Mildred J. Berryman

Mildred Jessie Berryman (1901–1972), who went by "Berry"[7]:66[1] (also spelled "Barrie"),[8] was an early 20th century pioneering researcher of lesbian and gay community in post-WWI Utah.[9] She was also a photographer, a mineral merchant, and a manufacturing business co-owner with her girlfriend of over three decades.

Mildred "Berry" Berryman
Berry, age 38, in 'The Mineralogist' magazine, July 1940
Born
Mildred Jessie Berryman

(1901-09-22)September 22, 1901[1]
Salt Lake City, Utah[1]
DiedNovember 7, 1972(1972-11-07) (aged 71)[1]
Salt Lake City, Utah[1]
Resting placeBountiful City Cemetery, Bountiful, Utah[1]
40°52′6.5366″N 111°53′18.0384″W[2]
Other namesBarrie or Berry
Alma materWestminster College[3]:69
Notable work
The Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual[4]:897–898
Partner(s)Ruth Uckerman Dempsey[5]
Parent(s)
  • Mildred Stokes[6]:353
  • Richard Berryman[6]:353

Research

At the age of 15 Berryman came out as lesbian at Westminster college and announced that she wanted to do an academic study of lesbianism. The thesis request was refused and some parents pulled their daughters from the school, but she was not expelled. Traumatized by the scandal and wanting to escape the shame of her homosexuality she ran away at 16 and entered a short-lived marriage with a man.[6]:354 In 1928 (or 1929)[6]:354 Berryman began writing her groundbreaking thesis The Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual[3]:223,228 on 23 lesbian women and 9 gay men, whom she met through the Salt Lake City Bohemian Club.[10][3]:73 Her research of lesbian and gay people from the perspective of a lesbian lay researcher was groundbreaking and argued that homosexuality was inborn, benign, and evident among many animal species.[11]:xi

It is possible that she had begun her research around the time of WWI as a student at Westminster College in Salt Lake from 1916 to 1922.[3]:69 Her study has been called the first lesbian community study in the US,[12][13][14] and she continued writing it until leaving it uncompleted by 1938[3]:223 or 1939.[10] By her request, parts of her research were posthumously published[15] by her daughter- and son-in-law[7]:67 in 1977.[4]:897–898[5] It appears that Berryman did not complete or publish her work due to discouragement from her advisor as well as a desire to protect her privacy and that of her siblings. Additionally, at the time of research, the study's positive depiction of people engaging in same-sex sexual behavior may have been enough to have it banned under US federal Comstock laws since a book containing positively depicted minor lesbian themes was nearly banned in New York in 1929.[16][4]:897

In the study most lesbian women and gay men (many of whom had Mormon background)[12] reported experiencing erotic interest in others of the same sex since childhood,[3]:120,222 and exhibited self-identity and community identity[17] as sexual minorities.[3]:222 It was during the 1920s when gay and lesbian subcultures were beginning to become more established in several larger US cities.[18] While most of the subjects feared discovery, a few were "out" about their homosexuality with their heterosexual friends.[3]:223 The social and legal risks of discovery were high since any consensual same-sex sexual behavior likely fell under the 1921 Utah sodomy law which banned "sodomy or any other detestable and abominable crime against nature" that was committed "with either the sexual organs or the mouth," or the 1907 Utah law which punished "every lewd or dissolute person" with up to 90 days in jail.[19]

Biography

Berryman was born in 1901 as the third and last child born to parents Richard Berryman and Mildred Stokes. Her siblings were George (born 1896) and Richard Jr. (born 1898). Her father worked as a bartender in Salt Lake City from 1894 to the Prohibition Era of the 1920s, with 1913 on spent working at a bar called The Opera Bar which acted as an early gay bar attracting many homosexual clientele.[6]:353 After her first failed opposite-sex marriage she had her first lesbian relationship with her violin teacher Mae Anderson from 1920 to 1921.[5] She joined the LDS church at the age of 19,[5] received a patriarchal blessing at the age of 21,[3]:226–228 and later entered a relationship with a Mormon woman for over three decades,[20] though she left involvement with the Mormon community to join the Bountiful Community Church.[5] She worked at the LDS School of Music with her former girlfriend Mae Anderson in the mid-1920s and had another failed opposite-sex marriage.

