Prescott Townsend, From the First World War to the First Pride Parade, with Theo Linger (episode 193)

Intro

Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[0:05] Welcome To Hub history where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston.
The Hub of the Universe This is Episode 193 prescott townsend from the first World War to The First Pride Parade Hi, I’m Jake.
I’m in the middle of moving this weekend.
A home renovation that was supposed to last three months before the pandemic finally wrapped up this week.
So on Friday night, I slept in my own house for the first time since before Thanksgiving because I’ve been packing and unpacking and lugging boxes around.
I’m gonna air a brief interview and then share a classic episode.
Prescott townsend was one of the most interesting figures in Boston’s LGBTQ history.
He was the ultimate Boston Brahmin, coming of age at Harvard in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt and enlisting in the Navy during World War.
He served time in prison after getting caught in a Beacon Hill trist back when homosexuality was a crime in Boston and spent decades as an activist helping to found the gay liberation movement.
He even marched at the head of the inaugural Pride Parade on the first anniversary of Stonewall.

[1:17] I’m also gonna introduce you to a researcher who’s uncovered new information about prescott as part of an effort to improve how the National Park Service interprets the LGBTQ History of Boston.
But before we meet this week’s interview subject and talk about prescott townsend, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:38] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is a book by Esther Forbes.
Forbes is well known is the author of Johnny Tremain, a beloved novel for young readers.
This fictional version of the lead up to the Revolutionary War in Boston was published in 1943 and won the next year’s Newbery Award.
Of course. A decade later, Disney made it into a feature film.

[2:02] Now what I didn’t realize until recently is that the year before Esther Forbes published Johnny Tremain, she published a biography of Paul Revere.
There remains one of the most respected titles on Revere and the historical context of his famous ride.
When co host America, Nikki started work at the Old North Church Historic site, she wanted to make sure to refresh her knowledge of the events of April 17 75 and every historian we asked recommended Paul Revere and the world he lived in by Esther Forbes.

[2:34] A 1942 review by Revolutionary War historian Fredrik Kirkland explains how she immerses the reader in the world of 18th century Boston and why she won the Pulitzer Prize for history.
In 1943 Justice Johnny Tremain was being published.
She has created a picture of revolutionary times, which is unsurpassable.
There is not the slightest doubt that she knows Boston and the Colonial era, as few historians do perfectly at home. There she makes the reader aware of the Living Boston, one of the most vital and energetic cities of the 18th century.
Her happy faculty of giving an apt picture in a few words, is well illustrated by her remark that his earliest 17 15 Boston was more than a geographical fact.
Even then, it was something of a state of mind.
All in all, Paul Revere, in the world he lived in, is a real contribution to American history in general and that of Boston in particular.
It could have been written only by a New Englander and by one who had read voluminously about the colonial era.

[3:39] I’ll take that endorsement at face value, and I can’t wait to dig into the book as soon as Nikki’s done with it.

Upcoming Event

[3:46] And for the upcoming event this week, I have a lunchtime virtual event that reflects one of my favorite recent podcast episodes.
Back in the beginning of June, I discussed the criminal career of Burglar Levi Aims.
Whoever the most interesting part of the story came after he was hanged in 17 73 when medical students would go on to be the top.
Doctors in the newly independent United States tried desperately to steal his corpse, while a sympathetic minister tried desperately to hide it.
If you like that tale of grave robbing resurrection men, you might enjoy this talk titled Anatomical Acts.
Exploring the Intersections between Popular Anatomy and Popular Theatre in 19th century America,
the events being hosted by the Mass Historical Society and led by Mia Levenson, a PhD candidate at Tufts,
her research examines 19th century grave robbing, public performance of science and the growing popularity of blackface minstrel shows showing how these seemingly disparate subjects are intertwined.
Here’s how the MHS website describes it.

[4:54] Levenson will contextualize our researches the intersection of three historical threads.
The increasing importance of anatomical science to medical education, which contributed to widespread theft of bodies from public and primarily African American graves.
The rise of a popular anatomy whereby moral reformers sought to uplift the white middle class through anatomical education,
and the popularity of minstrel see a theatrical form that created a mockery of black anatomy while in some burlesque simultaneously using the site of the dissection room is a punch line.

[5:31] The talk will be held at 12 p.m. On Thursday, July 16. It’s free to the public, but you must register in advance to get the connection details.
We’ll have the link you need, as well as a link to buy the Esther Forbes book in the show notes this week at hub history dot com slash 193,
While you’re on the site, please consider clicking the support US link and becoming a sponsor of hub history on patriotic.
Our patri on sponsors enable us to produce this show by funding the cost of Web hosting and security, our podcast media host transcription services and the audio processing tools we use to create the best sounding show we can,
I’d like to thank all our supporters, including Liza M.
Our most recent Patri on sponsor.
If you’d like to join Liza in helping us make hub history, just goto patri on dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support link.

Theo Linger Interview

[6:31] Now to kick us off. I have an interview. You may recall that back in May, I read a Facebook message from a listener whose Masters Capstone project was inspired, in part by our show, about gay rights pioneer prescott townsend.
Well, that listener was theo linger, who’s joining me now to discuss the project.

Jake – Interview:
[6:50] Theo, Welcome to the show.

Theo_Linger:
[6:51] It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jake – Interview:
[6:54] Now, before I ask you about your master’s project, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your job?

Theo_Linger:
[7:01] Sure. Um, my name is Theo linger. I am a seasonal park ranger with the National Parks of Boston That, um, if you’re not familiar, consists of,
Boston National Historical Park, Austin African American National Historic Site and Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park.
So there’s those three sites air kind of my purview. And as for some other things about me more personally, I just completed my M A in history at Simmons University.
Graduated in May of 2020.
Um, and I have now lived here since 2017 in Boston.

Jake – Interview:
[7:44] All right. I’m also a transplant. I moved here originally in 1997. So have a little head start on you. What led you to the National Park Service?

Theo_Linger:
[7:52] I have been interested in history since at the very least, when I was 11 years old.
I you ever since that point, I wanted to do something in the field of history.
I think I fell into the Park Service a little bit out of spite because my mom is a classroom teacher. And when I said I was into history, the first question out of everyone’s mouth was always What were you going to become a teacher.
Like your mom hand, I made my emphatic no all the way into National Park service.
Some still a teacher, but not in the same way.

