Lucy Hicks Anderson, American socialite and chef, lived the first 59 years of her life as a woman until 1945, when it was discovered that she was biologically male. Today she would be described as a transgender person, but that term did not exist during her lifetime. Throughout her life she insisted publicly that a person could appear to be of one sex but actually belong to the other. Lucy Hicks Anderson was born Tobias Lawson in Waddy, Kentucky sometime in 1886. When Lawson entered public school she insisted on wearing dresses and began calling herself Lucy. Her mother took her to a physician, and the doctor advised her mother to rear Lucy as a girl. She did and Lucy wore girl’s clothing through her childhood before leaving school at the age of fifteen to work as a domestic. When she was in her twenties, Lucy moved west, settling in Pecos, Texas, where she worked in a hotel for a decade. In 1920 Lucy married Clarence Hicks in Silver City, New Mexico, and then moved to Oxnard, California. In Oxnard she continued to work as a domestic, but she also saved her money, purchased property near the center of town … Continue reading Lucy Hicks [Tobias Lawson] Anderson (1886-1954)