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Pleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904

LC control no.n 98101221
Descriptive conventionsrda
Personal name headingPleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904
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Variant(s)Williams, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904
Smith, Mary, 1814-1904
Pleasance, Mary, 1814-1904
Associated countryUnited States
LocatedGeorgia San Francisco (Calif.) Nantucket (Mass.) Boston (Mass.)
Birth date1814~
Death date1904-01-11
Place of deathCalifornia
Profession or occupationCivil rights workers Abolitionists
Found inHeritage of power, c1998: page 3, etc. (Mary Ellen Pleasant; b. a slave in Ga., between 1814-1817; adopted the name of Mary Ellen Williams after arrival in Nantucket; married names: Mary Smith and Mary Pleasance; civil rights advocate in Calif.)
OCLC 40196260, Nov. 12, 1998 (hdg.: Pleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904)
African American women, 1993: pages 399-402 (Mary Ellen ("Mammy") Pleasant, c.1814-1904, a pioneer in California, a businesswoman, a civil rights activist. Claimed to have been born on August 19, 1814 in Philadelphia to a free black woman and a Hawaiian father who was a merchant who imported silk. Other accounts say she was born a slave in either Georgia or Virginia, which is likely closer to the truth. Most accounts say that she lived in Boston, then moved to San Francisco where she purchased a boardinghouse that she ran and purchased the freedom of many slaves and worked to advocate for civil rights in the courts, including winning the rights of blacks to have their testimonies accepted in state court in 1863 and suing the North Beach and Mission Railroad for refusing her passage in 1868. Served as a housekeeper for San Francisco banker Thomas Bell following the Civil War, then moved into a friend's home, where she died on January 11, 1904.)
Associated languageeng