Jake – Interview:
[8:28] Tell me more about this. So what is the job of, ah, seasonal park ranger?

Theo_Linger:
[8:32] All right, well, for 66 months out of the year, we will show up in the parks and be a lot of the people that you meet on the front line when you go to a National park service site anywhere in the country,
especially in the summertime months, so we’ll be the ones at the front desk.
Giving you your park map will be the ones, uh, probably giving you your tour of the park.
So where the world all of the Kremlin friendly faces.

Jake – Interview:
[9:04] So before you completed your masters, what was your personal role with the National Parks of Boston?

Theo_Linger:
[9:11] My personal role? WAAS conducting tours of the Freedom Trail Black Heritage Trail, also providing informational talks in Faneuil Hall.
Um and honestly, that kind of led to a little bit of what I focused on in my master’s project as it would happen, because,
as we all gave those Faneuil Hall talks one after one after another in the in the upstairs of Faneuil Hall,
I noticed that a lot of us were mentioning that there were discussions off LGBT Q rights in Faneuil Hall.
But we didn’t have a lot of, um, primary sources to back that up.
We had a few mentions in the historical record, but we didn’t actually know very much about this thing that we were, um, kind of saying over and over.

Jake – Interview:
[10:06] So it sounds like you noticed some pretty obvious gaps in the way public history is presented in Boston. And your project, at least in part, is an attempt to fill those gaps.
How did you make the jump from presenting history at, say, Faneuil Hall and hearing these stories background stories, too? Jumping in and doing the research yourself.

Theo_Linger:
[10:30] Quite honestly, I had finished all of the programs that were required of me.
And at that point, once you have all the required to freedom Trail tours, Black Heritage Trail, African Meetinghouse, Faneuil Hall, all of the above,
then you’re encouraged by your supervisors to start branching out and start doing your own research.
So it was really just a natural progression of fulfilling my requirements and looking then for my individual niche.

Jake – Interview:
[11:03] And then, very selfishly, I’ll ask where Hub history fits into the picture.

Theo_Linger:
[11:09] Ah, well, that’s a very important piece of the puzzle. So in a legal was December 2018.
That episode originally dropped, and as soon as it did my colleague Dave, who is my podcast buddy, sitting around the office seeing, uh, what have you subscribed?
Subscribes anything you lately he was the one that pointed out.
There’s this podcast episode about this man I’ve never heard of. Have you heard of him who apparently live right on the Black Heritage Trail?

Jake – Interview:
[11:44] Yeah, I think I had a very similar first introduction to prescott townsend, having done a little reading on him.
Now he seems like a towering figure, but he just came out of nowhere for me. I’d never heard the name or heard of his giant personality, so we’ve been hinting around the edges a little bit. But what?
What was the gist of your capstone project For your degree?

Theo_Linger:
[12:07] Well, what I wanted to do was create a most starter kit for interpreting LGBT Q history at this particular Park service unit, the National Parks of Boston,
and that would take on a couple different parts in Faneuil Hall.
I would look at the lesbian and gay town meeting, which actually occurred in Faneuil Hall for almost 20 years.
And then for Beacon Hill, looking at, well, your friend and mine, prescott townsend.

Jake – Interview:
[12:39] Okay.

Theo_Linger:
[12:40] And coming up with a few different pieces that would come together to create one large hole that could be given to,
say, my CIS gender heterosexual colleagues that may not have delved into this history before and might not know where to start.

Jake – Interview:
[12:59] What’s the output of that project? What do you actually putting in a Rangers hands to help them interpret that lesser known history?

Theo_Linger:
[13:07] Great, great question. So the center pieces probably this long ish 20 some page guide for interpreters at my park.
Taking on this history for the first time, this guide covers things like potential topics. You can research further on your own, uh, language that you should use when talking about different historical figures.
What to do if visitor interactions get to be sort of challenging, Um, and even some book recommendations to get somebody started.
I also have, um, outlines prepared for, you know, in the after times when we were allowed to.

Jake – Interview:
[13:49] Uh huh.

Theo_Linger:
[13:50] Get it back out into the world and go on things like walking tours again, a walking tour about the life of prescott townsend and a talk about LGBTQ history as it applies within Faneuil Hall,
and I also have a couple articles that I need to edit down very, very badly for the NPS website.

Jake – Interview:
[14:09] Well, as a former walking tour guide and as ah, very enthusiastic participant in walking tours, I’m looking forward to the after times and being able to Ah, get out and take that prescott townsend tour. That sounds like a lot of fun.
What is the research like for a project like this?
I went out. I read a couple of books that included chapters on prescott townsend, but from our offline checked it sounds like you did Cem riel. Primary source or historic research? What does that entail?

Theo_Linger:
[14:41] For one thing, as faras thief Faneuil Hall piece, I pretty much had to start from square one.
There wasn’t a lot out there in Thesis Kandarian scholarship about what was going on in Faneuil Hall, so I had really set up shop in Northeastern for a few months.
I would go in once a week on the clock and everything he’d painted wonderfully to do this and, um, just camp out in Northeastern and go through box after box after box,
of records for different organizations.
For the publication Gay Community News, which I was surprised to learn, was a Boston based paper that actually ended up being the,
first LGBT newspaper rather than magazine newspaper, to reach a national audience,
which is which is pretty astounding.
So I was digging through all of that. Plus when I got to the prescott townsend issue, the issue waas There aren’t a lot of primary sources about him anymore.
Harvard has a couple files.
The Boston Athenaeum has three boxes, and most of what he owned in his life was destroyed when his homes caught fire.
So I had to kind of get creative At that point.

Jake – Interview:
[16:05] So what is getting creative look like?

Theo_Linger:
[16:07] I decided, um, you know my usually my focus when I study history is on the 19th century and delving into the 20th century in a big way.
For the first time, let me to consider home a lot of the people that townsend new are probably still alive, which is not usually a luxury I have when studying history. So why not let me look?
We look up some people and see if they’re willing to talk. So I actually ended up conducting to oral histories.
Um, I was going to start in on 1/3 potential lead, but then Cove it hit, and I haven’t been able to pursue that adequately.

