Biddy Mason - Business Legacy

Not all black pioneers were prosperous, but they were enterprising.  Take Biddy Mason for example.  Biddy was born a slave who trudged from Mississippi to California driving sheep behind 300 wagons belonging to her master's train in 1851. 

Upon arrival, Biddy prevailed upon the sheriff of Los Angeles County to issue a writ preventing her master from taking his slaves out of state  and she finally secured her freedom through the courts in 1856.

Biddy was a shrewd business woman.  She began to purchase property in 1866.  Her original investment was only $250, but she kept purchasing bits and pieces until 30 years later, her heirs were presented with an offer to purchase a portion of her land for $200,000 - which they refused to accept. 

In the 1880s Biddy paid grocery bills for black families who had been left destitute.  She is just one example of those brave pioneers who took an opportunity and left a legacy.

Next time...Susan Wilson

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On this Day in Pioneer History:
On June 24, 1864, Colorado Governor John Evans warns that all peaceful Indians in the region must report to the Sand Creek reservation or risk being attacked, creating the conditions that will lead to the infamous Sand Creek Massacre.

Clara Brown - Independent Business Woman

Clara Brown took in washing at Horshoe Bar, Miner's Ravine, Colorado. It wasn't that she was a washer woman...it was what she did with that that history remembers her for.

 Born in Virginia in 1803, Clara and her mother were sold to a man heading West.  Several owners later, she purchased her freedom and made her way to St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1859 Clara persuaded a part of gold prospectors to hire her as their cook.  At the age of 59, she rode on the back seat of a covered wagon, making her way across the plains.  She arrived in Central City, Colorado and began her laundry business.  In 1860 she moved to Mountain City, 40 miles away,  and paid a prospector to drive her there as his hired help.

After the Civil War, Clara searched for her family, people she had not seen in 60 years.  She found 34 relatives and brought them all by steamboat and wagon, which she bought and outfitted herself, across country to Denver...all on her laundry money.

In later years, she sponsored other wagon trains, helping other blacks to come West...financed only by her own "laundry money."

Next Time...Biddy Mason

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This Day in Pioneer History:  On June 22, 1876, embittered and impoverished, the once mighty Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dies in Mexico City.

Mary Ellen Pleasants and the Beginning of Civil Rights in California

Many of the black women who came to the western frontier are left anonymous to us.  Margaret Frank wrote in her journal somewhere in the Humboldt Sink she saw "a Negro woman tramping along through the heat and dust carrying a cast iron bake stove on her head with her provisions and a blanket piled on top...bravely pushing for California."

Although this woman's name is lost to history, through her we can see and feel her determination to reach a new life, depending on no one but herself, and overcoming the obstacles so she could make a new life for herself and her family.

Some of the black pioneer women we do know about.  Mary Ellen Pleasants came to San Francisco in 1849.  Born a slave in Georgia, she was married to a free black man in Boston and came west with a sizeable fortune.  In 1858, she traveled all the way back to eastern Canada in order to deliver $30,000 personally to John Brown to help his crusade to free her people.

Upon returning to California, she was taken off a San Francisco streetcar.  She filed suit and along with other black women, eventually compelled streetcar lines to allow Negroes to ride.  100 years before Rosa Parks...

Mary became know as "Mammy" Pleasants, the "Mother of Civil Rights in California".

Next Time...Clara Brown

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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On June 18, 1847, Alexander Murray, an experienced fur trader and wilderness explorer,  leads a heavily armed party into the Yukon River region of North America, to build a fort for trading furs with the local Indians.