Little Joe Monahan

Joe "Little Joe" Monahan (1850–1904), born Johanna Monahan, was an American businessman who worked in various prospecting and cattle industries around Silver City, Idaho, under an assumed masculine name and identity. The revelation of Joe's sex became a sensationalized national news story after his death in 1904. His life was the subject of the 1993 film The Ballad of Little Jo. Early life Monahan is believed to have been born as Johanna Monahan in Buffalo, New York, in 1850, and to have moved to Idaho in 1867. Raised in a foster home from the age of eight, Monahan left for the West at 14 years old. Because his identity was obscured until his death in 1904, the circumstances of his birth are unclear, and census records suggest he may have been born as Mary Manumon, though the family also had a young servant girl, Johanna Burke. Accounts to journalists after his death claimed that Monahan's mother dressed the young child in boy's clothing in early childhood to sell newspapers on the street. As Joe Monahan Monahan had spent his early years in Idaho as a cowboy, and briefly lived in Oregon before returning to Owyhee County, where an 1898 census listed him as a cattle rancher. Monahan was said to have worked in the livery business, then a sawmill, and later saved several thousand dollars in mining, which were stolen in an investment fraud. Monahan voted in an 1880 Republican primary despite women being denied the vote at the time.