John Ramos looks back at the extraordinary story of businesswoman and abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant, California's first Black millionaire.
SAN FRANCISCO -- In the 19th century, San Francisco was a land of opportunity. Most who rushed there were dreaming of riches while others yearned for freedom but one woman set her sights on both and became an important yet unsung player in the fight to end slavery.
"This stand of eucalyptus trees was actually planted in what would have been her front yard in the 1800s," Derricotte said.A former domestic servant, Pleasant arrived from New England at the start of the Gold Rush with a keen eye for business. That included Thomas Bell, co-founder of the Bank of California, with whose family Pleasant shared an opulent mansion on Octavia Street. Often masquerading as a domestic worker, Pleasant listened in on conversations, gathering valuable information from some of the city's most affluent residents." the first millionaire -- we believe -- the first Black millionaire in the state of California," Derricotte said.
According to Templeton, Pleasant moved to California not just to generate money but to help incite a war that would end slavery. She gave $30,000 -- nearly a million dollars today -- to abolitionist John Brown to fund his famous attack on Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. "The deciding factor in the Civil War was California's gold," he said. "She was the one that turned California's wealth to the Union."
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