WE WERE HERE

Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived together for over 40 years in a relationship that was, for all intents and purposes, a marriage. Their community recognized it. Their relatives recognized it. They did not live in the shadows, have relationships with men to throw off the scent, or cower from public duty. They were considered to be good neighbors, trusted friends to members of the community, and a couple in whom local families placed a great deal of trust, when it came to educating young women in the seamstress/tailor trade. While they died years apart, they are buried in the same plot, and share a tombstone.

None of this sounds all that shocking: this could be a story about two women living in Park Slope, in 2019. It isn't. Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived in rural Vermont, in the first half of the 19th century.

Until very recently, erasure of gay lives has been the norm (and still is, in many places). The well-documented lives Charity and Sylvia led as a loving, devoted couple, however, makes me think of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We don't - we CAN'T - know the names of all of those who have been erased over the centuries, but we do know the names Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. More than 200 years after they first got together, their names scream out:

 "WE WERE HERE, AND WE STILL ARE"