Pleasant Stories from an Unpleasant Beginning: The Many Lives of Mary Ellen Pleasant

By Andrea Downing

Mary Ellen Pleasant

It never ceases to amaze me how some people can cram in about three lifetimes of a normal person into their one. I constantly feel as if I just haven’t done enough living. And doing the research on Mary Ellen Pleasant made me feel like that, especially as there are so many conflicting stories.

Pleasant was born either in Philadelphia, which she claimed in her autobiography, or Virginia, either in 1812 or 1814 (you begin to see the problem here, right?) either to a LA African American woman and a Kanaka Hawaiian father or to the son of the Governor of VA and a Haitian voodoo priestess in VA, or into slavery in GA. My pick is the first one. No matter, at some stage (aged between 10 & 13) she was sent to Nantucket RI as a bonded servant to the Hussey family, Quaker abolitionists who ran a store. There she not only met many abolitionists on this stop on the Underground Railway but she learned how to act with people, studying men and women, their manners and speech.

Sometime in the 1840s, when Mary was in her twenties, she had worked out her contract and the Husseys helped her obtain a position in Boston working for a tailor. She also became a paid soloist in a church where she met and eventually married James Henry Smith. While Smith was of mixed race—part mulatto Cuban, part white—both he and Mary were able to pass as white. Smith was a flour contractor and also had inherited a plantation near Harper’s Ferry from his white father (where he had freed his own slaves). A wealthy man, he was also an abolitionist, working a track on the Underground Railroad that took runaway slaves up to Nova Scotia. However much he believed in free men, he was apparently somewhat restrictive of Mary and some believe she was ‘responsible’ for his death four years after they wed. Whatever the truth of that, he certainly left her a fortune in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Mary continued her abolitionist work. There is some evidence to support her life as a ‘slave stealer,’ masquerading as a jockey and taking enslaved persons to freedom. But in 1848 she married another abolitionist, John James Pleasant, and with slavers after them, they went first to New Orleans where Pleasant had family, including, apparently, Marie Laveau. Then it was on to San Francisco around 1852.  West at last!

The Gold Rush had begun and with women at a premium, Mary saw her opportunity to make more money. She continued to pass as white in order to avoid California’s Fugitive Slave Act. She initially worked as a boarding house steward and cook but eventually opened various dining establishments for miners, moving on to restaurants for wealthy and influential men. There she picked up tidbits of gossip helping her to make various investments in the surging economy, in everything from laundries to Wells Fargo. She also anticipated the need for oil and invested in that. She teamed up with a young Scots banking clerk, Thomas Bell, whom she had met on the ship to CA, and together they made millions. This association would have benefitted Mary in not bringing her finances to the attention of the white populace. It would have been difficult for her as a black woman to make such investments. Her husband, J.J., passed away in 1877, by which time Mary had changed her ethnicity in the city directory to black--the Civil War was over!

Pleasant in her later years

But let’s back-track for a moment. From 1857 to 1859 Mary returned east to help John Brown in his cause.  She donated some thirty thousand dollars to his abolitionist movement. When Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, a note was found in his pocket: ‘The ax is lain at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck there will be more money to help.’ It was believed at the time it had been written by some northerner but Mary Ellen Pleasant was apparently the author.

When she and another black woman were forcibly ejected from a San Francisco streetcar in 1866, she sued both the streetcar company and the city.  Her case was won although the damages awarded her were reversed.  Still, that case was used as precedent to win another suit as late as 1983. Further lawsuits in San Francisco depleted her fortune, including one brought by the  

The Bell/Pleasant home around 1870

widow of Thomas Bell, who had started a smear campaign against her. Pleasant and Bell’s fortunes were so entwined that when he passed, there was no telling who owned what. His widow, being white, won the case and left Pleasant with a greatly depleted bank account.

Mary Ellen died in reduced circumstances in 1904.

Pleasant is considered the Mother of California Civil Rights.  She had been befriended by the Sherwood family and is buried in their family plot in Napa, CA, with a brass plaque to mark the spot.  The site of her former mansion, now demolished, is marked with a small park in San Francisco, which also has a Mary Ellen Pleasant Day. She has been mentioned in numerous literary works as well as in films.

In 1965, her gravestone was amended with a line she had requested on her deathbed, 'A Friend of John Brown.’

First photo provenance unknown

2nd photo public domain via wikimedia

3rd photo courtesy SF History Center, San Francisco Public Library,  SFG City Guides

Check out my Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Andrea-Downing/e/B008MQ0NXS?ref=dbs_m_mng_rwt_auth

Divas in Pink Tights

by Lyn Horner

I’ve been reading The Gentle Tamers, Women of the Old Wild West by Dee Brown. It’s a marvelous testament to how women endured and flourished on the western frontier. Some of the accounts are grim, others inspiring, but one chapter is a bit lighter in tone. Titled “Pink Tights and Red Velvet Skirts,” it shines a spotlight on female entertainers who trod the boards in San Francisco, Virginia City, Denver and far flung mining camps.

The chapter opens with this quote from historian Hubert Howe Bancroft: “The mere appearance of a woman sufficed in early days to insure success.” Even if the performer was untrained, had a cracked voice and was far from beautiful, she could strut off the stage amid a shower of silver and gold.

