Hudson: A New Look, or “I’m Not Mammy to Everybody in California” : Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black Entrepreneur
35
A New Look,
or “I’m Not
Nammy to
Everybody in
California^’:
Mary Ellen Pleasant
a Black Entrepreneur
Lynn M. Hudson
Mary Ellen Pleasant at 87 years of age. {Courtesy of the Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley)
I V X A R Y Ellen Pleasant, a free black woman in her
thirties, arrived in San Francisco in 1849 at the height of
the Gold Rush. In the 50 years following her arrival, she
would become a leading entrepreneur — a pioneer urbanité — in the tumultuous terrain of nineteenth-century San
Franciseo. ‘
Pleasant’s reputation as accountant, investor, and restaurateur in the West Coast metropolis would be eolored
by fantastie mythology regarding her oecult powers and
personal relationships with the city’s male elite.
In the ante-bellum years. Pleasant was committed to the
abolition of slavery. During the Reconstruction period,
she continued her battle against discrimination in a landmark suit against a streetcar eompany in San Franciseo.
Pleasant became a folk hero of the West, but also a target
of tremendous animosity. This contradietory legacy indicates that while Pleasant made inroads into power and
politics in the Gold Rush West, her life was shaped and
constrained by her race and her gender.
Histories of the West often describe Pleasant as a
madam, voodoo queen, and prostitute. Like many figures
in Western history — male and female — she is often the
subject of pulp literature but rarely featured in serious
historical studies.^ Pleasant’s life in California — and the
myths and folklore it inspired — merit further examination, however.
The myths about Pleasant tell us much about the way
gender was socially and culturally constructed in postGold Rush San Francisco. From this particular study, it is
clear that the politics of gender are bound up with politics
of race, class, and ethnicity. Further, Pleasant’s refusal to
confine herself to the terrain mapped out for African
American women intensified the vitriolic depietions of her
in the white-owned San Francisco press.
Contemporaries described Pleasant as everything from
a “coal-black negress” to an exotic mulatto. In the 1890s,
when Pleasant would have been about eighty, she was
described by a black female contemporary as “rather tall,
slender, with sharp features, keen black eyes, very dark,
almost black. “^ But images that artists created of Pleasant
in the San Franei.sco press are of a weathered, wizened old
woman. She is pictured in a bonnet, usually with small,
wrinkled features. Pleasant might have worn a bonnet
when she ventured out of her home on the corner of
Octavia and Bush Streets to do business or shop, but this
image reinforces a picture of her as a maternal Mammy
figure. She was even nieknamed “Mammy Pleasant”” by
the press. The stereotype of a fat, happy, female slave
dedicated to serving white families was a familiar figure in
nineteenth-century popular culture. And the tendency to
cast Pleasant as Mammy revealed that stereotypes of black
women in the West were consistent with those of other
regions.•* Pleasant cared little for the label “Mammy. ” She
told an interviewer from the San Francisco Call in 19ÜI:
36
JULY 1993
Listen: I don’t like to be called mammy by everybody. Put that down. I’m not matnmy to everybody
in California. I got a letter from a minister in
Sacratnento. It was addressed to Mammy Pleasant, i
wrote back to him on his own paper that my name
was Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant. I wouldn’t waste any of
my paper on him. The letter wasn’t in the house
fifteen minutes. I sent it buck to hitn unread.”
JOURNAL of the WEST
INIIf
In spite ot her requests, the interviewer just quoted and
most chroniclers of her story continued to refer to her as
“Mammy Pleasant.” As is clear from a brief sketch of her
San Francisco career, this stereotype resulted from power
struggles peculiar to nineteenth-century San Francisco as
much as it mirrored popular conceptions of black women.
According to several reports. Pleasant”s reputation as a
cook preceded her landing in the city in 1849, This
notoriety certainly would not be true of the thousands of
anonymous goldseekers who were rapidly populating
California. That Pleasant came to San Francisco with
capital (that she had inherited frotn her first husband), and
a skill that was in demand, certainly increased her chances
of survival in an environtnent that was more than risky for
tTiost. Pleasant s arrival was thusly described:
She . . . was besieged by a crowd of men. all
anxious to employ her. before she had so much as left
the wharf at which her ship had docked. She finally
sold her services at auction for five hundred dol lars a
month, with the stipulation thai she should do no
washing, not even dishwashing. This was the highest
wage paid to a cook, although several others received as much as three hundred dollars a month.”^
It is noteworthy that Pleasant earned nearly twice as much
as other San Franciscans in the same occupation. Another
chronicler of California’s Gold Rush days claims that
Pleasant’s income as a cook easily equaled that of the
average gold tniner.” Given the uncertainty of gold mining, Pleasant’s guaranteed income ol’ $500 a month would
have been superior to most new arrivals.
