Who is biddy mason

Their argument was you cannot release these people from bondage until God himself releases them. So, bondage is a divinely ordained institution, and the patriarchs of the Old Testament practiced it, so present-day Americans [could] practice it as well," Waite says. Mormons were encouraged to treat their enslaved people kindly, since they saw them as lesser humans who needed the white man's protection.

In , the Smith family began their trek West. Mason, her daughters, a woman named Hannah and her children were forced to join them on the brutal, roughly 1,mile trek from Mississippi to Utah. Mason probably walked much of the way behind the wagon, herding livestock. For this reason, enslaved women's value increased on the trail since, like Biddy and Hannah, they often had young children and were less likely to try to flee.

The Smiths spent time in the pro-slavery Mormon settlement of Cottonwood Canyon, Utah before coming to California in to help settle the Mormon colony of San Bernardino. Moving to Southern California, "Biddy was stepping into a world controlled by a clique of mostly white Southern men and their Latino allies," Waite says.

Although California joined the United States as a free state in , the laws around slavery were complicated. But it was a land made up of unfree laborers of various kinds," Gordon says. Indigenous people could be forced to work as "contract laborers" essentially indentured servants, but with no ability to leave or declared wards of white and Californio elites.

As Waite explains, during the s, Los Angeles contained what observers called a " slave mart. They would then throw the Native Americans in a pen and auction off their labor for the coming week. This "slave mart" was the second most important source of municipal revenue in L. For a time, Smith prospered in San Bernardino, where Mason probably worked alongside Native Americans who had been forced into indentured servitude.

Smith, a difficult and argumentative character, kept butting heads with Mormon leaders in San Bernardino. According to Waite and Gordon, the Mormon colony began to fall apart after its leaders made a terrible real estate deal, paying top dollar for what they thought was 80, acres of land when they had actually purchased only 35, acres. Unable to pay off their loans, the colony sued the people who had sold them the land.

They lost, likely because church leaders did not read the fine print. But the court allowed them to choose up to 35, acres anywhere in the larger area. Eventually, they chose Smith's ranch, among others, to be turend over to the church without any compensation. In , Smith broke with the Mormon leaders of San Bernardino and was eventually excommunicated from the Church. He sold off his cattle and prepared to move to Texas. Before he left, Smith took his family and slaves to a camp in the Santa Monica Hills, probably to obtain provisions for the journey eastward.

Waite also notes Los Angeles was considered a hospitable place for slaveholders, since many early Angelenos were originally from the American South. Maybe he just happened to know people in the area. We have yet to come across a hard and fast answer for that one," Waite says. In December , someone tipped off local authorities that a group of Black Americans were being held in Santa Monica Canyon and were about to be taken across state lines to the slave state of Texas.

Until recently, Smith would have been within his rights to take Mason and her compatriots out of California -- but not to Texas. The California Fugitive Slave Act, enacted in , allowed slave owners to temporarily hold enslaved persons in California and transport them back to their home state. But the code had been allowed to lapse in April , and would not have applied to Smith, since he was moving to Texas not Mississippi.

According to Gordon, writs of habeas corpus were widely used against slaveholders in free states. Hayes issued the writ and late that night, sheriffs raided Smith's camp in the Santa Monica mountains, taking Biddy, Hannah and their children into protective custody. They brought them to the city jail at the corner of Spring and Franklin Streets in downtown L. It has long been a mystery who exactly tipped off the authorities. In her masterful essay, Biddy Mason's Los Angeles, , historian Dolores Hayden claims it was Elizabeth Rowan, a formerly enslaved woman who had also settled in San Bernardino, along with prosperous downtown Los Angeles livery owner Robert Owens.

She and Waite think Mason may have met the Owens family when Smith went to Robert, a horse dealer and outfitter, to prepare for the journey to Texas. Broxton, the executive director of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation , believes the small community of free Blacks in Southern California would have been moved by the women's plight.

That's not the smartest thing he could have done. And there were already Blacks here who were free, so with their common experience, they are going to want to do something to help her," Broxton says. The secrecy surrounding the origin of the complaint lends credence to it being a person of color.

Many habeas corpus writs are issued at the request of local sheriffs, however, and it is also possible that happened in this case. Read more. In one of the most celebrated fugitive slave cases in California, Archy Lee, a young black man who had been brought to the state from Mississippi, escaped and waged a successful legal battle for his freedom that went all the way to the federal courts.

After purchasing his freedom, Edmond Wysinger filed a historic lawsuit that made it illegal for California public schools to ban black students. Mary Ellen Pleasant was a self-made millionaire and leading abolitionist based in San Francisco during the Gold-Rush era.

Explore all stories. She continued working as a midwife and nurse, saving her money and using it to purchase land in what is now the heart of downtown L. There she organized First A. Church, the oldest African American Church in the city. She donated to numerous charities, fed and sheltered the poor, and visited prisoners.

She was buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery. On March 27, , the mayor of L. Explore This Park. Portrait of Biddy Mason date unknown Public Domain. Place of Birth:. By the terms of this order, all families made homeless by the flood were to be supplied with groceries, while Biddy Mason cheerfully paid the bill.

Mason continued as a midwife, eventually setting up her own business. She remained very close to her daughters and their children, insisting that her grandchildren be educated and self-determined. I had come from the home of the colored people, and for some purpose, my employer sent me to see Aunt Biddy Mason.

The kindly, cheerful greeting of this good soul made me feel almost that I was again at my old home. Mason was a shrewd businesswoman too. Los Angeles was booming, and rural Spring Street was becoming crowded with shops and boarding houses. On her remaining half, she built a two-story brick building. She rented the first floor to commercial interests and lived in an apartment on the second. She also helped her family buy properties around the city. Mason was so well known in the evolving city that even her business spats were covered by no less than the Los Angeles Times.

In , the paper reported on a dispute over a sidewalk:. Biddy Mason had made a contract with David Mulrein to pave the sidewalk in front of her residence. After signing the contract, she got someone else to do the work, for which Mulrein brought action in the justice court and obtained judgement.

No doubt, the paved sidewalk had been urgently needed. As she grew old and infirm, and became too ill to see visitors, her grandson Robert was forced to go out to the gate and turn people away.

On January 15, , Mason died at her beloved homestead in Los Angeles. Kemp declared. Her life has been an inspiration to many.