Jake – Interview:
[16:50] If I can interrupt us for a second for the listener Sick. What does the term oral history mean in this context?

Theo_Linger:
[16:56] In this context, it meant sitting down with a recorder between myself and my interpreter, the interviewee, if you will, and just conducted an interview.
I aimed for 90 minutes of conversation, Um, and just try to make sure my specific questions ended up asked.
But I was mostly just leaving a live mic,
for a lot of for a lot of it, just to get a sense of what the person’s speaking style was like their storytelling style, all these other extraneous bits of information that,
wouldn’t necessarily be edited down like our interview that we’re doing right now, for instance,
the idea would be to leave it as as raw as possible and only really correct for background sound.

Jake – Interview:
[17:51] That’s interesting and kind of intimidating again.
As you intimated, one of the dirty secrets of our podcast and basically all podcasts is just about everybody, and it’s to some degree after the fact to make themselves and their guests sound good.
So to me, sitting down in front of Mike knowing that it would be preserved in its raw form would be pretty intimidating.

Theo_Linger:
[18:14] Oh, it was. It was definitely a little terrifying.

Jake – Interview:
[18:18] So what sorts of things do you learn by doing an aural history with acquaintances of prescott townsend? That wouldn’t have been in again the pretty, sparse secondary sources that that I used, for example, in my podcast.

Theo_Linger:
[18:33] Well, you really get to know just these thoughts as they come to people about what this person was like, what they remember of this person who was prescott townsend to this individual.
And it was particularly exciting because one of them and I was talking.
Thio was somebody who I don’t think has ever been interviewed before. Certainly not about prescott townsend, because he loves this rather private off the grid sort of life.
You get all these little extra fun stories that you might not otherwise find out from a book.

Jake – Interview:
[19:13] I already find prescott Johnson to be an incredibly colorful character, just from the small amounts of information I’ve been able to pick up it. Is there anything that you were able to learn that goes beyond the page that you’re willing to share?

Theo_Linger:
[19:27] Sure. So what comes to mind is this story that Joe McGrath told me Joe McGrath is the person I mentioned who, ah, has to my knowledge, never been interviewed before.
He was a little bit of everything to townsend.
He sort of managed Townsend’s properties, drove him to different places. Whether there was a conference of some sort happening in New York or protest in Philadelphia, it would be Joe behind the wheel, making sure prescott got there.
He just did all these different errands and took care of the place and helped edit townsend newsletter eso.
Talking to him was truly incredible, because during the 19 sixties, I doubt there was a person who spent more time with townsend than Show.
Joe told me this really amazing story about the second time he ever met prescott townsend. The first time Waas, um in province town in the summer of 1960.
And then they met again at the Boston Arts Festival, like purely by chance of the very following summer 1961.

[20:43] In this story, he approached townsend and, uh, excitedly said, You know, hello, We’ve met before, and townsend was equally excited and invited him to dinner.
So they went to a restaurant on Newberry Street but no longer exists, called the English Room.
And afterwards townsend brought him back Teoh his home on Lindell Place, right off of Cambridge Street at the foot of Beacon Hill,
and Joe was a little taken aback by the state of the house.
It was a little run run down, he specifically referred. He specifically used the word decrepitude.

Jake – Interview:
[21:24] Uh, yes. Squalor is a word of red, Another condom.

Theo_Linger:
[21:28] Yes, yes, you see the words squalor quite a lot, and Joe would not disagree with you.
And standing in townsend Kitchen, Jova calls.
Um, he said he was remembering this quote with exact cleric fit clarity. He’s never forgotten it.
You are Irish, so you must like to drink.
Joe was a touch taken aback, but he sort of nodded.
He did indeed like to drink at that time of his life, and townsend went over to the fireplace and pulled out of somewhere a can of Pabst blue ribbon beer,
that was roughly 10 years old.
Hey, could tell it was old because it still needed a one of those old church key tools to open it.
I didn’t have a pull tab of any sort.
Townsend also did not have a refrigerator. So Joe had to just kind of stand there and watch as townsend ran it until the cold water.
For, as he said several minutes and to quote from Joe to give it a very minor chill.
Sufism extremely lukewarm beer and ended up being something he could barely barely stomach. He could barely get it down.
But, you know, he drank it to be pulled, to be polite, to be a nice guest.
And that was thes. Second time he met prescott townsend.

Jake – Interview:
[22:54] You know after that, it’s kind of amazing that he went on to spend as much time as it sounds like he did with prescott over the next decade or two.

Theo_Linger:
[23:02] Yeah, the next better part of a decade. Doing everything for this This gentleman.
That was just one of those astounding. The stories that hearing him tell it just put you in the room with him and really brought townsend toe life in a way that reading about him almost did. But not quite.

Jake – Interview:
[23:23] Who was the subject of your other oral history project?

Theo_Linger:
[23:25] Oh, yes. So Joe is actually my second interview.
My first interview was Randy Wicker and Randy Wicker.
For very first oral history interview ever was a very intimidating subject, because this is somebody I had read about,
in books, not just in the prescott townsend context, but in histories of stonewall and,
um, all sorts of different things from the early days of the movement.
So I knew he was a big deal going. Kin.
So I was utterly, utterly terrified, But, yeah, I had gone down to New York City for the weekend when we could still do that.
Remember when we could travel and meet up with people?

Jake – Interview:
[24:09] Yeah, I miss those days.

Theo_Linger:
[24:11] It was so nice sitting down with him.
Uh, he ended up being just absolute joy. I plan to be there in his apartment for I don’t know, two hours ended up being there for six hours, and he insisted that I stay for dinner and,
it was the whole saga was an adventure, but he was.
He was absolutely incredible to talk to a swell, just jumping around, not just about Townsend’s life, but also all these other people that he has known throughout his life.

Jake – Interview:
[24:44] And what was his relationship to prescott townsend?