According to Pleasant’s own notes, she invested her
savings at an accounting firm. West and Harper, who in
turn earned her ten percent interest on her investment. By
1855. she owned several laundries in San Francisco and
was a well-established businesswoman. But in spite of her
successes, she would not fmd the West a haven from antiblack sentiment.
Although California had joined the Union as a free state
in 1850. the decade that followed was a troubled one for
African Atnericans living there. The black population had
grown tretnendousiy during the decade: in 1850. the
census reported 962 blacks living in the state; by 1860. that
number had risen to over 4,000 free blacks, most of whom
lived in the San Francisco-Sacramento area. Although the
census made no provision for counting slaves, it was well
known that Southerners often brought slaves with them
across the California border. Mary Ellen Pleasant and
Pleasant appeared as a wizened “Mammy” in a December 1902 issue
ot the Sar) Francisco Call. (Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University ot California, Berkeley)
other free blacks worked to harbor slaves and assist
runaways in the state. One German visitor noted that
“wealthy California Negroes’* were “especially talented”
in stealing slaves to freedom.^
Some white politicians reacted to this population boom
and the increasing power of California’s free black communities by sponsoring a version of the infatnous Fugitive
Slave Law in 1852. It allowed slaveholders to reclaitn their
slaves on California soil. Resistance to the bill peaked in
1858 when a runaway slave. Archy Lee, petitioned for his
trcedom. The case mobilized African Americans in the
state, who eventually succeeded in freeing Lee. But this
victory was followed by another legal battle the same year:
the introduction of a bill to ban blacks from entering the
state. One result of this bill — though it was narrowly
defeated — was a mass exodus of Airican Americans to
Canada, including Mary Ellen Pleasant and her husband
John James Pleasant, a cook and a seaman, whom she had
tnarricd in 1848. Many emigrated to Vancouver, but the
Pleasants chose to settle in Chatham, Canada West (now
the province of Ontario).
The Pleasants went to Canada not only to flee oppressive conditions in California but also to join the growing
community of abolitionists and fugitive slaves in
Chatham. It is also likely that while in Canada West.
Pleasant met John Brown, the white abolitionist, with
Hudson: -4 New Look, or ”¡’m Not Mammy to Everybody in California” : Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black Entrepreneur
37
whom she was very much impressed. Pleasant claimed —
and many historians believe — that she also traveled to
Virginia, before Brown’s I8ÍÍ9 raid on the arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, to incite the slave population and prepare
them for the raid. She is also credited with financially
supporting the raid; no small credit since the raid is often
describedas the start of the Civil War. Her exact role in the
raid is difficult to determine, but we do know that she held
Brown in high esteem. She requested that the words, “She
was a friend of John Brown.” be inscribed on her tomb. It
is likely that the Pleasants stayed in Canada until the raid
was carried out and then returned to Calilbrnia,
The Civil War heightened tensions in San Francisco,
Although many Californians displayed pro-Union sentiment during the war and Reconstruction, race relations in
the West were as antagonistic in the 1860s as they had been
a decade earlier. As a result. Pleasant returned to California to attack discrimination against African Americans
with renewed vigor.”^
On October 18. 1866. the San Francisco paper Alta
California reported on the front page that “Mrs. Mary E.
Pleasant, a woman of color, having complained of the
driver of car No, 6 of the Omnibus Railroad Company’s
line, for putting her off the car. . . withdrew the charge,”
Pleasant had withdrawn the charge because she had been
assured by the company that “negroes would hereafter be
allowed to ride on the car, ” This was the first time, but not
the last, that Pleasant would challenge discrimination on
public transportation. She would take her suit for not
allowing African Americans access against a different
street car company, the North Beach and Mission Railroad
Company, all the way to the California Supreme Court in
1868. Like many African American women before and
after her, the public arena was hardly off-limits in the
nineteenth century; in this case, it was a battle ground for
civil rights.'”
year. Black San Franciscans could not only survive in the
service sector— they could prosper. This success, however, was linked to the dramatic opportunities afforded by
the Gold Rush and the subsequent success of silver mining. Black San Franciscans, like other city dwellers,
reaped the rewards of a booming economy.
