Kenton Library Archives

Happy Pride Month!

On December 13, 1969 — just months after the Stonewall Riots — hundreds of LGBTQ people boarded Cincinnati’s “Party Boat,” The Chaperon, seeking a few hours of freedom on the Ohio River. Beneath the glow of the skyline, men danced together openly, some in drag, others arm-in-arm, creating a floating sanctuary in a city where q***r life was expected to remain hidden.

They had no idea Kenton County police, undercover agents, and federal authorities had spent six months planning a raid.

In the early morning hours, officers stormed the vessel at gunpoint near the Suspension Bridge. Terrified passengers froze as music abruptly stopped. Some fled by jumping into the icy Ohio River rather than risk arrest and exposure. Others hid their faces from newspaper cameras as they were marched across the bridge into Cincinnati before dawn.

Authorities framed the raid as liquor enforcement, but it was part of a broader effort to suppress visible q***r life in Cincinnati after Stonewall. Yet the crackdown had the opposite effect. The humiliation, arrests, and surveillance helped forge connections that would fuel Cincinnati’s growing LGBTQ movement throughout the 1970s.

Stories from the Covington High School Class of 1876

William G. Lord
by Bobbye Winterberg

One could say William Gay Lord was destined to be an educator. He was born in Buffalo, NY, on June 18, 1853, to Frederick and Mary Lord. Williams’s grandfather, Rev. Nathaniel Lord, D.D., was the president of Dartmouth College from 1828 to 1863. In the 1860s, William’s family moved to Alabama, where his father accepted a teaching position. Due to the Civil War, he lost the position, and they migrated to Covington, where a family member secured him a job as a freight agent with the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railway. The Lord family history recounts that Frederick arrived in Covington with fifty cents to his name and wore homespun clothing made by his wife. Despite the rough restart, William graduated from M. H. Worrall’s Classical & Scientific School, 4th and Russell Sts., in 1869. He graduated from Cincinnati’s Chickering Classical and Scientific Institute then taught at Covington High School. On August 26, 1880, William married Mary Ellen Collins, daughter of famous Kentucky historian, Richard H. Collins. The wedding, held in Maysville, was quite a social event. It was described as one of the most beautiful and original ceremonies the columnist had witnessed. The Lords had four children, Richard, William, Mary, and Elizabeth (Huske.) In 1885, William received an honorary Master of Arts from Kentucky’s Central University in Richmond. After teaching at Covington High School, William became principal of the Rugby School in Covington before moving to Anchorage, Kentucky to be the proprietor of the Bellewood Female Seminary. The school advertised that it was founded on firm discipline, thorough instruction, high scholastic attainments, careful religious training, and moderate expense. It proclaimed that a certificate from the school would admit a student to Wellesley or Vassar Colleges. William was principal of the school beginning around 1898 until he retired. After retirement, he served on the Anchorage School Board. When William was 73 years old, he passed away on March 16, 1927, at his home in Anchorage. He was laid to rest at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.