Theo_Linger:
[24:47] His relationship to prescott townsend was a little more. I wouldn’t say tangential, but it was not as close, certainly, as prescott relationship with Joe McGrath.
So they were friends. Randi was somebody that Tom’s intended Teoh stay with couch surf with whenever he happened to be in New York for some sort of event.
But apart from being at different events together in New York City, they didn’t see a ton of each other.

Jake – Interview:
[25:16] Did you get the impression they mostly knew each other through the movement and less socially.

Theo_Linger:
[25:21] I think with Randy, the line is very, very blurred.
He has, ah, very, very large family of people that he has met through the movement, that there were definitely people that lived in Boston that would have, you know, obviously seen townsend a lot more.

Jake – Interview:
[25:37] You have to admit, I’m pretty jealous of your foresight in and thinking to do those interviews, and I’m sure it’ll be a gold mine for future research. I’m sure,
that leads me in a roundabout way to the question of where your project stands now.
So much of what you created is for use in in person, public history, and you managed to time it so it dropped right in the middle of a global pandemic.
Where does where, where did the in person elements of the project stand now?

Theo_Linger:
[26:11] Oh gosh, it is completely disrupted. So we’re not offering at the National Parks of Boston any tours this year,
and we’re still talking with the city government about Faneuil Hall, but that’s going to look like going forward.
What we are trying to do is adapt our programming to digital formats for the time being.
Eso, for instance, a couple weeks ago you would have had on one of your episodes promotion for an event that,
I did with the History Project and with Longfellow House, Washington’s headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge,
that we did over Zoom.
Well, I talked about prescott townsend, and my partner over at Longfellow talked about Samuel Longfellow, the poets brother.
So that was a pretty successful first go of it, and we were really pleased with how it turned out.
We really hoped to facilitate more of that going forward.

Jake – Interview:
[27:11] So are there other LGBT Q history topics that you would like to illuminate through the National Park Service, or that you feel others should try to take on two to bring to light through the NPS here in Boston?

Theo_Linger:
[27:25] Absolutely. I have a whole list of topics that we can’t wait to jump in on.
In general, we would love to illuminate the stories of LGBT Q People of color in Boston a lot more.
Also looking into women hot, more and for the women front, my for my next project, it seems to be looking into an Whitney who was the sculptor who created the statue of Samuel Adams outside of Faneuil Hall.
She never married and was in a long term involvement with another woman looking into her life.
And the lives of a lot of women in sculpture specifically seems to be, ah, hot topic for potential queer connections.
Plus, I’m really interested in the relationship between any Adams Fields who is married to a publisher to the stars James T. Fields for a very, very long time.
But then, after he passed away, she had a long term relationship for the rest of her life with Sarah Orange. Ooh, it who is a novelist?
I might do that work in conjunction with a Longfellow house as well.

Jake – Interview:
[28:38] What’s the connection to the Longfellow House?

Theo_Linger:
[28:39] Longfellow House Connection. Is that any Fields and Sarah Orange?
Ooh, it were family friends of the Longfellow family, and Longfellow himself published his all this writing through the publishing house of Tickner and Fields.
So Longfellow and all his literary friends would be frequent visitors at the literary salons that any fields hosted.

Jake – Interview:
[29:06] And the other stories you’re hoping to bring the light.

Theo_Linger:
[29:09] Yes, I’m currently.

Theo_Linger:
[29:10] Also with the Longfellow House team.
We were looking into making a video about Charles Sumner,
but now it has turned into an entire miniseries about Charles Sumner because he had all these very, very interesting romantic friendships with other men that were,
much more important to him clearly than anything he ever experienced with a woman.
So that’s been very, very interesting for us. Toe explore.

Jake – Interview:
[29:41] It sounds like there is a rich history still to tap into, and your master’s project seems have only been the tip of the iceberg.

Theo Linger:
[29:48] Exactly. It was never intended to be exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination.
It was always intended to just be a jumping off point.

Jake – Interview:
[29:58] We’ve waited everybody’s appetites for this LGBT Q history of Boston through the National Park Service and then immediately told them that there’s a pandemic and they can’t come out and see you in person.
If people want to find out more, see some of your work. Is there any way they could do that online?

Theo Linger:
[30:17] Yes, for now, I would say Keep your ear to the ground and look at the website for Boston National Historical Park.
Look at the website for Boston African American National Historic Site.
Those two especially you can also find us on social media.
We’re on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
I encourage you to give us a follow, and you might see my name popping up in conjunction with different virtual events will be trying to pilot.

Jake – Interview:
[30:50] That sounds great out link to the social profiles on the website in this week’s show notes. And hopefully we’ll, ADM. Or some of those virtual programs come together. Theo linger. I just want to say thank you very much for joining us today.

Theo Linger:
[30:59] That would be really exciting.

[31:04] It was very much a pleasure. I had a lot of fun.

Prescott Townsend

Jake Intro-Outro:
[31:09] Now that Theo has given us the background, let’s meet prescott townsend. This story originally aired as episode 109 in December 2018.

Jake On Townsend:
[31:20] A year before Boston’s Pride Parade was established, which we described in Episode 83 the first gay pride parade in the world was held in New York City.
A year after the LGBT Q patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street fought back against police oppression.
Thousands of supporters march from Christopher Street to Central Park in the name of gay pride.
Among the organizer’s who led the parade was a Bostonian who driven down for the day.
By then, he was 76 years old, often dressed in old and tattered clothes with a white beard halfway down his chest and unruly white hair.
Despite appearances, this rumbled old man was one of the nascent movement’s leaders.
A biographer would right, I can think of no one more responsible for launching the gay rights gay liberation movement than prescott townsend.
There were no demonstrations, no protest marches for gay rights before prescott, and he was always on the spot for an organized protest.

[32:15] While he may have looked like an aging flower child by that point, or perhaps like a homeless person, prescott townsend was the ultimate Boston Brahmin.
He could claim to be descended from 23 different Mayflower passengers, and his third great grandfather was Roger Sherman,
who grew up in Newton and went on to represent Connecticut in the second Continental Congress and eventually in the U. S. House of Representatives and the U. S Senate.
Sherman signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Association, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
He was, as townsend would observed dryly, the only man to be so inconsistent.

