July 29 - Washington D.C.
Congress passed a law for the District of Columbia that states that "for the preservation of the public peace and the protection of property within the District of Columbia." Labeled in the law as vagrants were "all public prostitutes, and all such persons who lead a notoriously lewd or lascivious course of life." All offenders had to post bond of up to $200 for good behavior for a period of six months.
1899
Oregon
Marie Equi, Oregon’s first publicly known lesbian, arrives in The Dalles, Oregon to help her girlfriend Bessie Holcomb manage a homestead a few miles outside town. She is twenty years old. The two women emigrated to Oregon from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Oregon
Two men enter the Oregon Penitentiary for sodomy a couple of weeks apart and the clerk entering
information into the prison register writes “Sodomy !” for each, but doesn’t place an exclamation point after the crimes of manslaughter or rape.
The Oregonian carries the story of Sandor/Sarolta Vay, a Hungarian woman raised as a boy. She marries ten different women.
1890
Oregon
A neighbor reports a Gay male couple in Portland to the police and both are jailed.
1898
Congressional ACTs of Congress:
Governmental Agencies Formed:
Constitutional Amendments & Policy:
Treaties:
Supreme Court Rulings:
Michigan
At an a suffrage conference held in Michigan, Oregon’s indomitable woman suffrage leader, Abigail Scott Duniway, castigates any woman who doesn’t like men as a “sour-souled, vinegar-visaged specimen of unfortunate femininity, who owes the world an apology for living in it at all.” She thought such women should “steal away and die, in the company of the man who doesn’t like women.”
1894
Oregon
The Oregonian runs a feature on “old maids,” mentioning several famous contemporary women who’ve never married. They include a number of women now known to have been Lesbians: sculptor Harriet Hosmer, painter Rosa Bonheur, writer Sarah Orne Jewett, temperance leader Frances Willard, feminists Susan B. Anthony and Anna Dickinson, nurse Florence Nightingale, and Rose Cleveland, sister of the President, who had acted as the official White House hostess before he married.
1892
Oregon
Marie Equi horsewhips a school superintendent in The Dalles, Oregon over a pay dispute involving her schoolteacher girlfriend, Bessie Holcomb. Newspapers describe the intimate, loving relationship of the two women. This is the first publicly reported lesbian relationship in the state.
Oregon
Oregon born itinerant laborer Hayes Perkins notes in his diary that he encountered a “homo sexual” traveling with his “punk” with him “constantly.” Clearly not understanding their relationship, Perkins states “they act like two sixteen year old lovers more than two friends.”
1895
United States History for 1890 - 1899
1893
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