ABSTRACT
Homosexual and lesbian friendships and social groups were long part of the American social scene, although most of these groups avoided public exposure. As historians try to trace down the histories of these groups, some serendipitously come to light and we find they left studies or autobiographies that are important to helping us to understand same-sex life in the past. One such “find” was a study by Berry Berryman who began interviewing her lesbian and gay friends perhaps as early as the 1920s and began writing them up in the early 1940s only to abandon the project, which was eventually completed by Bonnie and Vern Bullough in the 1970s. Her study was significant even though flawed because it is one of the few studies we have of a rather loosely knit lesbian (and gay) community in an unlikely place, such as Salt Lake City was. She was a pioneer in her study and in her public lifestyle.