[32:55] By the time Keeton Edward townsend Welcome Baby prescott into the world in Roxbury in 18 94 they’re intertwined. Families were related to a veritable who’s Who of Boston. Historical figures from Bunker Hill hero William prescott, toe abolitionist Wendell Phillips.
Young prescott grew up in the family homes in Roxbury, Brookline and the prestigious Back Bay, benefitting from the significant family fortune that only grew as his father’s success is. Founder and president of a coal company increased.

[33:25] Townsend father died when he was 15 and he began regularly seeing a 40 psychiatrist.
During roughly the same period, prescott came to a realization about himself in a sexual identity.
Two of the most significant sources we use. Both The Crimson Letter and Charles Shy Vili’s book Before Stonewall Draw upon an unpublished manuscript by townsend authorized biographer Adrian Cath card in The Crimson letter Shantou.
She quotes Cathcart account of townsend awakening as a teenager when, as soon as he had realized that his physical affections were directed toward those of his own sex, he informed his parents who were, he said, understanding only warning him to be careful.

[34:06] The townsend family placed a value on education and seemed willing to pay handsomely for the best educational opportunities girls in the family were sent to. Bryn Mar.
Well, boys were expected to go to Harvard.
Prescott grew up in the age of Teddy Roosevelt, and TR cast a long shadow for a young man about to enroll at Harvard.
Taking a cue from TR, townsend took what we might today call a gap year.
As described by Charles Shyly, townsend early embraced paths on Trot in.
He came through Harvard when Manly list was the norm. And when Bull Moose Theodore Roosevelt was a hero.
If Tr’s Roughriders inspired him, prescott certainly deviated from Tr’s ideal of what that might constitute.
Like Roosevelt, he went west for adventure and in the summer of 1914 worked in the logging and mining camps of Idaho and Montana.
Here he came in contact with the freewheeling industrial workers of the world, the Wobblies, who are organizing unskilled and itinerant workers.
They’re anarchist Politics left a strong imprint on the impressionable youth.
He probably witnessed camp dances where the men got along without women and lived outside the norms of traditional society.
At the very least, the lumber camps in the I W. W give townsend a view of the world far beyond Harvard and Yankee Boston.

[35:24] After this gap year, prescott entered Harvard in 1914 as a member of the Class of 1918,
a 2014 article in the Harvard Crimson looked back a century and compared the challenges that the incoming class of 2018 faced with those of the class of 1918 and overcome.

[35:41] It was easy to get in then, no personal essays required just a series of entrance examinations.
73% of applicants were admitted.
Admittedly, there are a lot of reasons to discount these numbers. The exams required special preparation available at only a few elite prep schools.
There was no common app, no female students and only 937 people applied.
Along with his studies. Prescott townsend, Pursuit athletics Joining the tennis team is one of the school’s top players.
During his freshman year, he recalled having his first physical relationship with a man, a classmate in a fellow athlete, a polo player.
This finally confirmed the sexual identity he’d suspected of himself for several years.
He would tell an interviewer, I didn’t ever feel guilty, but I was very frightened.
This was, after all, an era in which being out of his gay would result in instant censure, likely expulsion and the loss of all social standing.
Despite this early exploration, townsend didn’t have much time to reflect on his evolving identity.
As he told the same interviewer. Becoming involved in gay life was a slow process for me because I was so busy going out to dances with girls and working hard on my studies.
My brothers before me had been very active with girls socially because of this, and because I was in the social register, I was I was being drawn into things.

[37:07] Even more than sports or social obligations. Prescott townsend Harvard years seem to have been occupied with the preparation for what seemed like America’s inevitable entry into the Great War that was already raging across Europe.
As TR before him became secretary of the Navy and JFK after would join the Navy, P T began training for service in the Navy In 1916 he went on his first long training cruise with the Navy Reserve,
according to an August 20th Boston Post report from Block Island, townsend was among the volunteers who have been acting his petty officers for their division.
When 2000 naval reservists invaded Block Island for a four hour shore leave,
the sailors made their visit memorable by monopolizing the jitney buses, hiring all the beach ponies in sight,
buying the entire available supply of cigarettes, eating up the ice cream in the village, congesting the bathing beach and otherwise making a record for themselves in this unpretentious Little summer resort.

[38:03] The article emphasized that the local women were more friendly than usual because they knew that Boston contingent was made up of many Harvard men, including heirs, to vast fortunes.
It also stressed the less marshall aspect of the crew’s the night before their arrival on Block Island, Boston rowers from the U. S s Virginia and Cure Sarge one accrue race.
Then the next day, visiting parties from all the battleships came aboard the Virginia following the races to congratulate the crews and were entertained by the Virginias band and an especially fine movie show.
A feature of the show was a number of humorous sketches aboard ship of the civilian sailors.

[38:42] Following that, Cruz townsend enlisted in the Naval Reserve properly, Charles shyly expanded the service record listed in the Harvard Class of 1918 2nd annual report.
In April 1917 he enrolled as chief. Bozeman’s, made in the U. S. Naval Reserve Force, was appointed in. Since September 18th I was assigned to the USS Illinois in the Atlantic Fleet.
After a short time, it see he transferred to New Orleans and then attended the Texas A and M Naval unit to learn secret military codes.
He was released from active duty January 25th 1919 shortly after the end of the war.

[39:19] Before his discharge, Harvard granted him a bachelors degree. He would complete his four years in the reserves without being called up for active duty again.
With a degree from Harvard in hand and his time in the Navy, a close townsend enrolled at Harvard Law School but dropped out before the first year was over.
Instead, he joined the Harvard Travelers Club, which Santucci describes as composed of those with the inclination and means to go adventuring in exotic locales. The farther from home the better.
Charles shyly recounts how widely travelled townsend was at this time.
As a member of the Harvard Travelers Club, prescott made several memorable trips, one into North Africa and another into communist Russia.
The free life of the Bedouins attracted him as it had so many gay men.
One of Prescott’s prized possessions was a djellaba, which is a form of long flowing robe traditionally worn by Arab men, which he claimed Lawrence of Arabia had given toe Andre Deed, who in turn gave it to him.
Since the garment, along with many other prize manuscript and Mementos, was lost in one of his several disastrous fires, DNA tests could never be run to see whether either Geet or Laurence wants war It,
nonetheless, the existence of the garment and townsend attachment to it, similar to that of Christians to their relics demonstrates how highly he regarded the homosexuality of the Bedouins, his connection with deed and fantasies of Lawrence and the Arabians Sands.

