the Calders.
Hiram almost managed to take his secret to the grave. But the tale of the “First Woman to Vote in Florida” became Orlando lore.
But Hiram wasn’t pretending to be a man. By today’s standards, he was a transgender man.
As for registering to vote, it’s unclear what the rules were in 1902. These days, a driver’s license or state-issued identification card or U.S. passport is usually used.
Until 2011, a transgender person had to have undergone gender-reassignment surgery in order to change their gender marker on state-issued IDs.
Now they need only documentation they are undergoing “clinical treatment.”
So was Hiram Calder really the first woman to vote in Florida?
It depends on whether you apply 2019 laws to 1902, or vice versa.
But this week’s Ask Orlando inquiry raised another question — should we even answer?
“He’s been dead a long time,” Gillian Branstetter said. “There are concerns addressing in death what he didn’t want to address while alive.”
She’s a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality. Her concern was that we’d be outing Calder by writing about him.
But Hiram has been effectively outed for more than a century. My guess is he’d be tired of being known as the woman who voted before it was legal.
He’d rather be remembered as a man who was married to his wife, and their love was such that he could not live without her.
That doesn’t sound much like a monster.
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