Charley Parkhurst is someone we can learn about from a very long time ago! They were a person who lived over 100 years ago, back in the 1800s, and was famous for being a really skilled stagecoach driver.
But what's a stagecoach, you might ask? Well, a stagecoach is like a big wagon that can carry lots of people and things, and it was how people traveled from place to place before cars were invented!
Now, what made Charley Parkhurst really cool was that they were what we call "gender non-conforming," which means that they didn't fit into the typical idea of what a man or a woman should look like or act like. In fact, Charley dressed like a man and went by a man's name, even though they were actually born a woman.
Even though it was very uncommon and often unsafe for someone to be openly LGBT+ back then, Charley was able to live their life the way they wanted, and they became one of the most skilled stagecoach drivers around. They were so good, in fact, that people who rode in their stagecoach didn't even realize they were a different gender!
Charley's story reminds us that no matter who we are, we can still achieve great things and live our lives the way we want, even if it's different from what other people might expect or think is "normal."