Unearthing Queer DC: What Household Trash Reveals About the Past
Was Halcyon House a Queer Prohibition-Era Party Spot? An Archaeologist Investigates
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I’m delighted to continue my Queer Possibility in Action Series with Dr. Jenn Lupo. Dr. Lupo invites us to think about how archaeology, and specifically examinations of trash from a historic property can tell us about queer possibility in the past.
Be sure to check out the other articles in this series:
Lincoln, Fan Fiction, and Queer Museums: A Deep Dive into Possibility
Looking for Queer Possibility in Museums: An Interview with Margaret Middleton
Paid subscribers also received my personal essay, “You’ll Never See that Cutie Again” about the stragest wake I’ve ever attended (and what it taught me about queer ancestors)
Name: Dr. Jenn Lupu
Organization: Rhodes College
Can you tell us about the museum about which you do research?
I work with archaeological collections, most of which are housed by the DC Historic Preservation Office. In the US, construction projects that include federal funding or are on federally-owned land are required to go through an environment review process that includes a cultural resources assessment. This often includes archaeological testing and excavation. In Washington, DC, so much of the city is federally owned or involves some federal funding so there have been hundreds of excavations conducted all around the city with materials from the earliest inhabitants of the area to the 20th century. Most of these excavations are written up in a technical report and the collections are stored and never re-visited. I have been working with several of these collections and reports to look at household trash relating to Queer history and to the history of medicine. Before 1900, there was no central trash collection, and so before that time and for some Washingtonians for several more decades after that, many people disposed of their household trash in the yard of their house. They would dig a pit to fill with trash, or throw trash into an old privy or unused well. Because of this, archaeologists can often link a set of household trash materials to a set of names and demographic information in the census. Often, beyond listing the names, ages, genders, races, and occupations of the residents, nothing more exists about these people’s lives in historical documents. The archaeological materials can provide deeper insights into the everyday lives of Washingtonians who are unrecorded or minimally recorded in record books.
In particular, I’ve been working with the Halcyon House collection, a set of household trash excavated from the yard of a mansion in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC. In the 1980s, a team of archaeologists excavated the site. However, due to disagreements between the land owner and the archaeology firm, the project was never completed, a report was never written, and the artifacts were stored in boxes mid-processing. It is not a museum collection - the materials are mostly 19th and 20th century household trash that was intended to be thrown away and never seen again. However, that is a rich data set that can yield insights into people’s lives at homes and people who are mis-recorded or unrecorded in historical documents and history books.
What drew you to this work?
The Halcyon house collection has materials from many eras, including the 1800s, 1860s, and the 1910s. I was drawn to the collection by rumors around the 1910s materials in the collection which have long been rumored to relate to queer history. From 1900-1938, Halcyon House was owned by Albert Adsit Clemons, and newspaper reports and neighborhood rumors suggest Albert lived alone with a male carpenter. Together the two remodeled the house, adding, among many other things, a theater with a secret entrance designed to look like window shades from the outside. This is right around or just before the time of Prohibition, and in many American cities, queer spaces, which already tended to be somewhat secretive, became sites of alcohol consumption. Although trash collection existed in Georgetown by this time, a wealth of material from this era was buried underneath a patio in the backyard. The materials are stylistically similar to items listed as Albert’s belongings on a post-death inventory. The materials included items from lingerie and clothing that tended to be female-coded or marketed to women, such as garter hooks, corsets, and hand-held fans. Also included are remains of make-up, many jars of Pond’s cold cream (sometimes used for removing make-up), red lamp glass, and numerous alcohol bottles. These all point to the interpretation that they related to a secretive queer party scene around the time of Prohibition.
As a queer woman myself, I felt drawn to the possibility of a queer ancestor having discarded some of these materials. I’ve since done some community- engaged work around different parts of the collections and in particular have found that other LGBTQ people are excited to learn about queer people in the past. Often, queer history is presented as starting with Stonewall, but same-gender loving and gender nonconforming people have always existed. It can be empowering to hear these stories told and to learn about people who today might identity as LGBTQ+.
What is one of your favorite aspects of the museum or collections? This could be an object in its collections, a juicy anecdote you’ve stumbled on in research, or a treasured visitor interaction you’ve witnessed, etc.
