CARNEGIE CACHE:

Florence Molloy and Mabel MacLeay: A piece of women’s history, a possible piece of LGBTQ history?

By Nicole Docimo

Since the first time I happened upon the photo above in the Carnegie Library archive, I have been intrigued by these two women. If you’re interested in Boulder history, you have likely heard of them; in addition to developing their own business in mountain tours and operating a taxi service around town (something that was virtually unheard of as a profession for women when they arrived in Boulder circa 1918), Florence Molloy and Mabel MacLeay also owned a dude ranch in Gold Hill called the Double M Ranch after their two last names. But this is just the first layer of their story

Last summer I began learning about the process of uncovering LGBTQ stories from history. LGBTQ history is one of the most difficult histories to find as it is so often completely invisible As I began dipping my toe in this work with the help of the Colorado LGBTQ history project, Florence Molloy and Mabel MacLeay popped back into my head. At that point I had never really dove into their story, but I found it interesting that their names were always spoken in the same sentence without any mention of men. As an archivist, the cardinal rule when conducting research is: assume nothing, so I looked more deeply at the facts of their lives

Chapter

According to all available accounts, Florence Molloy and Mabel MacLeay came to Boulder in a five-passenger touring car from Syracuse, New York. The exact date is unknown, but from Daily Camera clippings, we know they were here by spring 1918. The two women had each been married, but they came to Boulder together without either of their husbands. They also brought Florence Molloy’s two daughters and Mabel MacLeay’s son, all three children 10 and under. In a 1927 Rocky Mountain News article, the women are referred to as widows, but I discovered in later newspaper clippings that Mabel MacLeay’s husband was still alive years later at the time of her son’s marriage. I have yet to discover what happened to Florence Molloy’s husband. On census records and other documents, the two women were listed as married, widowed, and divorced in different years, adding up to very nebulous information. What we can confirm is that these two women came west together, lived together for 30+ years, raised their children in the same home, traveled together, and were in business together

In terms of LGBTQ history, there are a series of markers that can be used to identify potential LGBTQ people from the past: “Never married/confirmed bachelor” is a marker. Shared long-term home with a same-sex person is another marker. A gap in the person’s life history is another

While Molloy and MacLeay were each married before moving to Boulder, I find the confusion around their later marital status to be fascinating. Florence Molloy was known to be a big personality and storyteller, narrating her high mountain taxi rides with stories from the area, but in everything we have in our archive, details about the women’s lives before moving to Boulder are obscured

We will likely never be able to confirm that Florence Molloy and Mabel MacLeay were a same-sex couple. It is completely possible, that they were just dear friends We also must consider how identities have changed over time--how people self-identified in 1918 is different than how they identify today, so we can never absolutely identify someone from the past using current concepts Add to this the fact that even if Molloy and MacLeay were a same-sex couple in a way similar to what that identity means today, they may have wanted to remain hidden.

As a straight person, I cannot speak to the experience of an LGBTQ person engaging with this story of two women who made a life together 100 years ago in the west But as a woman I can speak to my experience learning about these women who made their own way in a world that defined women by the role of wife and mother it makes room for me to also create my own path. When considering doing the work to retell stories like Molloy and MacLeay’s as possible pieces of Boulder’s LGBTQ history even though we may never confirm them, and even though there’s a chance these two women would not want to be “outed,” I like to imagine that surfacing these stories begins to create a history for all the different ways people have lived, which opens up and legitimizes possibilities for current and future generations