[40:48] Shan Tucci picks up the same thread.
Lawrence of Arabia was probably very much in townsend mind that year in North Africa as he outfitted his many caravan of camels and camping gear with a whole retinue of youth, says guides, cooks and whatever willing for both work and pleasure.
One assumes how many gays with the means.
Lawrence was not the only one. John Singer Sargent was another found in this era, both adventure and solace in distant and exotic locales.
Indeed, some of townsend experiences on this expedition, where Kendall Lawrence’s own,
he dined out for years on how, at the height of the Rift Rebellion in 1922 that’s Harman to make his way and not be bogged down in a war zone, he had nonchalantly braved a brisk exchange of rifle fire between the forces of Abd al Karim and the Foreign Legion,
reducing the startled combatants to an uneasy truce while he passed through grandly announcing that he was an American citizen and, as such, entitled to safe passage.

[41:46] Speaking of world travel in an article and the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington E are done, described a new species of salamander that he and his companion discovered in 1921.
They were on an expedition to the rainforests near Djellaba along the Rio Blanco in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz,
in honor of his co discoverer, Done named the tiny amphibian Saleh Mandra, edifice townsend dentists,
in the 19 twenties, prescott townsend was simply traveling everywhere and doing everything, including two extended stays in Paris.
Later, he would claim to have been deeply involved in the American expat community there, alongside celebrities like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and T. E. Lawrence, who we know better is Lawrence of Arabia.
Later, authors question whether he was ever welcome in the inner circle of this moveable feast. There’s certainly evidence that he was traveling in its outer orbit.
He became close friends with the Nobel Prize winning anti colonialist writer Andre Geet, who we mentioned before Heat was unique at the time for being openly gay.
Having come out in print in the mid 19 twenties, he would act as a mentor to townsend as the much younger man explored the original Bohemia to be found in the Left Bank.
At about the same time you met the writer Elliott Paul, who turned out to be a native of Molden.
The two fell into an on again, off again romantic relationship that would last for years.

[43:16] In the mid 19 twenties, prescott townsend moved back to Boston, perhaps to be close to his mother as she slowly succumbed to terminal cancer.
Elliott Paul came with him, and the two men seem to have been determined to recreate some sliver of the modern, daring, electrifying Paris seen they left behind,
through their work and that of a handful of other early Boston bohemians, they managed to create the world they were looking for.
On the unfashionable north slope of Beacon Hill, Charles shyly introduces the scene and uses some dated language that we apologize for.
The back of Beacon Hill, where prescott lived most of his adult life, approximated New York’s Greenwich Village and in some ways, even the left Bank in Paris,
Before, during and after Prohibition, the bars in the back of the hill catered to a miscellaneous crowd of sailors, transvestites, poets, prostitutes and gay men.
For a time during the 19 twenties, townsend participated in a speakeasy eatery and theatrical establishment on Joy Street and what was formerly a stable, one of several buildings he owned on Beacon Hill.

[44:20] A network of so called tea rooms, actually speakeasies, where Jen and Vermouth were discreetly served in teacups filled the tiny alleys of Beacon Hill, anchored by the up and coming institution founded on Paul’s Taste and townsend inheritance,
Shan Tucci describes how townsend himself.
Meanwhile, in an old brick house he owned at 75 Phillip Street opened What was 1 may be sure, one of the livelier of the new tea rooms, the Jolly Roger and in adjoining ground floor bookshop name for Paul Revere. Of all people, townsend was ever the patriot.
It was adorned with pie radical murals. Perhaps the joke was that the pirates were gay enough.
Certainly, townsend is known in these years to have been a member of a Cornhill poetry reading club or arts club or gay bar.
No one seems sure even then what it really waas.
If it was a gay bar, it was one of Boston’s first called pen and pencil.

[45:15] Cafe chronicler Lucious Bebe described the wild scene.
There were hints of even mawr. Exotic practices and prominent bohemians were apprehended and raids on Negro nightclubs.
In the South End, the studios of Myrtle and Mount Vernon streets on Beacon Hill were subjected to frequent raids by embattled officers who vision counterfeiting, cocaine, vending and worse wherever a bayberry candle glimmered in the neck of a discarded whiskey bottle.
Usually, however, they discovered nothing worse than a temporarily decommissioned playwright or Harvard Latin instructor under the bed and prescott townsend, former stable on Joy Street.
He and Elliot Paul established a new playhouse in 1922 called the Barn Theater.
It was inspired by the small, experimental theaters the parent seen in Paris and in no small part by the Provincetown Worf Theater that had been founded in 1915.

[46:07] Without citing sources, Bebe claims that these improvements were made possible by expeditions for purposes of lust and pillage, during which Paul in townsend liberated building materials from quarries and lumber yards for one heist quote,
Elliott Paul put in an appearance with 1000 of red glazed brick.
Another townsend dragged into admiring Joy Street behind his car the main steel strut of the Court Theatre.
Then, in the process of demolition victims of these expeditions complained that their stock quote vanished down the road in the hands of persons they usually described to. The police is having don fancy dress for the purposes of disguise.

[46:47] BB’s description of talented at that time leaves little question is to who preferred fancy dress.

[46:54] Paul’s constant associate was arranging youth named prescott townsend who, strictly accountable background, an actual supply of ready cash were not particularly held against him.
Even in the most enlightened circles, townsend emerged from Harvard Law School possessed in war a raccoon skin overcoat.
There was the envy of Cedar Street and could talk informative Lee on any given subject for the space it required his auditor to consume precisely a quart of Gen.

