The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. (1876).
Although 17th-century colonial Virginia seems like an unexpected place to defy the gender binary, a 26-year-old servant named Thomasin Hall did just that. As if life in colonial Virginia wasn’t dangerous enough — with starvation, disease, war, and an unfamiliar climate — Hall dared to live as both a man and a woman in a society with strict gender roles.
Who was Thomas/Thomasin Hall?
Hall was born in the vicinity of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and was christened “Thomasin.” According to what is likely the church record for Thomasin’s January 2, 1604 baptism, Hall’s father was Raph Hall, who worked as a collier, a trade that involved coal or charcoal.
Hall was assigned female at birth and raised as a girl. At age 12, Hall’s mother sent her to London to live with an aunt. (Since Hall chose to present as male or female during different time periods, this article refers to Hall using both she/her and he/him pronouns.)
In 1625, Hall’s brother was pressed into military service. In response, Hall joined the military as well. As Hall told a Virginia court, he “cut of his heire and Changed his apparel into the fashion of man.” Hall participated in both the unsuccessful 1625 attack on Cádiz, Spain and the similarly failed 1627 Siege of Saint-Martin-de-Ré in France. After returning home from France, Hall settled in the coastal town of Plymouth. Here, she resumed living as a woman and found employment in the traditionally female trades of lacemaking and needlework.
Hall’s ability to adopt both masculine and feminine gender roles was probably aided by her/his physical characteristics. Based on descriptions of Hall’s anatomy that appear in Virginia court records, Hall was likely an intersex person who was assigned female at birth but developed male sex characteristics at puberty.
Being intersex is relatively common, and Europeans at the time of Hall’s birth were aware that some people had physical characteristics that defied the male-female sex binary. However, intersex people were not supposed to transition repeatedly between masculine and feminine gender roles. According to English law, a person whose sex was ambiguous was expected to live as the gender that best matched their physical characteristics.
Beginning with Hall’s military enlistment, s/he resisted this expectation. Instead, Hall repeatedly transitioned between a masculine and feminine presentation depending on her/his circ*mstances. After a short time living as a woman in Plymouth, Hall decided to immigrate to Virginia, once again presenting as a man.
Hall's life in Jamestown
Hall arrived in Virginia as an indentured servant in 1628. If life in Jamestown was difficult for the average settler, it was even more challenging for indentured servants. Indentured servants — people who worked without pay for a specified number of years in exchange for passage to America — performed physically demanding work in tobacco fields and homes. Bound by restrictive contracts, they lacked personal freedom and were often subject to violent punishments. Compared to a white servant like Hall, servants of color faced even greater restrictions. Beginning in 1619, enslaved people from west and central Africa were brought to Virginia and conscripted into forced labor. White colonists also conscripted Indigenous people into unfree labor.
Hall first worked for two planters, John Tyos and Robert Eyres; later, she worked in the household of John Atkins, who would testify in a Virginia court about Hall. Hall arrived in Virginia dressed as a man and using a man’s name, but once employed by Tyos and Eyres, she began to live as a woman. At this time, there were relatively few white women in Virginia. Hall’s presentation may have allowed her to work in a less strenuous domestic role rather than labor in the tobacco fields. Her duties might have included milking cows, making cheese and butter, tending gardens, preparing food, making and mending clothing, distilling alcohol and medicinal remedies, and general housekeeping.
In a male-dominated colony, women were likely also sought after as sexual partners. Hall stated she dressed as a woman “to get a bitt for my Catt,” which some historians have understood as a reference to sexual activity. Whatever Hall’s motivations, gossip was soon circulating about the new servant who had boldly, and without explanation, exchanged a masculine role for a feminine one.
Hall’s neighbors began to discuss her/his gender. At the same time, rumors circulated that Hall was sexually involved with a female servant known as “great Besse.” Hall denied the claim, but the accusation may have fueled additional interest in Hall’s gender. According to English common law, “fornication” between a man and an unmarried woman could be prosecuted but sex between two women was not a criminal offense. To weigh the seriousness of the allegations, Hall’s “true” sex would have to be determined.
Over the course of several months, Hall endured four separate incidents in which her/his genitals were forcibly inspected by employers and neighbors. These searches were primarily conducted by groups of women. In English society, women were sometimes deputized to search the bodies of other women to gather evidence for courts. In Hall’s case, men were also present at searches, and on one occasion, two men who were alone with Hall “threw the said Hall on his backe” in order to inspect her/his body.
In colonial Virginia, servants were not generally understood to have a right to physical privacy. Still, it seems likely that these unwanted searches distressed Hall, particularly as her/his right to gender self-determination was being threatened.