In 1924 she fell in love with Edith Mary Chapman and lived in her house (that later became a boarding house for lesbians) until 1928. Around that time Berryman became a photographer,[1] and in 1936 had a relationship with "Z". In the 40s she collected and sold minerals specimens from her house[8] and was involved in the Mineralogical Society of Utah[21][22] and the Women's Benefit Association (W.B.A).[23]

Grave marker for the resting place of Berryman

In 1934 she met a Mormon mother Ruth Uckerman Dempsey at their manufacturing job at Hill Air Force Base, with whom she later had a 33-year romantic relationship.[5][3]:226 Together they ran a manufacturing business[24] and participated in the Bonneview Garden Club[25][26] until Berryman's death in 1972.[20][10] Barry had also served as president of the Utah Business and Professional Women's Club.[1] Her stepdaughter Bonnie Uckerman Bullough from Ruth's first marriage[27] married Vern Bullough[3]:226–227 and they both became renowned sexologists writing on homosexuality.[28][29][30]

References
  1. "Mildred Berryman". The Salt Lake Tribune. 9 November 1972. p. 30. Mildred J. "Berry" Berryman, 71, of 3513 S. Main St. Bountiful died Nov. 7, 1972 in a Salt Lake hospital of natural causes. Born Sept. 22, 1901 Salt Lake City to Richard Gordon and Millie Stokes Berryman. Member of Bountiful Community Church, past president of Business and Professional Women, past president American Legion Auxiliary, employed at Stokes-Berryman photography 25 years. Survivors brother G. Stokes Salt Lake City, several nieces and nephews. Funeral Friday 11 am Lindquist Bountiful chapel where friends call one hour before services. Burial Bountiful Memorial Park. The family suggests contributions to the Bountiful Community Church building fund.
  2. "Bountiful City Cemetery". namesinstone.com. Gateway Mapping, Inc.
  3. Quinn, D. Michael (1996). Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252022050.
  4. Bullough, Bonnie; Bullough, Vern (Summer 1977). "Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s: A Newfound Study". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. University of Chicago. 2 (4): 895–904. doi:10.1086/493419. JSTOR 3173219. PMID 21213641.
  5. Wood, Stacy; Cubé, Caroline. "Mildred Berryman papers 1918-1990". oac.cdlib.org. University of California, Los Angeles.
  6. O'Donovan, Connell; Wilson, Wendell E. (May–June 2012). "Mildred J. 'Barrie' Berryman" (PDF). The Mineralogical Record. 43 (3).
  7. Bullough, Vern L. (20 November 2002). "Berry Berryman (1901–1972)". Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New York City: Harrington Park Press. ISBN 1560231939.
  8. Wilson, Wendell E. (2017). "Mildred J. Barrie Berryman". minrec.org. The Mineralogical Record, Inc. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017.
  9. Gallo, Marci M. (28 September 2007). Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement. Seal Press. ISBN 978-1580052528. Unknown to them at the time was the work decades earlier of a pioneering lesbian researcher, Mildred (Berry) Berryman. Berryman and her life partner, Ruth ...
  10. Anderson, J. Seth (29 May 2017). LGBT Salt Lake: Images of Modern America. Arcadia Publishing. p. 20. ISBN 9781467125857.
  11. Mussey, Ann Louise (May 2001). "Lesbian Subjectivity and the Sciences of Sexuality, 1920–1970". Rutgers University New Brunswick Theses & Dissertations.
  12. Wilcox, Melissa M. (2006). "Same-Sex Eroticism and Gender Fluidity in New and Alternative Religions". Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America: Volume 1: History and Controversies (1 ed.). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 249. ISBN 0275987124. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 November 2017.
  13. Jordan, Sara (March 1997). "Lesbian Mormon History". affirmation.org. Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014.
  14. Jennings, Duane E. "'Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth Century Americans: A Mormon Example' Book Review". affirmation.org. Affirmation: LGBT Mormons, Families & Friends. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  15. Quinn, D. Michael (Winter 1995). "Male-Male Intimacy among Nineteenth-century Mormons: A Case Study" (PDF). Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 28 (4): 128.
  16. Machlin, Sherri (September 26, 2013). "Banned Books Week: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall". New York Public Library. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  17. Boag, Peter (October 2002). "Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America (review)". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 11 (4): 693. doi:10.1353/sex.2003.0030. S2CID 142740704.
  18. Berkin, Carol; Miller, Christopher; Cherny, Robert; Gormly, James (2010). Making America: A History of the United States, Volume II: Since 1865 (Brief Fifth ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Publishing. p. 545. ISBN 978-0618471416.
  19. Painter, George (1991). The Sensibilities of Our Forefathers: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States. Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest.