During the decade between the first California gold strike and the Civil War, theaters flourished in San Francisco, but also in just about every mining town. They might be fancy playhouses or canvas tents. In a land where men far outnumbered women, it didn’t matter as long as a woman arrived to put on a show.

When an actress with real talent came along, she was idolized by her male audience. One such woman was Caroline Chapman. Born illegitimately into a famous theatrical family, Caroline performed with her father, William Chapman. After their first performance in San Francisco, the pair were showered with buckskin bags of gold dust. Dubbed “our Caroline” by her adoring audience, she drew mobs of followers. When she and her father arrived in Sonora to christen a new theater with She Stoops to Conquer, they were met and escorted by a thousand miners. The Chapmans would perform anywhere, even on the sawed off trunk of a huge tree in one case.

The most glamorous, seductive and scandalous western diva was Lola Montez. More akin to a burlesque queen than an actress, according to Dee Brown, she “. . . burst upon San Francisco like a bombshell, making excellent copy for the newspapers with stories of her many marriages and her claim that she was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron.” She dressed like Byron in black jackets with big rolling collars, and strolled the streets with two leashed greyhounds and a parrot on her shoulder. Lola’s sensational and shocking spider dance made her famous. She purposely spread stories of her sinfulness, tales that have perpetuated her legend in western lore down the years.

 

Petite, talented Lotta Crabtree took the stage as a shy little girl. A protégé of sorts of Lola Montez’s, she danced and sang her way through the mining camps with her mother and eventually landed on the San Francisco scene. She took the “West’s theatrical center” by storm. Headlines read: “Miss Lotta, the San Francisco Favorite,” “La Petite Lotta, the Celebrated Danseuse and Vocalist,” and “Miss Lotta the Unapproachable.” Brown attributes her lasting success to her innocence. She remained above scandal and suspicion, the perennial princess for thirty-five years, amassing a fortune, which her mother carefully hoarded. When Lotta died in 1924, she was worth over four million dollars. All of it went to charity since she never married and had no children. 

Dee Brown goes into much greater detail about performers and the history of theater in the West. And this is only one chapter in his amazing book.

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San Francisco, circa 1860

My first published work was Luck of the Draw. Fleshing out the hero and heroine, their features, childhoods and why they were patronizing Sam's saloon when the story opened, came easy. So did some of the secondary characters, including Royce's older brother, Lucas. Like Royce, Lucas carried emotional scars and was untrusting of women. He needed a strong female to help him overcome a heart-breaking past. I found his heroine when I created Missy, sister to the heroine in Luck of the Draw. But unlike Lucas, Missy presented a challenge. She'd been absent from her sister's life for seven years, and I had to find out where she'd been all this time. Enter my love for John Wayne.

Way back in my childhood, I remember a movie that placed John Wayne in a gaming hall on the Barbary Coast. While I don't recall the plot of the movie, a gaming hall was a perfect fit for Missy. She knew poker, and she knew how to sit at the tables and fleece men with a flirtatious smile. But giving Missy her own business was only the beginning. I had to know if the gaming halls existed in 1860 San Francisco, where in San Francisco the Barbary Coast was, and what the inside of her hall looked like. So, I went to the library.

The first fact I proved was the Barbary and the gaming halls did exist in the timeframe of my story, Lady Luck. I was pleased with that, and later on, I found an old San Francisco street map, circa 1860, to cement placing Missy and her hall on the Barbary Coast. And then, I found something much more interesting; something I had to have in the story--ships.



Yerba Beuna

In my opinion, the easiest way to get to San Francisco during this period was by ship. Some of these great vessels ran into storms while trying to dock. Navigating rough waters wasn't easy, and many ended up on shore permanently dry-docked. Crews disbanded and joined other ships, leaving behind the wreckage. One such area where this occured was Yerba Buena Cove, just a few blocks away from the area known as the Barbary Coast and a perfect fit for Missy's gaming hall.  Problem was, around the time of my story, the city had taken to filling in these ships with sand and erecting businesses on top of the sand. Being that I write fiction, I took liberty with fact and gave Missy a ship of her own, moving the vessel to an intersection along the Barbary. And then, I went a step further and imagined what the inside would look like, creating a home by replacing the masts with walls and windows and erecting staircases at the front and back of the ship to connect the deck with the middle, as in a two-story house. (Dual staircases were popular in older, two-family homes in my hometown.) Then I put the gaming parlor in the hull. The end result was better than I had imagined, but my research didn't stop there.

Being a stickler for remaining as true to an era or area as possible, I had to know about the police department, because they figured into the ending of the story. Did such a department exist in 1860? If so, what color were their uniforms? That might seem trivial--the color of clothing the policemen wore--but I didn't want someone to come back and say their uniforms were blue when I wrote they were black. A police department did exist, and the uniforms were blue. The last thing I incorporated into the story was the Pony Exress. I originally had Lucas communicating with his family in Colorado via the telegraph, but the telegraph wasn't operational in 1860 San Francisco. The Pony Exress was, and I had a little bit of fun with Lucas' ranch hands and those famous riders.

Taming the west wasn't easy. It took a lot of hard work by determined, brave men and women. Along the way, many interesting discoveries were made to make life easier, and thanks to the internet and the library, I look forward to finding my next fascination; something to rival the discovery of dry-docked ships and converting them into a gaming hall. In my imagination, of course.  

 










Lady Luck:

www.amazon.com/dp/B0063WCXO0