Transvestia

informers were usually discredited.

In Union dispatches of November, 1864 there is a report by a major who had surprised 15 guerrillas pillaging in Bloomfield, Kentucky. Three of them were captured and reported as killed while attempting to escape. This was the usual and accepted fate for such men. The leader, though wounded, managed to get away. The major, in his report, stated that "Sue's fine pipe fell a trophy to my men." For the next four months, Clark's band and Union forces were in almost continual contact. Federal troops were not always the defenders of property. In January, 1865, Clark and 60 guerrillas attached 18 Home Guard (Kentuckians loyal to the Union) who were plundering stores in Bloomsburg and killed all but one. Almost every day Union officers reported skirmishes with the forces of Captain Sue Mundy. Once, Clark was attacked so suddenly by Union cavalry after he had captured a wagon train that he only escaped by fleeing barefoot through the snow.

Finally, on March 12, 1865, a force from the 30th Wisconsin surprised the guerrillas near Webster, Kentucky. Clark personally killed one Union soldier and wounded three others. He refused to surrender until the Northern commander promised that he would be considered a prisoner of war and not an outlaw. At Louisville, two days later, the Union courtmartial repudiated this promise and sentenced him to be hanged. On March 15 at four o:clock in the afternoon, at the age of twenty, Jerome Clark/Sue Mundy was hanged. Just before his sentence was executed, he asked for pen and paper in order to write a farewell note to his fiancee! This note is described as “a very touching letter."

There does not appear to be any doubt that Jerome Clark, who has been reported as "the soldier with two sexes," was a transvestite, although such things were unknown to his contemporaries. Who knows? With his abilities and associates he might have become even more famous than Belle Starr, had his life not been cut short. He certainly appears to be in the tradition of Chevalier D'Eon and worthy of an honorary membership in FPE.

"George, what

do we call you

when you come back to the office?"