Ellen D.B. Riggle
Ancestors and Legacies | Talbott Street
In the black and white photograph my mother gave me on my 28th birthday, my great-grandfather, a poised, handsome young Benjamin Harrison, wears a tweed suit jacket over a high collar white shirt with a gray bowtie, clipped hair neatly parted on the left side, and small rimless spectacles perched atop his nose ridge. The family resemblance is evident in his eyes and soft lips.
Though I was introduced to him as an infant before his relocation to the Union Printers Retirement Home in Colorado, I have no memory of him. He died a few months after my second birthday.
My mother explained she was giving me the photo because my great-grandfather was gay.
"How could you have failed to mention this in the past ten years since I came out to you?" I asked in my most incredulous tone.
She shrugged. "It just never occurred to me."
Ben’s life is now my own urgent mystery, a DNA throughline from past to present.
~
Born in 1893 in Pennsylvania, Ben moved to Illinois after graduating high school and met Mabel at a publishing company where they both worked. Ben was 18 and Mabel 24 when they married a few months later.
Did he know then?
To avoid the shame of marrying a much younger man, Mabel erased the year of her birth in the family Bible, using thick pencil to revise her age to match his. They had two daughters and eventually settled in a two-story brick home on the near north side of downtown Indianapolis, close to the main trolley line.
~
Nearly 20 years after his death, and several years before receiving the portrait, I visited a new gay bar housed in a converted movie theater a block from where they had lived. The marquee announced the name of the bar in bold red letters: TALBOTT STREET.
My mother went with me.
She had visited the building before while staying summers with her grandparents. She was allowed to walk alone to the theater for the 25-cent matinee. In this space, she could still smell the popcorn, and the sticky floors were not much changed from the syrupy spilled soda pop of happy childhood memories. The space was a connection to her beloved grandparents, and a new connection to me.
A bored bouncer sitting at the heavy wood and glass entry door checked our IDs. If he was surprised by someone my mother’s age looking every bit a Midwest country farm woman in jeans and white blouse with tiny blue flowers, he didn’t blink an eye. He also didn’t blink at my pitifully fake ID.
Inside the lobby, the old popcorn stand had been transformed into a round wooden bar selling alcohol and poppers from the glass candy case. This was the year before AIDS exploded on the scene, so bowls of free condoms by the beer taps had not yet appeared.
The wall behind the bar was open to the theater where the upholstered seats had been removed. The concrete floor sloped gently towards the old stage and screen. People danced with the abandon of finally being set free, for just a moment, in just this place.
Was Ben ever able to dance with abandon?
Once our eyes adjusted to the dim light, my mother excused herself to the restroom. When she returned a short time later, she cheerfully described all the nice ladies she’d met. She helped them with their elaborate dresses, which required adjusting and zippering. They had wonderful conversations about where they were from and where they worked. Knowing my mother, they almost certainly also traded a recipe or two. My mother had met her first drag queens.
The music and shouting voices escalated as the evening progressed. Bodies dripped with sweat despite the cold winter night outside. I watched from the side of the room as my mother danced with a nice young gay man, smiling as he held her gently, shielding her from the throng of other dancers. Throughout the evening, my friends, old and new, surrounded my mother, talking, laughing, and soaking up her warmth.
Did Ben’s mother love him as mine loved me?
~
Ben was a member of the International Typographical Union. As a typesetter, he meticulously created the printing plates for books. My mother remembered hearing a tale about colleagues who changed a single letter in one line during Ben’s lunch break to see if he would catch it before the end of the workday. Apparently, he did, and everyone had a good laugh.
I wonder if they suspected?
My mother also recounted family stories of Ben taking Mabel shopping at the downtown Ayres department store, picking out clothes for her to try on. Always dapper himself, he wanted her to dress fashionably as well.
He was a member of the social and charitable fraternity of the Freemasons, spending much of his free time at the men’s club. Was this secretive society – an organization that emphasizes morality and obedience to the law – a place to hide the transgression of an "abominable and detestable crime against nature?”
Sometime in 1950, Mabel filed for divorce. Ben moved out of the family home and into a studio apartment a couple of blocks away.
When did Mabel know?
~
After receiving the birthday gift, I peppered my mother with questions: “How do you know he was gay?” and “Did he have a boyfriend?"
A teenager in the 1950s, my mother had never directly been told of Ben’s sexual orientation, whether gay or perhaps bisexual. However, she did meet Johnny, a slight, younger man who accompanied Ben on a visit to the family farm in North-central Indiana. My mother vividly remembers her own father – a man with a volatile temper – calling Ben and Johnny perverts, kicking them out of the house, warning them to leave, and threatening to beat them to death with a two by four should they return. Later, putting the pieces together, my mother understood what had happened.
Though I was accepted in my family – or at least not rejected, my girlfriends were welcomed at family events – the one time my mother brought up Ben’s sexuality and possible relationship, the conversation was quickly shut down.
I still sometimes wonder: Who was Johnny? What happened to him? Are his queer family members now searching for clues in their own family tree? Is his family as afraid to talk about his sexuality as mine is to discuss Ben’s? Or, do they even know?
~
I watch shows which trace a person’s ancestry, including PBS’s Finding Your Roots. In a typical episode, the host reveals outlaws and entrepreneurs, unknown marriages and scandalous out-of-wedlock children, and forgotten or hidden tragedies. Not once have I heard the host say, “Your great-grandfather was gay!” (Nor any other relative for that matter, but maybe I missed those episodes.)
One ancestry search site advises those looking for LGBTQ relatives to check military records for a dishonorable discharge. Ben did not serve in the military. They suggest consulting old newspapers and court records for arrests or convictions for sodomy or unnatural behaviors. No arrest records exist for Ben. They recommend looking at census records for those living at the same address. Ben lived with Mabel, then alone.
As in most cases, Ben’s records yield no clues. These ancestors slip into the crevices of the woodwork of time where the walls cannot (or will not) talk. When we seek our lost family members -- those hidden, silenced, rewritten, overwritten, erased – we rescue history by finding the true meaning of queer – something, or someone, beyond ordinary.
LGBTQ people are more visible now than in years past, but many still grow up in families with few, if any, openly queer relatives. Queer folks often move away from their family of origin, looking for safer, more welcoming places to belong, creating chosen families. This act of self-preservation abandons the youth, leaving them with vicarious traumas and limiting intergenerational wisdom. We need our queer voices to be found in history and heard in the present. What will future generations learn from our records of life, love, and struggle?
~
Ben’s portrait hangs on my wall. He is my ancestor; I am his legacy. I honor him by paying it forward as I like to imagine he was doing for me.
Ellen D.B. Riggle is an award-winning educator, author, and poet, currently based in Kentucky. Their poems have been published in Rise Up Review, Pegasus, and Earth’s Daughters. Their academic work and credentials can be found at PrismResearch.org.
