Next Hurley Heritage Society Lecture
October 17, 6:30pm
Old Dutch Church, Uptown Kingston

"But Among Our Own Selves We'll Be Free:" A Discussion of Molly Houses, Homosexuality, and the Eighteenth-Century English Colonial World"
(Lecture part of the official Burning of Kingston 2024 event series)

Join us for a fascinating presentation on a part of LGBTQ life during colonial times. Presenting is Megan Rhodes Victor, PhD, assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College - CUNY.

"Located within eighteenth-century taverns of the English Colonial World, molly houses were clandestine locations wherein gay men and cross-dressing individuals could meet and participate in elaborate gendered performances. They served as spaces to interact, to socialize with others ‘like them’, to engage in more intimate relations, and to participate in complex rituals simulating births, ballroom dances, marriages, and tea parlor gatherings. As taverns, molly houses were places where individuals could conduct social negotiation and form bonds of community, due to these buildings’ inherent “alcosocial” nature. Taverns were largely male-coded drinking spaces in the eighteenth century, and yet these were also one of the few places where women – especially unmarried or widowed women – could work and even manage (or own) a business. This apparent gender contradiction may have played a role in taverns and inns serving as the location for molly houses.

Currently, no archaeologists have excavated a known molly house or identified a tavern assemblage as possibly being connected to mollies – those homosexual males who frequented the molly houses. The Molly House Project hypothesizes that the activities that took place within molly houses were distinct enough to create archaeological indicators of the currently underrepresented eighteenth-century LGBTQ+ community. Building on this, the Project seeks to conduct the first archaeological excavations of these institutions, not only in England, but in the English Colonial World, examining locations such as New York, Virginia, or South Carolina. Historical and documentary research on molly houses has only taken place within the past two decades and little exists in the way of an oral historical tradition. The Molly House Project, therefore, a.) pioneers the archaeological exploration of these spaces of homosexuality and b.) provides a window into the lived experience of individuals in the larger LGBTQ+ communities of the eighteenth-century English Colonial World, who spent every day under the threat of capital punishment if exposed, and c.) lays bare nuances of gendered performance and gendered artifacts within larger tavern assemblages.”