There’s a few objects that I absolutely love from the Clemons trash deposits from Halcyon House. There’s a piece of bright red lamp glass, from the globe of an oil lamp. Although electricity had been invented, Albert Clemons was staunchly against electricity and refused to install it in the house. In addition, at the time the Temperance Movement and social morality norms pushed for simple white china and plain lamp globes as indications of morality. Red and pink lamp glass has been found in relation to brothel sites and other sites that transgress social norms of morality, so it’s another indication that the Halcyon house site might have been a queer party scene during this era. It’s also cool to imagine queer parties in the 1910s and 1920s lit by a reddish glow from the oil lamps.(all photos by Jenn Lupu)
Another item that is super cool is a small fragment of ceramic. It’s unusual and at first I didn’t know what it could be. It’s glazed on the outside with some partial text but unglazed on the interior. It looked a little like a pipe bowl, but it narrows too much at the lip and is a bit small for that (it is super tiny). For a few years, I asked many different archaeologists and no one had any idea what it could be. Then, I got lucky and asked the right person at a conference. It turns out, it is a small beer-stein charm that people would sometimes wear in their buttonholes or as a small adornment to indicate being against prohibition and in favor of drinking culture. They would say things like “I won’t be home till morning” or other phrases. The one in from Halcyon House is broken, but the visible text reads: “... can go…. [ ]fty a day…. [th]at’s no….”
A common phrase at the time was “A camel can go a day without a drink, but that’s no life.” It think this item might have said something similar. It also further supports the hypothesis that Albert was against Prohibition and in favor of drinking culture.
There are also several clasps, some from corsets. One of the clasps in the collection could be a corset clip or potentially a different type of clothing clip, such as from suspenders. It has a lotus and leaves engraved into it and is very beautiful. Albert was a collector of antiques and was particularly drawn to East-Asian items such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean porcelains. The flower, which appears to be a lotus, could indicate it was from a corset or other garment that had an East-Asian inspired aesthetic.
What are the kinds of narratives traditionally used in interpretation within historical archaeology about finding queerness in the past? How has the interpretation changed over time?
I often talk about how archaeologists (and historians) often treat past people as straight until proven otherwise. Instead, I think we need to ask why so few queer people have been identified in the past when we know they actually did exist. We miss so much by applying a heteronormative bias onto the past.
I’m also sometimes told or receive push-back about using the term “queer” to talk about historical people. I’ve been told it’s anachronistic or a more-recent term. First of all, historians and archaeologists are speaking to present-day people, and should use the modern language that is relevant, with appropriate explanation. The historical terminology for many types of people can be deeply offensive. I’m not going to be calling historical queer people “inverts” or “perverts,” which was the medical terminology reflecting that same-sex desire and gender nonconformity were seen at the time as abnormal, mental illnesses, or problems of character. Secondly, “queer” has been in use since the 1500s to mean different or strange, and has gradually been reclaimed and adopted to mean non-conformist or different in a more positive way. The use of the term “queer” to indicate people who are same-sex loving or gender non-conforming dates to as early as the 1910s. And finally, the concept of heterosexuality as an orientation and the term “heterosexual” is actually much more recent, dating from the 20th century. While ideas of male and female, a gender binary, and the “traditional” family as a male-female couple with children existed before the term “heterosexuality” was coined, modern ideas of heteronormativity (heterosexuality as an assumed norm) are often projected onto the past and face much less critique from the mainstream history community. Assuming heterosexuality is actually a much more pervasive issue that biases historical research. If we treat historical people as “straight” until proven otherwise, we will end up with an incomplete and erroneous version of the past that erases queerness and gender nonconformity from our history books. That is not only incorrect, but deeply harmful because it reinforces an idea that LGBTQ+ people are only around in today’s world, and along with that the idea that if anti-trans and anti-queer laws are passed, eventually queer people will go away. People who today would identity as LGBTQ+ have always existed and have been fighting to live and love as ourselves for as long as the gender binary and the Christian family strucutre have existed. In actuality, the gender binary and the nuclear family are relatively recent inventions which obscure and oversimplify the diversity of human gender identities and relationships.
What role, if any, has queerness played in stories about the house whose collections are the basis of your work?
The queer mythos around Albert Clemons and Halcyon is long-lived. One of the original project archaeologists told me that there were neighborhood rumors about Clemons’ queerness that endured into the 1980s when the archaeological excavation occurred. (Clemons died in 1938). Clemons has caught the attention of other queer researchers before me as well. One of the historians on the 1980s excavation project learned of the possible queer associations with Clemons and published a letter in DC’s gay newspaper, The Washington Blade, asking if anyone knew anything about Clemons or his partner. There’s still some ambiguity around Clemons because he got legally married to a woman at one point, named Elizabeth White Clemons. Some records suggest that Elizabeth was living across town in her late-mother’s house, co-residing with a woman listed as her “companion.” This is during the time that Clemons was at Halcyon. In his Last Will and Testament, Clemons wrote, “To my wife, Elizabeth White Clemons, who has ample independent means, I leave my grateful love and affection for many years of kindness and friendly interest and assistance.” It is impossible to know the exact nature of Albert and Elizabeth’s relationship, but these documents suggest they did not lead a traditional, interdependent, heterosexual lifestyle. I think this was a “lavender marriage” or a marriage between two queer people, often for social reasons. Both Albert and Elizabeth were wealthy and engaged in Washington’s elite society. It’s also possible that Elizabeth being married was a condition of her inheritance as they got married around the time Elizabeth’s mother passed. Albert and Elizabeth married when they were both in their 40s and they never had children.