Despite repeated inspections, Hall’s neighbors still disputed her/his sex. At various points, local authority figures ordered Hall to adopt masculine or feminine clothing. Yet Hall was clear about who s/he was. When questioned by Nathaniel Basse, the burgess, or the leader of settlements that included Hall’s community, Hall said “that hee was both man and woeman.”
Hall may not have set out to openly challenge Virginia’s gender norms, but the information that survives about Hall’s life in 1629 court proceedings reveals a person who refused to be constrained by societal expectations. There are many reasons that Hall may have chosen to transition between genders. Perhaps Hall was more comfortable living as a man, a woman, or both. Economic opportunity and a desire for personal freedom may also have influenced Hall’s various gender presentations.
Hall’s unexpected gender transition caused a public disruption. Though it wasn’t clear if Hall had broken any laws, the colonial government had ample reason to consider a complaint about Hall’s behavior. And so Hall was sent to court.
The court weighs in
On March 25, 1629, Thomas/Thomasin Hall, Hall's employer John Atkins, and a neighbor, Francis England, testified before Governor John Pott. Atkins and England described how Hall's gender had been debated by the community since Hall's arrival in Virginia. The two men recounted forced inspections of Hall's genitals, sharing detailed descriptions of Hall's intersex body that the court recorded as evidence. Finally, Hall narrated her/his own life story prior to arriving in Virginia, recounting an adulthood spent living at times as a man, at times as a woman.
Two weeks later, the governor and his council made a final determination about Hall’s gender and place in Virginia society. Governor Pott was trained as a physician and may have been familiar with European beliefs about intersex conditions. However, judges in early Virginia courts were not required to be educated in the law. Perhaps for this reason, the court’s legal judgment was a highly unusual one.
The court stated that Hall was, indeed, both “a man and a woeman.” Rather than following legal precedent by assigning Hall a male or female gender identity, the court ordered Hall to dress in a mix of masculine and feminine clothing. Hall was instructed to wear traditionally male clothing, “only his head to bee attired in a Coyfe and Croscloth [close-fitting head covering and triangular forehead cloth] with an Apron before him.” Hall was also expected to be on “good behavior.” A local burgess, Nathaniel Basse, would ensure that Hall complied with the order.
The court’s decision defied centuries of legal precedent. In Europe, intersex people had almost always been expected to choose a male or female gender identity. In order to resolve the public outcry sparked by Hall’s ambiguous gender, Pott and his council had inadvertently affirmed the possibility of nonbinary bodies and genders. However, the intent of the order was not to welcome Hall into Virginia society, but to exclude her/him.
Hall’s punishment wasn’t violent, but it was cruel. Wearing both masculine and feminine clothing did not reflect the way Hall presented to the world; according to the court record, Hall’s gender presentation was always male or female. The new clothing made Hall’s intersex status publicly visible, marking her/him as an outsider. It also prevented romantic or sexual partners from “mistaking” Hall for a non-intersex person.
Hall’s story survives because an 18th-century researcher borrowed several years of court records from the Virginia colonial government and never returned them. Later, Thomas Jefferson acquired the records, and they became part of the Library of Congress’s collections. Hall’s case was preserved, but many other records from colonial Virginia were lost or destroyed. As a result, historians have no record of Thomas/Thomasin Hall’s life after s/he appeared in court in spring 1629.
For centuries, Hall’s story remained buried in the Thomas Jefferson Papers. A transcript of the case was first published in the 1920s. Discomfort with Hall’s story can be detected in an early version of the transcript. Passages describing Hall’s intersex anatomy were replaced by the statement: “[Various unprintable details are omitted here.]”
Decades later, in 1978, the historian Alden T. Vaughan published a short article, “The Sad Case of Thomas(ine) Hall.” Since Vaughan brought Hall into the public eye, Hall’s life story has been widely discussed in academic literature and, occasionally, in popular media. Hall’s transgressive life and voice have been held up as an example of how gender was understood and policed in colonial America.
Today, the term “intersex” encompasses a wide range of physical variations. Intersex is not a gender identity, and not all intersex people are queer or transgender. As an intersex person, Hall could have lived as a woman, her/his assigned gender, or s/he could have adopted a stable male identity. Instead, Hall made a series of intentional and radical choices that put her/him at odds with societal norms. Hall’s case serves as a compelling reminder that gender nonconforming people have always been part of the American story.
This article was produced with Made By Us, a coalition of more than 200 history museums working to connect with today's youth.
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