Roy Exum: The Legend Of Cockeyed Charlie

Now let’s just suppose a small group of us are sitting in the den, late at night, and the embers in the fireplace are just before losing their glow. The glasses are nearly empty and let’s just pretend one of the younger in the room asks one of the older the best story he has ever heard before calling it a night. Chances are it might be the Legend of Cockeyed Charlie.

The story starts in Lebanon, New Hampshire around 1824, when 12-year-old Charlie Parkhurst ran away from Mr. Millshark’s orphanage.  Somehow he got down to Providence, Rhode Island, where he landed a job as a stable boy for Ebenezer Balch, who had a large livery stable.

The kind Mr. Balch took the orphaned boy under his wing, delighting in the way Charlie was something akin to a horse whisperer and had a natural way with the animals.

Soon Mr. Balch taught him to drive a coach, working with a two-team, then four until young Charlie could handle a six-horse team, three pairs of reins in each hand. He was a natural but Balch soon sold his company, heading out to California because stage coaches were in high demand due to the Gold Rush.

Understand, the golden spike wasn’t driven at Donner Pass until 1868 and before then stage coaches were the only way through the Sierras. Charlie couldn’t read but he was a quick learner and, shortly after, Charlie sailed from Boston to Panama, crossed the isthmus to the Pacific side on foot, and sailed up to then-bustling San Francisco. During his voyage, he ran into John Morton, who had a drayage business, and when Morton saw how Charlie could handle a team, he hired him on the spot.

Shortly after Parkhurst’s arrival, he was shoeing some horses when one kicked him in the eye. After that he wore a patch but, when he didn’t, folks knew him best as One-Eyed Charlie, or Cockeyed Charlie. Everybody liked him, his quick wit coming easily when he was smoking cigars and chewing tobacco. He was small for a “whip,” that’s what they called stage coach drivers, but it was widely known he could cut open an envelope or put out another man’s cigar with ease at 10 paces.

“Whips” were also called “Jehus,” this for the line in the Bible’s Book of Kings (9:20) that reads in part … “and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously,” and that was evermore Charlie Parkhurst. In short order he became the fastest driver in California, running “The Great Route” from San Jose to Oakland, Stockton to Mariposa, and San Juan to Santa Cruz. It was hardly glamorous work, as historian Charles Outland wrote, “It was a dangerous era in dangerous country, where dangerous conditions were the norm.”

Stage coaches carried silver and gold bullion, company payrolls and the mail. Bandits would appear from nowhere, leveling a shotgun and demanding, “Throw down the strong box.” While they never hurt the passengers, they would rob them, too, and after the first time it happened to Charlie, he strapped on a Colt .44.

In due time, he was roaring around a long turn when one of the most notorious road agents in the West, “Sugarfoot,” road-blocked Cockeyed Charlie. Both knew the other’s reputation well. Charlie instantly dropped the reins at his feet, laid the whip on his six-team and whirling all at the same time to shoot “Sugarfoot” stone dead. That only heightened his fame and in time Cockeyed Charlie was just as famous as the legendary Hank Monk, George Gordon and a brilliant whip known simply as Foss.

The legend grew even greater when one day, at a roaring gallop, the stage hit a deep hole in the road coming out of Carson Pass and Charlie was hurled from his seat. Holding onto the reins as he was being dragged on his stomach on the downhill grade, Parkhurst managed to slow the team until he could stop the heaving animals by turning them into high brush. His passengers were so in awe – and thankful for their lives -- they took up a collection of $20 on the spot.

Wells Fargo soon awarded the gun-toting’ Parkhurst with a gold watch and chain for his bravery and one time, when there was a huge strong box aboard, Wells Fargo actually hired Charlie and the hard-driving Foss to team around the clock. Cockeyed Charlie would drive fearlessly and furiously during the night, using mostly his memory to guide the team in the dark to the amazement and delight of Foss.

Parkhurst was a curious sort. He never took his gloves off, he rarely spoke unless it was to cuss, and he bedded down with the horses most nights. He was small for a “whip,” about 5-foot-six and well-muscled at 170, but he could evermore handle himself in a fistfight and could outdrink darn near any other drivers. He oozed confidence in a non-bragging way and had many friends and more admirers.

Charlie was a giving man – easy with a handout to some sufferer -- and would-be drivers begged to learn from him. He wore a wide-brimmed hat with a giant bandana around his neck. His shirt fit loose and his heavy-twill blue jeans tight, cinched with a wide belt, and always his leather gloves, which fit so tightly the sweat-stained leather was like a second skin. To steer a six-in-hand meant a pair of reins had to skillfully be threaded between each finger of each hand. Nobody could control each horse in a galloping team like Charlie Parkhurst.