There is no evidence to suggest that Pleasant’s boardinghouses were houses of prostitution. But even the literature
and folklore that credits her with business acumen assumes that is how she made her fortune. Pleasant appears
in myriad articles, cartoons, and novels as a crafty and
greedy brothel-keeper who had the power to put men and
women under her spell. This fascination with prostitution
is a common theme in Western history; but in the case of
Pleasant, it is combined with racial stereotypes and further
obscures her role as a black capitalist. ‘Depicting Pleasant as a sexually immoral woman is not
surprisinginaculture that often portrayed black women as
“Jezebel.” the insatiable prostitute. What is remarkable in
this case is the way that Pleasants image in the white press
swung between two circumscribed categories assigned to
African American women; Jezebel and Mammy.’ *
No episode in Pleasant’s actual history better captures
the white press’s tendency to paint Pleasant as either a
Jezebel or a Mammy figure than her relationship with
Thomas Bell. James John Pleasant died in 1877; and
sometime after that. Pleasant built a magnificent mansion
on the corner of Octavia and Bush Streets in the western
part of the city. The property is still a topic of intense
speculation, partly, again, due to its value, and partly due
to the fact that she lived there with herclicnt Thomas Bell,
a Scottish banker and entrepreneur. The mansion was
called “The House of Mystery” by the San Francisco
press. In 1939. Charles Dobie, author of myriad tales ofthe
West, wrote:
But it was at the juncture of the public and private
spheres that Pleasant seemed to wield the most power. Of
all her enterprises. Pleasant was best known for her elegant
boardinghouses and dinner houses, the first of which she
opened in 1868, Some ofthe wealthiest and most powerful
public figures in the West lived and dined at PIcasant’s
establishments. When Newton Booth, one of her greatest
admirers and a boarder in the lamed house at 920 Washington Street, was elected governor of California in 1871.
Pleasant said “‘he was elected from my house.””
Pleasant was one of many boardinghouse operators in
the West. One visitor to Sacramento in 1851 claimed.
“Every other house is a hotel or boardinghouse,” Boardinghouses were a national institution, but were especially
common in the West. Because San Francisco was a magnet
for miners on their way to and from the mother-lode
country, it provided a particularly lucrative market for
boardinghouse owners, most of whom were women.
By the 1870s, Mary Ellen Pleasant owned $30.(K)0
worth of real estate. She wasn’t the wealthiest black San
Franciscan — a porter. Richard Barber, reported $70.000
worth of real estate to the San Francisco census that same
Its sic mystery was not the mystery of ghosts but
the mystery of flesh and blood enchantment. People
were reputed to live beneath its frowning mansard
roof but the only person 1 ever saw emerge was the
black witch who held them all enthralled,’-*
Although Pleasant served as Bell’s accountant while he
was the co-founder of the Bank of California, she is most
often described as Bell’s domineering courtesan. More
likely they were business partners and friends. She began
managing his accounts soon after they met in the 1870s
and was probably responsible for many of his successful
investments. Pleasant was known to acquire tips on profitable mines, which she was privy to in her dining rooms
and boardinghouses. Because Pleasant lived under the
same roof with Bell, his wife. Teresa, and their children, it
is assumed that Pleasant was his maid and mistress. In
fact. Bell’s family lived in Pleasant’s mansion.’^
Pleasant’s relationship with the city’s business elite
would continue to be a topic of public controversy in the
1880s when she took the stand in the infamous divorce
case of Sharon v. Sharon. For five consecutive years,
JULY 1993
JOURNAL of the WEST
Hill’s case rested on the existence of a marriage contract
that Sharon denied signing. Her chief witness, and some
say her financial backer, was Mary Ellen Pleasant, who
testified that she had seen the contract and had discussed it
with Sharon. Many observers of the trial thought that the
relationship between Hill and Pleasant was quite curious.
The defense attorney claimed:
It is a most remarkable circumstance that she
would have selected Mrs. Pleasant for her confidence. . . . Will anybody tell me why it was during
all this time this unfortunate woman never confided
the secret of her marriage to one single respectable
person of her own color or class in life?”^
Reasant’s role m the Sharon v. Sharon divorce case was viewed
suspiciously by the white press. Known for its political satire. The
Wasp portrayed Pleasant as a baby seller, meddling in the personal
affairs of San Francisco’s elite. The caption under this front page
cartoon of 1884 reads, “When I was young and charming, I practiced
baby farming,” (Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
beginning: in 1883. the sensational divorce ot ex-Nevada
Senator Williatn Sharon and Sarah Althea Hill Sharon
would fascinate San Francisco society. William Sharon
had already made quite a name tor himself; his investments in Nevada mines, his position as president of the
Nevada branch of the Bank of California, and his real
estate purchases in San Francisco had made him a multimillionaire before he was elected United States Senator in
1875.”‘But when Sarah Hill sued him for alimony, claiming he signed a marriage contract in 1880, his fame would
take on a new dimension. JheNew York Times followed the
trial avidly: indeed, the case warranted front-page coverage throughout 1883, 1884. and 1885.
