Partner John Mosher, Wife Agnes Rindge

Queer Places:
Beach Walk, Yaphank, NY 11980

Philip Wadsworth Claflin (November 9, 1906 - September 18, 1990) was the companion of John Mosher, American short story writer as well as the first regularly assigned film critic for The New Yorker. The first sharp awareness of the gay presence in Cherry Grove, NY, came amid the general hubbub of reconstruction in the early summer of 1939, when John Mosher’s house, across the walk from Pride House, was completed. It was not that the locals found Mosher particularly obnoxious. Catherine Richter remembered him as “a nice man—not obvious—not blatantly gay. We assumed he was because he had Philip, but he was discreet. Those men were very discreet.”

Philip Wadsworth Claflin was the son of Allen Avery Claflin (born 1873) and Mabel Gertrude Nash (born 1871). Following the suddent death of Mosher in 1942, Claflin enlisted in the army, and in 1945 married Agnes Rindge, arts administrator, collector, and educator who spent the majority of her career at Vassar College as a professor and serving as director of its art gallery for 28 years. She was close friends with Allen Porter and Monroe Wheeler.


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