Charley Parkhurst, a.k.a. One-Eyed-Charlie, was an American Stagecoach driver, rancher and farmhand in California in his late 30s in the year 1849, after the California Gold Rush. It is proposed that in 1868 he may have been the first person assigned female at birth to vote in a US election. He received his nickname after being struck by the kick of a horse, blinding him in one eye. The work of a stagecoach driver in the era was dangerous, and he was subject to adverse weather conditions at best, and armed hold-ups at worst.

Charley is historically depicted from accounts of those who knew him as “a man of slight build, who chewed tobacco, drank whiskey and swore often.”

He is the subject of the opera, Good Country, which debuted in 2019, and is considered the first opera composed with a protagonist tenor role designed for a trans masc lead vocalist performer. The role ultimately went to Holden Madagame, a queer non-binary activist and tenor opera singer. Charley Parkhurst’s birth sex, like many other historical transgender people, was only discovered after his death.