Griffith’s presentation, titled “Six-Horse Charley,” will begin at 6 p.m. in the Nancy Howe Auditorium. She will tell the story of Charley Parkhurst, the legendary stagecoach driver who spent her life masquerading as a man.
Parkhurst was born in Vermont and reared as a girl, Charlotte Parkhurst, in New England, living mostly in orphanages. She ran away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a male. As an adult, she eventually made her way to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and became a noted stagecoach driver.
In 1868, Parkhurst voted in the presidential election. In doing so, she became perhaps the first American woman voter, some 52 years before the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed all women in the United States the right to vote. Parkhurst kept her true gender a secret until her death in 1879.
Griffith’s presentation at the Howe Library is free and open to the public.