  20. McHugh, Kathleen A.; Johnson-Grau, Brenda; Sher, Ben Raphael (2014). Making Invisible Histories Visible (PDF). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles Center for the Study of Women. p. 68. ISBN 9780615990842. Archived from the original on 6 November 2017. Also hosted online at escholarship.org
  21. "Mineral Society Schedules Trip". The Salt Lake Tribune. 2 October 1940. p. 25. Plans for a field trip to Grand County for geological study and collection of mineral specimens were outlined Tuesday evening at a meeting of The Mineralogical Society of Utah in the geology building of the University of Utah. Miss Mildred J. Berryman, society historian, exhibited colored photographs of the area to be visited.
  22. "Visiting Expert On Minerals Lectures Today". The Salt Lake Tribune. 7 January 1941. p. 9. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Miss Mildred J. Berryman, historian and photographer for the Mineralogical Society of Utah, said Monday that Dr. Donnay is en route to Quebec from Austin, Texas, where he has been attending a convention of the Mineralogical Society of America.
  23. "Coming Events". The Salt Lake Tribune. 18 January 1931. p. 46. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. W.B.A., No- 11, Westlake club, will give a card party for members and their husbands and friends Thursday at 8 p.m. in the K.P. hall. Prizes will be given and the following are on the committee: Miss Mildred Berryman, chairman ...
  24. Rampton, Robert E. (8 February 1959). "Women Parlay War Craft Into Thriving Occupation". The Salt Lake Tribune. p. 9. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Inspecting prism characteristics of plastic cubes are Mrs. Ruth Uckerman, left, and her partner Miss Barrie Berryman, who fabricate varied plastic objects in their backyard shop. A wealth of technical knowledge and precision machine shop know-how during the emergency mobilization and training program of World War II has been parlayed into a profitable and interesting business by two Woods Cross businesswomen. Working with an estimated $25,000 worth of machine tools, carpentry equipment and injection mold plastic fabricating equipment, Mrs. Ruth Uckerman and Miss Barrie Berryman, 6702 S. 600 West, Woods Cross, have manufactured both unusual and commonplace items during the years they have been in business. The company has even had a contract to manufacture items for Westinghouse Corp. for use in the atomic energy developments at Arco, Idaho. The women say they have no idea what the small circular items were to be used for except that they had to be precision molded and dyed with color-fast dyes. Both Miss Berryman and Mrs. Uckerman took their machine shop training at West High School in Salt Lake City during World War II when war industries in Utah needed trained technicians. They were employed at Hill Field during the war years in both the machine and instrument shops. After the war they decided they would put their talents to further use so they formed a partnership and set up shop behind their residence. Their early efforts saw the manufacture of small cubes of highly polished plastic with small flowers or insects inside. While they marketed many of these items to stores in Utah they soon branched out into the manufacture and sale of hammered and polished copper items. "Alas," says Miss Berryman, "the habits of the buying public change and the fad soon wore off and we found that prices for raw materials were going up. We soon restricted ourselves to machined metal and specially-molded plastic work." The biggest job we have," both Mrs. Uckerman and Miss Berryman admit, is keeping up with the new technical advances in materials available in the plastics field.
  25. "Garden Calendar: Tours, Show on Fall Schedule". The Salt Lake Tribune. 25 September 1960. p. 65. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Bonneview Garden Club—Show winners: ... Bountiful; theme arrangement: Miss Barrie Berryman, North Salt Lake, all green arrangement; Mrs. Ruth Uckerman, zinnias and marigolds ....
  26. Folsom, Genevieve H. (24 November 1963). "Gab from the Garden: Harvest Yule Ideas from Flower Shows". The Salt Lake Tribune. p. 123. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017. Bonneview Garden Club on December 7 in the Community Church, ... She will be assisted by ... Barrie Berryman, Ruth Uckerman ....
  27. Bullough, Vern L. (1 January 2004). American Nursing: A Biographical Dictionary (Vol. 3). Springer Publishing Company. p. 36. ISBN 0826111475.
  28. Woo, Elaine (2 July 2006). "Vern Bullough, 77; Prolific Author Was Scholar of Sex History". Los Angeles Times.
  29. De Cecco, John P. (20 November 2002). "Vern L. Bullough (1920– ): Making the Pen Mightier than the Sword". Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New York City: Harrington Park Press. p. 361. ISBN 1560231939.
  30. Collins, Brett Anthony. "Obituaries: Bonnie Bullough; Initiatied Nurse Practitioner Movement". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 22 February 2016.

See also
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