As the trial got under way. it provided San Francisco
with stupendous entertainment. The sordid details of the
case were revealed daily in front of a packed courtroom.
When Sharon took the stand for the first time in May of
1884. he stated that it was his understanding that he was
merely paying “Miss Hill” to have ,sex with him at tlie
Palace Hotel, where he resided for a time. Sharon paid her
S5()() a month. He claimed Hill was a perjurer and that she
had devised this scheme to wrest him of his fortune. ”’
Given the defense’s misgivings about HilTs witness, it is
curious that they never called Pleasant to the stand. We can
only assume that by virtue of her “color and class” they
deemed Plea.sanI an unreliable judge of character and not
worth questioning.
Pleasant was. however, accused of a variety of things
inside and outside the courtroom, including placing the
Senator under a voodoo spell, presumably to foree him to
sign the the contract. In some reports she was also assumed to have had Hill under some kind of supernatural
spell. The San Franci.sco Examiner cmmed that Pleasant
“. . . was believed to have a remarkable influence over
wt)men. amounting to hypnotism,”‘*’
Pleasant said nothing in her letters, her interviews, or
her autobiography about voodoo or hypnotism. Her testimony in court revealed only that she had met Hill in 1882.
and that Hill had asked her to furnish a house. Pleasant
requested to see the marriage contract, which Hill showed
to her. Then, as Pleasant stated in court. “1 went to see Mr,
Sharon. I told him that I heard he had some kind of relation
with Miss Hill and owed her money, and asked him if it
would be all right if i furnished the house.” According to
Pleasant. Sharon agreed to cover the costs. Given this
scant testimony, Pleasants high profile in the press’s
coverage of the case probably reOects the fascination with
Pleasant’s wealth, .stature, and relationship with Hill,
The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper known for its
political satire, featured Pleasant in a number of its famous
cartoons of the trial. One titled “Judge Sullivan’s Nightmare” appeared on July 18.1884. and featured Pleasant, a
black witch with a skeleton face hovering over a dreaming
presiding Judge Sullivan. In another, she appeared as a
raven, picking over the remains of the trial; presumably
this referred to the belief that Pleasant, as Hill’s financial
backer, would get a sizeable kickback if Hill won the ease.
In one issue. The Wasp devoted an entire cartoon to
Pleasant. Captioned “The Baby Seller,” Pleasant
appeared as a fat, happy Mammy, carrying a basket of
black and white babies, and singing a song; “When I was
young and charming, I practiced baby farming.”-”
The subject of this last cartoon was Pleasant’s supposed
role as caretaker of young women, like Hill, who found
themselves in the city without resources. Some accused
Hudson: A New Look, or “I’m Not Mammy to Everybody in California” : Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black Entrepreneur
her of placing the unwanted children ol these same women
in homes — for a fee. There is no evidence to indicate that
this was the case. She obviously helped Sarah Hill, if only
by being a witness on her behalf. The likelihood that
Pleasant was actually selling babies is probably an exaggeration. Unlike real estate and boardinghouses. the market for baby selling was not a lucrative one in the
nineteenth century. But the cartoon does speak to the
fa.scination with Pleasant’s power.
The mainstream press’s depiction of Pleasant’s role in
the trial provides further evidence of the Mammy/Jezebel
myth. The baby-seller image is clearly a Mammy figure.
But a true Mammy, as she was figured in nineteetheentury popular culture, would protect and nurture white
babies — not sell them. The faet that she was profiting
from the venture made Mammy appear greedy, sinister,
and heartless. Capitalists may indeed have been all of
these things. William Sharon certainly appeared greedy
and heartless, but the press wasn’t surprised by his behavior. They are mueh more critical of the character of the
women in the case. This mirrors the gender ideology of the
times that prescribed domestic rather than public roles for
women. The press coverage adhered to gender conventions by parodying Pleasant’s publie activities and tolerating Sharon’s private indiscretions. Whereas Pleasant is
represented as Mammy or Jezebel. Sharon is always a
Senator.