[47:22] Within a very short time, the Joy Street compound had grown and evolved into an artist colony in its own right.
A 1925 advertising flyer for 36 Joy Street promoted, among other endeavors,
the Barn Bookshop, Sally Whites, costumes, a Victorian inspired interior decorator, a basket maker, a ballet instructor, unusual photography and wrought iron by prescott townsend,
entertainments included the brick Oven gift shop in tea room operated by Miss Jordan,
the Saracens head coffeehouse, with lunch and dinner served daily and chicken and waffles every Thursday.
And, of course, the Boston Stage Society Ah small theater, producing six plays from November to May 8 evenings a month, admission was by membership only.

[48:09] Despite its higgledy piggledy construction and somewhat shady origins, the Barn Experimental Theater went on to make a significant contribution to the city’s artistic history.

[48:19] Douglas Shantou. She describes how, after the first season’s opener,
the Barn pretty shows by a series of modernist playwrights whose work the Barn Theater specialized in,
others included Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, Jean Cocteau, Gordon Bottomley, Andre Deed, another Memory of North Africa and Alexander Block.
It is a very avant garde list that marks the barn Company is perhaps the best and purest theater amateur but dedicated and pioneering.
Indeed, several plays were advertised as given for the first time in English and at least two for the first time in this country.
And although it was in the Trustees Words, a noncommercial effort to establish a theater in Boston in which we can experiment in new dramatic forms and subjects such as air available in New York at the Provincetown Theatre,
an entirely amateur standards were high.
The barn’s productions were linked to the 47 workshop of Professor Baker at Harvard, referring to that professors nationally important course on playwriting.
Poet Robert Hillier, who lived in a muse of Charles Street on Beacon Hill and who had just been appointed to Harvard’s English faculty, was also involved.
Set design, moreover, was often a project of a class in that subject at the Vesper George School of Art, or the School of Boston’s M F A.

[49:40] Even The New Yorker noticed reporting in 1926 that,
sophisticated Bostonians may often be seen sitting on long wooden benches, watching performances of Strindberg with expressionist settings, Anatole France Check Off and the more modern works of Marcella Shard, Alexander Block and Jean Cocteau.
In any event simply by opening, much less sustaining the Barn Experimental theater, townsend and Paul had achieved much.
After taking inspiration from the Provincetown Theatre for the barn, prescott townsend was soon taking inspiration from Provincetown itself.
He began summering there sometime in the 19 twenties and spent an increasing amount of time on the far tip of the cape after the Barn Theater closed up shop in 1929.
During his many years there, his interests turned from theatre, which he supported with more of his trust fund and less of his time toe architecture shyly describes how he got started.
Townsend is greatest work beyond his extraordinary personality and public agitation for gay causes was in his architectural experiments, both on Beacon Hill and in Provincetown.
He built five a frame houses in Provincetown. Had he patented his a frame, he might have become better known.

[50:54] As he became established in P Town, he began assembling a compound he called province townsend at one Bradford Street.
If I read the map correctly, it’s the site of a playground. Today, his designs used found materials like driftwood, bubbled plastic sheeting and ship parts to reflect. His idea of what P town felt like.
The entryway to his own home, called The gangway, was made from a ship’s actual gangway.
Adjacent to it was a large wing with a dormitory access by a ship’s ladder.
Here he sheltered young runaways, gay, straight and otherwise, many of whom had nowhere else to go on his blood called building Provincetown, the History of Provincetown told through its built environment, David W.
Dunlap describes how one of the young runaways who found his way to province, townsend, went on to become the world famous director of Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Cry Baby.

[51:47] In the summer of 1967 this teeming bohemian cohort included 21 year old John Waters and 20 year old Nancy Stole of Baltimore.
Soon to become much better known as Mink stole the name Waters gave to her, she was briefly engaged to townsend.
Also dwelling in townsend is Tree Fort, where Nancy, Sister Seek and Alan Doll.
It was like living with a lunatic Swiss family, Robinson Waters wrote in Shock Value.
Part of the apartment was made out of a submarine, and trees grew right up through the living room.
The only real problem was that when it rained, it was like being outside.
There was no rent. You just had to be liked by the incredibly eccentric landlord.

[52:28] No matter what has recalled in an interview with Gerald Peary for Provincetown Arts, I can remember it as some of the happiest moments of my life of complete freedom.
For the first time, I was away from everything. I rebelled against the sad final chapters of townsend.
Life began is his years in Provincetown came to an end, the environment of complete freedom that he cultivated a province townsend may have rubbed the old Yankee Town is the wrong way.
After a fire burned the entire compound of the ground in 1968 Charles, Dr Lee reported that some believe that his house was torched deliberately.
This was because shortly before the fire three of the Selectmen of Provincetown and issued an appeal toe, all decent people complaining that we are not getting the support we should in an effort to rid our town of these degenerates,
the appeal concluded with the call.
Let us not permit our town to become a Sodom or Gomorrah.

[53:26] After the fire, townsend retreated to Beacon Hill, where he owned two properties.
Ah! House on Phillip Street was the last remnant of the Barn theater complex and an apartment building on Lindell Place, which is unvarying.
Lee described this filthy labyrinth in and completely debauched as he entered old age in the Philip Street house.
His tenants on Lindell Place included a motley assortment of artists, junkies and aging domestic servants who had worked for his family, who he now supported in their old age.
It’s unclear how many, if any, actually paid him any rent in 1971 1st one house than the other burned Lindell Place went up after a chimney fire, and only the brick walls could be saved.
A few months later, Philip Street burned. Is prescott townsend, in his late seventies, stood outside his pajamas on a winter’s night and gawked at the flames with his once considerable resource is nearly depleted.
He moved in with a friend on May 18th 1973 the friend found townsend body.
He was kneeling next to his bed as if in prayer in a dirt floored basement apartment on Beacon Hills Garden Street. He was 79 years old.

[54:37] Before that final decline, however, prescott townsend lived through an incredible third act in his life.
Having been involved in the theater and an architecture, he now found himself drawn to political activism.
His 45th Harvard class report, from 1963 said, The third and last phase of my life has been the fight for social justice.
This has also been the most fun.
The Dem a file center, is one of the three newer organizations in the United States dedicated to bringing the problems of the home a file to the attention of the public and aiding in their solution.
I do this by my forensic and scriptural abilities by my leadership of the Dem A file, and also by membership in the international society.
Townsend political activism actually had its first awakenings decades before.
As Mark Crone recounts in Boston Spirit magazine during the 19 thirties, townsend entered history by testifying at the State House for a gay rights bill.
As a Brahmin, he was politely received but swiftly dismissed.
He was back the next year and the next after that meeting, with the same polite indifference.