Charlie was never much of a lady’s man. Oh, with his good looks he had more than most who dropped a handkerchief in his path, despite the eye patch he wore and his roustabout lifestyle. He was a popular face at any saloon and his good humor and easy way endeared him to many a crowd. Yet he never really talked that much except when “likker” had his tongue and his polite mannerisms were odd for a man who was believed to have shot and killed several other would-be highwaymen with his Colt .44.

But soon the railroads spread like wildfire and in 1865 Parkhurst grew tired of the rain and wind, the ever-present danger and the grueling schedule, this because he was always in high demand. He opened a stage station, making money because he had good horses, but then started ranching near Soquel, Calif. In 1879 he complained of fever and a sore throat, was diagnosed with oral cancer and finally passed on Dec. 29, 1879.

Again, he was adored by everyone. But when loving hands were preparing him for burial, there came a shriek and a yell for the doctor.  One man there commenced to cussing … he couldn’t talk other than cuss, it was later said. That same day an amazed physician confirmed one of the greatest secrets of the Wild, Wild West.

As the obituary in the Sacramento Daily Bee reported, “On Sunday last, there died a person known as Charley Parkhurst, aged 67, who was well-known to old residents as a stage driver. He was in early days accounted one of the most expert manipulators of the reins who ever sat on the box of a coach. It was discovered when friendly hands were preparing him for his final rest, that Charley Parkhurst was unmistakably a well-developed woman!”

Oh, mercy my! Charlie was a well-developed woman! Yessir, and the doctor said it appeared for all the world that she had once given birth, this before a baby’s dress and baby shoes were soon found in the bottom of Cockeyed Charlie’s trunk.

In the New York Times it said, “He was in his day one of the most dexterous and celebrated of the famous California drivers ranking with Foss, Hank Monk, and George Gordon, and it was an honor to be striven for to occupy the spare end of the driver's seat when the fearless Charley Parkhurst held the reins of a four-or six-in hand...

“Last Sunday [December 28, 1879], in a little cabin on the Moss Ranch, about six miles from Watsonville, Charley Parkhurst, the famous coachman, the fearless fighter, the industrious farmer and expert woodman died of the cancer on his tongue. He knew that death was approaching, but he did not relax the reticence of his later years other than to express a few wishes as to certain things to be done at his death. Then, when the hands of the kind friends who had ministered to his dying wants came to lay out the dead body of the adventurous Argonaut, a discovery was made that was literally astounding. Charley Parkhurst was a woman.”

The obituary wondered in print how no one had ever discovered his true gender and the fact he was indeed a member of the fairer sex made it astounding Parkhurst could "achieve distinction in an occupation above all professions calling for the best physical qualities of nerve, courage, coolness and endurance, and that she should add to them the almost romantic personal bravery that enables one to fight one's way through the ambush of an enemy ... It is beyond believing,” the article read, “but there is more than ample evidence to confirm her life’s story is true."

When they removed Charlie’s beloved gloves, the hands were soft and the nails were well-kept. Charlie kept his hair cut short and, while beards and moustaches were popular at the time, nobody thought anything of Charlie’s face because it was weathered from constant exposure to the elements, and whose business was it if Charlie preferred to shave?

Since Charlie was already a legend, the news went all the way to the front pages of newspapers across America. The orphanage, after reading the news accounts, confirmed there once was a girl named Charlotte Parkhurst who had indeed run away at age 12. It was also learned that some years before, when Charlie was staying at a boarding house, a 12-year-old boy was helping the badly-drunk Charlie get to bed when he came back down the steps to say with wide eyes, “Ma! Charlie ain’t no man – he’s a woman.”

The boarding house owners never told the story until after Parkhurst’s death, out of respect that it would embarrass the famous “whip.” And then there is this: on Nov. 3, 1868, there is evidence Charlie Parkhurst voted in California for the next President of the United States, this 52 years before Congress passed the 19th amendment to allow women to vote.

It was first believed Charlotte was the first female to ever vote, but later it was learned some states already allowed it. There is no question Charlie was the first female to vote in California.

Oh, that one day we might be so lucky to sit high on the box as our life’s coach winds down Carson Pass and talk wisdom with one the likes of Cockeyed Charlie. And, here, you thought Caitlyn Jenner was somebody special...

* * *

A special thanks to my friend Betty Haralson for drawing my attention to the Legend of Cockeyed Charlie. What a marvelous – and very true – story far too few have ever heard.

royexum@aol.com