The origin of Mary Ellen Pleasant is not clear. She claimed that she was born free in Philadelphia, while researchers believed she was born into slavery in Virginia or Georgia. Her mother disappeared when she was an infant and that she was raised in Philadelphia by free people of color named Williams. When Pleasant was about 6 years old, she worked as a domestic servant at the Hussey-Gardner family in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The Husseys were Quakers and abolitionists, and though Pleasant did not attend school, their son taught her how to read and write.
In 1840, at the age of 26, Pleasant moved to Boston and worked as an apprentice for a tailor. There, she met her first husband, James Smith, an abolitionist who got her involved in the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to their freedom. When her husband died four years later, he left her an inheritance of thousands of dollars. At 34, she married John James Pleasants, a former slave who worked as a cook-seaman.
In 1852, 38 years old Pleasant sailed to San Francisco, escaping from being captured for her abolitionist work. Her fair skin enabled her to pass as white, so to keep her identity and abolitionist work safe, she presented herself in public as a white woman, while the black community knew her as black. During the California Gold Rush, most migrants were men miners, and Pleasant seized the opportunity to establish a household services business. She opened laundries and boardinghouses, staffed mainly by African-American men and women; many were former slaves. She used to listen to her wealthy customers’ conversations and make successful investments based on the advice they gave one another. With the fortune she made, she expanded her business, opened a chain of restaurants, bought various properties in California and Canada, and co-founded the Bank of California.
Upon her arrival to San Francisco, Pleasant became a prominent figure in the local Underground Railroad. As her wealth grew, she gave more to the abolitionist cause. She sponsored the founding of the Athenaeum Building – a library and meeting place for the black community, and established safe houses for slaves on the run, ensuring they have all their needs in San Francisco as well as on the road north. She paid for legal services for those who have been extradited to their former owners.
Pleasant also helped women of any color with clothing and housing, providing them money and advice on how to dress and carry themselves in the unsafe streets of the early days of San Francisco. For her tireless efforts for her community, Pleasant became known as a “one-woman social agency” and was referred to as “Mother of civil rights in California.”
After the Civil War, Pleasant began to identify herself as a woman of color. She stopped working as a housekeeper and dedicate all her time to civil rights activities. She established schools for the black community, housing for the newly free people, and fought against Jim Crow laws. In the 1870s, Pleasant developed a business partnership with a banker called Thomas Bell, which by 1875 gained them both a sum of $30 million (approximately $698,454,545 today). Pleasant spent her final years in a legal battle with Bell’s widow, who accused Pleasant of stealing money. The case was still not settled when Pleasant died at the age of 90.
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