A Lesbian Life Coded in the Census

Using genealogy to identify LGBTQ+ ancestors

The headline was small and blunt, the way they often were:

'LOCAL TEACHER TAKEN BY DEATH'

There was no scandal, no mystery. Just the quiet announcement that a distinguished woman died. The obituary carefully listed her accomplishments: educator, principal, supervisor, and civic fixture. It named the schools she served and the committees she chaired. It did not mention a husband. It did not mention children. It did not mention who shared her life. That omission is the story.

Alice Hubbard was born on January 15, 1866, in Georgetown, Michigan, one of nine children born to George and Martha Hubbard. She grew up in a large household, learned early to take on responsibility, and eventually did what many capable, unmarried women of her generation did. She left.

In 1901, Alice moved west to Vancouver, Washington, where she became a foundational figure in the city’s public education system. She taught for many years at Central School, then served as its principal for 15 years. The school stood on the site of what is now the Clark County Courthouse, meaning that for more than a decade, Alice ran a school where the city’s center of law and authority would later rise.

For years afterward, she served as the main supervisor of Vancouver’s city schools. Newspapers often mentioned her, committees relied on her, and parents trusted her. She was not marginal; she was essential. No one asked why she never married.

In the early twentieth century, teaching was one of the few professions where unmarried women could remain employed indefinitely. In many states, marriage meant automatic dismissal. Officially, this was framed as morality. Practically, it created one of the safest professional structures for lesbian women to live quietly, independently, and with social legitimacy.

Women teachers lived together, and they shared households. They formed durable domestic arrangements that did not require explanation. Census records list them side by side, city directories repeat the same addresses year after year, and obituaries praise devotion and public service while remaining silent about intimacy. This was not secrecy; it was strategy.

The United States Census tracks Alice’s life this way, quietly and precisely. In 1910, she appears in Vancouver for the first time as a boarder, unattached and still situating herself. By 1920, she was no longer a boarder. She is listed as a companion in the household of Ms. Daniels, a term that did a great deal of work in records like these. Companions were not servants, relatives, or wives. But they were understood.

By 1930, Alice is listed as head of household. She had moved, settled, and claimed permanence. A deed dated September 12, 1925, documents the transfer of a house on West 11th Street from widowed Rebecca Brown (family friend) to Alice. She lived in that house until her death on April 3, 1935. It is only after you trace these living arrangements, boarding, companionship, and ownership, that later testimony begins to make sense.

Alice also raised a child, but not her biological child: Charles Wilson (an orphaned grandson of Rebecca Brown). In every way that mattered because she was his authority, his home, and his constant. 

In 2006, Charles Wilson visited the house on West 11th Street. He was ninety-five years old. By then, the house belonged to a law firm where I worked and had researched its past. Many of the rooms were unchanged enough to trigger Charles’ memory. He walked slowly through the living room, touching doorframes, and recalled where furniture once stood.

Alice never married. That fact alone proves nothing because plenty of people didn’t marry. But Alice also lived independently at a time when few women did and could. She moved comfortably within women-centered civic institutions that offered both legitimacy and protection. She belonged to the Fort Vancouver Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and was an active member of the Vancouver Women’s Club, a middle-and upper-class civic organization focused on education, culture, reform, and public welfare.

These clubs were spaces where women exercised political and social power years before they had full political equality. For many women like Alice, such organizations were not secondary. They were navigational tools, female-centered networks that made independence, lifelong companionship, and unmarried respectability not just possible, but defensible.

Alice sometimes held meetings in the house. Charles remembered that sometimes, one woman lingered after the others left. He wondered aloud if Alice and that woman were fond of each other. Could that woman have been Ms. Daniels, with whom Alice is listed in the 1920 census? Charles did not recall the woman’s name. However, Charles did not frame this as gossip or scandal, but as a mere memory.

Alice was not out in the modern sense. But she was not hidden either. Her life was arranged carefully enough to be livable. When people imagine discovering LGBTQ ancestors or relatives, they often expect a single dramatic revelation, like a diary, a confession, a medical record, or a police report. Sometimes, that is the case. However, in reality, queer genealogy is cumulative. It is built from patterns rather than proof.

It is census records showing the same two adults sharing a household for decades. It is property records that establish financial independence without marriage. It is repeated occupations that offered cover: teachers, clergy, artists, nurses, and academics, for example. It is documents listing “friend,” “companion,” or “partner” without explanation. It is probate papers that leave everything to a non-relative. It is obituaries that celebrate devotion and service while avoiding personal attachment. It is the absence of heterosexual markers where you would expect them to appear. Silence, when consistent, becomes evidence.

Statistically speaking, it is impossible not to have a gay ancestor. Even conservative estimates suggest roughly one in twenty people are LGBTQ. Go back four generations, and you are already dealing with dozens of direct ancestors. The idea that none of them were gay, bisexual, or living some version of a coded life is not just unlikely, it’s absurd. Families resist this idea as if it were an accusation.

They say, “But no one ever talked about that.”

Of course, they didn’t. That was the point.

Alice existed because she did not disrupt the story her city told itself. She chose a profession that protected her, built a household that made sense, and created a life that required no correction. This is what “out” looked like then. Alice was not erased; she was edited in a sense. And the edit is still visible if you know how to read the record honestly and if you let silence count as evidence, trust repetition, and listen when someone who lived inside the house tells you what they always thought. Alice lived a full life. She was respected, and she was needed. That does not make her invisible; it makes her human.