[55:46] His money and status had often protected prescott townsend from the worst forms of oppression that society had to offer gay men.
At that time, however, a decade after his testimony was indulged on Beacon Hill, townsend got a full helping of the treatment that non elites faced, and it galvanized into action.
In 1943 the 25th report for the Class of 1918 noted that prescott townsend had not returned the annual questionnaire.
But in his most recent communication, he described himself as an experimental architect.
Two decades later, Talented Would War bluntly described what had been out of touch.
In 1943 the 1963 Harvard class report says, I was thrown into jail for refusing to pay $15 graft for an act that is not against the law in England. Nor in Illinois.
A headline in the Midtown Journal reported. Beacon Hill, Twilight Man, member of Queer Love Cult seduced Young man.

[56:44] Douglas Shantou Gee did this best to peel back the layers of rumor and cover up to describe what had happened.
The precipitation of this third and final phase of townsend Probable Life story.
In 1943 he was caught having sex rumor always had it that it was in one of those deep entryways on Beacon Hills historic Mt. Vernon Street.
Someone opened his door and presumably called the police and this fiercely honest Boston Brahmin queer of bohemian fame, having long since discarded his parents advice to be careful was not about to back down townsend.
Defining moment had come, and though the police captain was open to a modest bribe, townsend, though certainly savvy enough to have paid off the cops in the days of his tea rooms, was in a matter of this sort, determined to stand on principle. So we went to jail.

[57:33] Unfortunately, Massachusetts law at that time treated any act of homosexuality as an abominable and detestable crime against nature.
Prescott townsend was sentenced to 18 months at hard labor in the State penitentiary on Deer Island.
Perhaps all the sunshine and exercise reminded prescott of his years in the Navy,
or even the time he spent cutting timber out west because by all reports, he served a sentence in remarkably good spirits, finding immense amusement in the fact that his imprisonment had finally gotten him kicked out of the social Register.
Soon his sentence was up, and, as Mark Crone recounts, as it turned out, he was released on VJ Day, he said later, when he saw the celebrations in town, he thought they were for him.

[58:18] Townsend had never been in the closet by any measure, but after 1943 he began to seek out ways to push harder and more publicly for the cause of gay rights.
Soon after, the magazine society was founded in L. A. In 1951 as the first service and welfare organization devoted to the protection and improvement of societies, androgynous minority townsend jumped in with both feet.
By 1953 he was among the group’s leadership, attending a steering meeting in Los Angeles, where the decision was made to decentralize the organization, creating regional chapters.

[58:52] The first East Coast chapters were New York’s in 1956 and Boston’s in 1957.
Prescott townsend was the motivating force behind the Boston chapter and his in your face confrontational style, soon opened a rift with the parent organization.
As Charles, Dr Lee describes the division between what in Boston has often been called the good Gays and the bad faggots carried over into the magazine society.
In 1957 prescott organized the first chapter in Boston, and he also attended meetings of Echo, the East Coast home of file organisation.
As the Boston group grew with larger meetings, newsletters and prominent speakers, the good gays soon voted prescott out of leadership.
Pushed aside even left, organize his own Boston Dem a File society.
It should be mentioned that both home a file and dem a file were early words for homosexuality.
The Dem A file was considered more accepting of a broad range of sexual identities as we already eluded the Dem A file Society became townsend Passion Project in 1959 just two years after breaking from the machine.
He wrote to that organization with a proposal to introduce sodomy law reform in Massachusetts.
The Man Machine Society’s response illustrates the break between their gradualist approach and his radical one.

[1:00:13] Let me say that I feel it is still too early in the history of the Madison to sponsor a bill in the state Legislature concerning a change in the sex laws.
I personally feel that we should wait until we have the support of psychiatrists, ministers, lawyers and others who could testify on behalf of such an action and who could vouch for our integrity.
We do not have that professional backing at this time.

[1:00:37] Undeterred, prescott townsend plunged ahead in 1958 he wrote editorials in favor of marriage equality, saying, I believe homosexual partnership must be worked at more than any other.

[1:00:50] He developed his own snowflake theory of human sexuality, advancing the idea that every human libido is unique, in the words of Cath cards. Unpublished biography.
What he was after was sexual liberation, freedom on a universal scale without regard to gender or sexual orientation.
When he said no two are alike, he meant exactly that how difficult it must have been for prescott, a full blooded Yankee, a Bostonian in a Harvard man.
To resist the compelling urge to categorise this evolving radicalism compelled townsend to join and groundbreaking protests held in New York and Washington.
In 1965 in New York, they marched in front of the United Nations and Washington. They picketed the White House.
In the other side of silence, John Locke re described the first widely publicized gay rights demonstrations in America.
The Washington action, with 10 participants, seven game in two lesbians and a straight woman friend, took place at the White House on Saturday, April 17th 1965.
It’s New York counterpart with 20 odd participants, including Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and prescott townsend from Boston.
On Sunday, April 18th half a decade after the first gay rights protest was counted as a success with just 10 participants,
townsend was part of a core group of activists who gathered on Christopher Street in New York on June 28th 1970.

[1:02:18] They number between one and 200. At first, as they stepped off, they must have wondered how the crowd would react.
Soon, though much of the crowd joined the marchers and the group swelled into the thousands, following prescott townsend and his fellow activists.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:02:36] To learn more about prescott townsend, check out this week’s show notes at home history dot com slash 193,

Wrap Up

[1:02:44] I’ll have links to all the sources I used in preparing the original episode about townsend, as well as links to the websites and social profiles for the Boston National Historic Park,
and Boston African American National Historic Site, where you can find Theo Linger’s virtual events is there announce?
And of course, we’ll have a link to information about our upcoming event and Esther Forbes biography of Paul Revere, this week’s Boston Book Club Pick.
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Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:04:20] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.