When researching the debate about eugenic marriage in Wisconsin (PDF of article available on my Academia.edu page), I explored the case of Ralph Kerwineio/Cora Anderson, whose marriage to Dorothy Klenowski in Milwaukee in 1914 got caught up in the national scrutiny of Wisconsin’s eugenic marriage law. Ralph Kerwineio’s case got me interested in other cases of what were then called “female husbands.” It turns out that there were quite a few in Wisconsin. Rachel Cleves has a great article in the Journal of American History (open access) on this topic, “‘What, Another Female Husband?’: The Pre-History of Same-Sex Marriage in America.”
Susan Rensing, Ph.D. 