Mary Ellen Pleasant born - August 19, 1814

On this day in 1814, entrepreneur and abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant was born. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves, and Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that on covers history one
day at a time. Today is August nineteen. The day

(00:24):
was August nineteen fourteen. Mary Ellen Pleasant was born, though
the exact year of her birth has been disputed, so
many of the details of her life are unconfirmed. Pleasant
is remembered as an entrepreneur, activist, and abolitionist. It's not
clear where Pleasant was born. She said she was born

(00:46):
in Philadelphia and that her mother was a free black
woman and her father was a Hawaiian man who imported silks,
but other sources have said that she was born in
Georgia or Virginia and that she was born slaved to
a black mother and a white plantation owner. When she
was young, she went to Nantucket, Massachusetts, where she lived

(01:09):
with the Hussies, a Quaker family. There she worked as
a bond servant in the family store. Pleasant married twice
in her life, first to a man named James Henry Smith,
who died in the eighteen forties and left her an inheritance,
and second to a black man named John Pleasant. While

(01:30):
she was with her first husband, she became involved in
the abolition movement. He had instructed her to put the
inheritance towards the movement, but she likely did not direct
all of the money towards the cause. After the California
gold rush began in eighteen forty eight and people moved
west seeking fortunes, abolitionists also migrated to the state in

(01:52):
pursuit of gold. Pleasant moved to San Francisco and started
working as a housekeeper and cook, but she was making
a lot of money from her investments. She was putting
her money into stock and money markets, and she lent
money to minors and business people with interest. Over the years,

(02:12):
she owned laundries, boarding houses, and restaurants. She had shares
in dairies and Will's Fargo Bank. She also put her
money to philanthropic use. She helped black people get homes
and jobs in San Francisco and helped free black people
who were illegally enslaved in California. Some sources have said

(02:33):
that she was involved in the underground railroad, and she
claimed that she gave money to help John Brown with
the raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia. Pleasant was also
involved in civil rights advocacy. In the eighteen sixties, she
staged a sit in in San Francisco street cars, and
she participated in a court case that earned black people

(02:55):
the right to give their testimonies in California courts. But
Pleasant's life was not free from controversy. There were rumors
that her boarding houses were fronts that provided wealthy men
with mistresses, and she formed a relationship, possibly romantic, with
a wealthy white man named Thomas Bell. She moved into

(03:17):
a mansion with Bill and his wife Teresa, and became
the housekeeper. People gossiped that she was Thomas's lover and
that she was running scams to get money out of
the Bells. Her name was even on the deed to
the Bill homestead. When Thomas Bell died after falling from
a window, rumors spread that Pleasant killed him. Teresa Bell

(03:40):
claimed that Pleasant pushed him out of the window, and
the city turned against Pleasant. Court battles with the Bills
and others cost Pleasant money and her reputation. Though she
said that the Bell property belonged to her, as she
designed and built the mansion, She was forced to leave
the Bill estate when she was eight five. In she

(04:04):
declared bankruptcy though it was reported that she was still
worth between thirty five thousand and a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Pleasant was well known in San Francisco by
the time she died in nineteen o four. Despite the drama,
newspapers gave her the condescending nickname Mammy, a stereotypical name

(04:25):
for black women who took care of white children. She
stated that she did not like the name. Decades after
her death, the inscription she was a friend of John
Brown was added to her gravestone as she had requested,
and a park was established in her memory at the
site of the mansion where she lived. I'm Eve Chef

(04:46):
Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn more about
history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
t D I h see podcast. Thank you so much
for listening, and I hope to see you again tomorrow

(05:06):
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