Pleasant took little notice of the publicity, which, in
general, she detested, as shown.
Now I have never cared a feathers weight for
public opinion, for it is about the most ghastly thing I
know of. No one but a rank coward fears it. for it
don’t know its own mind a minute or where it gets
the ideas about anything. So I want it understood
distinctly that I am not seeking any vindication
which my own conscience does not call on me for.
I have been accused of many things, and under the
load of accusation 1 have held my tongue. I have
never been given to explaining away lies, and you
can’t explain away the truth.-‘
The truth, in this case, is that Pleasant does not indicate
anywhere in her records, including her bankbooks, that
she financed Hill’s case. Her financial connection with
Thomas Bell, and her real estate holdings in San Francisco, would have meant that she also had an interest in the
stability of the Bank of California which Bell had helped
to establish. Becau.se William Sharon had, in effect,
wrested control of the bank when he headed its Virginia
City branch. Pleasant could have had reason to resent
Sharon. Further, it is likely that Pleasant found his treatment of Hill, no matter what their legal arrangement,
unacceptable.
Whether because she was exhausted or financially and
emotionally depleted from legal ordeals. Pleasant retreated to Geneva Cottage, her home on San Jose Road, in the
!890s. Although she purchased a !.(K)()-acre raneh in
39
Sonoma County. Pleasant appears to have lived out the last
years of her life in Geneva Cottage and in a house on
Webster Street in San Francisco. The flat on Webster
Street was small and delapidated. and It was here that one
of her friends found her. sick and with only a few months
to live. Pleasant died on January II. 1904. in the home of
her friend. Olive Sherwood, in San Francisco.
Although tnany pet)ple had tried to convince Pleasant to
publish her diary, she did not. It was stolen from her
Webster Street house, which was ransacked after her
death. Perhaps she had wanted it that way. She certainly
had had enough of “newspaper people” and “public
opinion.” In 1901 she had told Isabel Fraser, a reporter for
the Satt Fratuisco Call:
And i don’t want to be carried to victory on
Howery beds of ease, either I like to go through
bloody scenes. The papers can say what they want as
far as I’m concerned. . . . You tell those newspaper
people that they may be smart, but I’m smarter. They
deal with words. Some folks say that words were
meant to reveal thought. That ain’t so. Words were
meant to conceal thought.-The words that filled the pages of San Francisco’s mainstream papers at the time of Pleasant’s death, did. indeed,
conceal her thoughts and the meaning of her life. Her
obituary in the San Francisco Fxamitier read: “Mammy
Pleasant Will Work Weird Spells No More; Mysterious
Old Negro Woman, at 89, Ends a Life of Schemes and
Varied Fortune.”
Sexism and racism lend themselves to myth-making
and stereotyping. In Pleasant’s case, they also led to a onedimensional view of her work in which she was cast as a
Mammy, a Jezebel, or both. The fortunes of her contemporaries — mining moguls and railroad tycoons — are
legendary. But it is rare that discussions of Western
urbanization or capitalism acknowledge women’s role.
Pleasant’s story hints at the “old boys” network that
defined much of Western development. Whereas individual acts of the Bonanza Kings — William Ralston and
Sharon, for example — may have been likened to the deeds
of robber barons, they still are remembered as the builders
of the West.
Pleasant never became a multimillionaire like Sharon
and the Big Four railroad magnates (Hopkins, Huntington,
Crocker, and Stanford). She gave too mueh of her money
away and never managed to monopolize an industry. But
her career was shaped not only by her own actions and
choices, but also by con.straints. Nineteenth-century San
Francisco offered unforeseen opportunities associated
with the Gold Rush, and Pleasant successfully exploited
the limited options usually reserved for African American
women: those of cook and domestic. Ultimately, Pleasant
transformed woman’s work in the private sphere to a very
profitable public role as restaurateur, accountant, and
entrepreneur. But the constraints on black women’s lives
— and the stereotypes that reinforced them — were a
40
JULY 1993
tenaeious part of nineteenth-century American culture
that even Pleasant could not transcend.-*
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An earlier version of this paper was presented at “The Women’s West:
Race. Class, and Social Change.” annual conference of the Coalition for
Western Women’s History. San Fraticisco, CA. August 1987. I would
like lo thank the following people for their comments and encouragement: Nell Irvin Painter and Prineelon University. Richard Blacken and
Jane Rhodes of tndiana Utiiversity, and Mary Murphy of Montana State
University.
