Charity and Sylvia

Charity Bryant (1777-1851) and Sylvia Drake (1784-1868) met in 1807 in Weybridge, where they lived and were accepted as a couple. They had a cottage on Hagar farm, joined the local church and charities, and ran a tailoring business. Charity’s nephew, poet William Cullen Bryant, wrote: “they took each other as companions for life… this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage.” Correspondence, poems, and business records document their 44 years together. Charity and Sylvia rest under a single headstone at Weybridge Hill Cemetery, forever marking their relationship. The only known image of them, a ca. 1810 double silhouette, is considered the earliest depiction of a same-sex couple in America.