Still sometimes, people push back on my suggestion that Albert may have been queer and/or transgender. They want to imagine that the fancy corset materials and the make-up in the Halcyon trash was Elizabeth’s, even though there’s no evidence she ever lived at the house. Ultimately there are things about the past and details of people’s lives that we many never be able to know, but I would assert that assuming heterosexuality is much more harmful than seeking out queerness. As a queer woman myself, Albert’s materials read as queer-coded to me. That’s based on a wealth of research and evidence, but it’s also based on my positionality as a queer person. I think this is part of why it’s valuable to have researchers of many different identities, because we notice different things and are drawn to different research topics. Too much of history has been written by white men who claim to be “objective” but are really just deeply biased in their own patriarchal, heteronormative, white supremacist world view. Not necessarily intentionally, but many white male historians have not been pushed to question their own assumptions or subconscious biases.
How has the response to questions about queerness related to this place and collection changed over time?
I have gotten more confident in presenting this as a queer site. I was initially surprised to find how discomforted some audience members became when I talked about the past in ways that contradicted their unquestioned worldview. In many conversations with straight-identified community members, I noted a desire to pull the artifacts back into a straightened narrative, and push away the potential queerness that felt out of place for them in the past they had imagined. At one of my first library talks, I talked about the possible gender nonconformity or queerness at the house in the 20th century and I got some pointed, oppositional responses. Could I be sure the trash deposit items belonged to Albert? Maybe the corset clips, stockings, and makeup belonged to a mysterious woman unlisted in the census. I acknowledged this could be possible, but that there was a lot of evidence suggesting possible queer use of the materials. A woman in the audience raised her hand. “I think all the straight people in the audience are hoping that you are wrong.” She said it off-handedly, but it took me by surprise. Hoping that I’m wrong? After reflecting on this encounter, I began to think more deeply about the assumptions that underlay her comment. In retrospect, I read her statement as indicating an underlying discomfort with the thought of queerness, and a desire to return to a historical fantasy in which everyone was straight, or at least was pretending to be. I have since changed how I present the Clemons’ materials to pre-empt this response. I now start by showing journal entries, photographs, and other sources that broadly demonstrate that queer people existed in the past. We know queer people existed, but they are under-identified in the archaeological record. I assert that treating past people as straight until proven otherwise is part of queer erasure and creates an inaccurate past. A queer lens and queer positionality can be a corrective that helps yield new insights.
How do you see the museum as a site for discussions of queer history?
Material culture provides a tangible touchstone to the past. It’s harder to deny parts of history when the actual stuff is sitting there in front of you. Taking the corset clips for example, and imagining them worn on a queer body prompts people to think about the tactile, the experience of wearing adornments that might be affirming to a person whose gender did not align with the strict categories of the time. It starts a new set of conversations, and is more relatable than a text account alone.
Why are museums and historic sites such a great place to explore this topic?
Museums can be both a window to the past and window to our own world. With that in mind, what can the idea of “queer possibility” coined by Margaret Middleton as a guide for museum interpretation offer by way of hope for how we can interpret other kinds of spaces and institutions where we spend our lives?
I’ve been working with a colleague in performance studies, Dr. Benjamin Zender. They worked with me to create a creative writing workshop. Participants each chose an artifact from the Halcyon materials and we led them through some creative writing exercises that Benjamin had created. We had the participants imagine stories around the artifacts. As a speculative and creative project, this builds on the work of other scholars such as Saidiya Hartman to write the histories that can’t be recovered from the archival materials alone. It isn’t the story of what did happen, but the story of what could have happened. Living in that space of possibility and writing our own queer heritage to repair the harms of biased, narrow mainstream histories.
Lastly, is Indiana Jones queer history? Where is the fan fic!?
I would love to do a drag performance someday as Indiana Jones. Even though he wasn’t doing good archaeology according to ethical guidelines for the discipline, he is a fun public character that people associate with archaeology. And he’s so over the top with his masculinity and sex appeal - I think that’s very camp.
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