NOTES
1. Douglas Henry Daniels. Pioneer Vrbaniles: A Social und Cullural
Hisiorv of Black San Franei.sco (Philadelphia. PA: Temple Universily Press, 1980).
2. See. for example, Helen Holdredge. Mammy Pleasant (New York:
G. R Putnam’s Sons. 1953). atid by the same author. The House of
the Strange Woma/i (San Carlos. CA: Nourse Publishing Co., t961).
3. J. A. Rogers. Sex and Race. 3 vols. (New York: by author, t944),
3:310-311.
4. Deborah Gray White. Ar’n’t I A Womün?: Female Slaves in the
Pkmtation South (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.. 1985).
5. Isabel Fraser, “Mammy Pleasant: The Woman.” San Francisco
Call. July 9. t901, 2.
6. Heitert Asbury. The Barbary Coast (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1933). II.
7. Doris Muscatine. Old San Francisco: The Biographv of a City from
the Early Days (New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons. 1975), 23Ö.
8. U. S. Census Bureau. Ne^ro Population. I7W-I9I5 (Washington.
DC: Government Printing Office, 1918). 57; Rudolph Lapp. “Negro Rights Activities in Gold Rush. California.” California Historical Society Quarterly. 45 (Mar. 1966): 6.
9. Eugetie H. Berwatiger. The WesI and Reconstruction (Urbana;
University f»f Illinois Press, 1981). 25. Also by the same author, sec
The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Ami Negro Prejudice and the
Extension of Slavery Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1967).
10. Pleasant v. North Beach and Mission Railroad. 34 California
Report.586(l868);PhilipS.Foner. “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes oti Philadelphia Streetcars (Parts 1 and It),” in
Foner, Essays in Afro-American //í.vím (Philadelphia. PA: Temple
II.
!2.
13.
14,
!5.
16.
17.
!8,
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
JOURNAL of the WEST
University Press, 1978). African American men were also involved
in this effort; see the essay on James Pennington in R. J. M.
Blackett. Beating Against the Barriers: Biographical ts.mys in
Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1986).
L^rone Bennett. “A Historical Detective Story: The Mystery of
Mary Ellen Pleasant. Part II.” Ebony. 34 (May 1979): 79.
See, for example, Charles Caldwell Dobie, San Francisco: A
Pageant (New York: D. Appleton Century Co., 1939), Frank Yerby,
Devilsted (Garden City: Doubleday and Co.. 1984); Anne M.
Butter. Daughters of Joy. Sisters of Mercy: Prostitutes in the
American West. ¡865-1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1985)White. Ar’nt ¡ A W(mian. These depictions of Pleasant as mammy
and jezebel were not present in the black press, where she figures in
news articles as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. See. for example,Son/^rartc-íJí-o A/jpra/(Sep. 19.1870). where she is described as
“that noble and philanthropic woman of our city.”
Doh’ie. San Francisco. 316,
See Eugene Block. The Immortal San Franciscans: Eor Whom the
Streets Were Named (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1971). 94.
Block writes: “For many years, she cast a weird spell over the
household of a wealthy Scot. Thomas Bell. Just how many a
wealthy home would be wrecked were she to tell what she knew of
the capers of the city’s most respected men.”
Hubert Howe Bancroft. History of Nevada: 1540-1888 (Reno:
University of Nevada Press, I89(), 1981). 204,
“The Sharon Divorce Case.” The New York Times. Apr, 8 and 10,
1884. 1; and Jan- 2. 1885,8,
Oscar Lewis and Carroll D, Hall, Bonanza Inn: America’s First
Luxury Hotel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1939), 167.
San Francisco Examiner. Jan. 12. 1904. 6; also see. Robert H.
Kroninger, Sarah ami the Senator (Berkeley. CA: Howell-North,
1964).
Kenneth M. Johnson, ed.. The Sting of the Wasp: Political and
Satirical Cartoons from the Truculent Farly San Francisco Weekly
(San Francisco: The Btxik Club of California, 1967).
Fraser. “Mammy Pleasant.” 2,
¡bid.
Jane H. and William H. Pease, Ladies. Women and Wenches:
Choice and Constraint in Antebellum Charleston and Boston
{Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
Lynn M. Hudson is a doctoral student in the history
department at Indiana University. Bloomingtoti, where
she teaches courses in African American history and
women’s studies. She earned her B.A. in history and
women’s studies from the University of California at
Santa Cruz and an M.A- in history from the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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