Indeed, the only unambiguous extant record of sex between men in the Southern Mines occurs not in a letter or diary but in the divorce proceedings of Hanna and Jeremiah Allkin of Calaveras County. Jeremiah had come to California in 1851, and Hanna joined him there in 1854. Two years later she divorced him, in part because “of his frequently sleeping with certain men, in the same house then occupied by her as his domicil—for the diabolical purpose of committing the crime of bugery.”84
I appreciated the author being very clear about this being the only unambiguous historical record.
