Mary Ellen Pleasant, Date of Birth, Date of Death

Mary Ellen Pleasant

African-American entrepreneur

Date of Birth: 19-Aug-1814

Date of Death: 04-Jan-1904

Profession: entrepreneur, abolitionist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Leo

Mary Ellen Pleasant (19 August 1814 – 4 January 1904) was a successful 19th-century American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist whose life is shrouded in mystery.
She identified herself as "a capitalist by profession" in the 1890 United States Census.
She was nicknamed "Mammy Pleasant" in San Francisco because of the many years she spent in servitude.
The press also called her "Mammy" Pleasant but she did not approve: "I don't like to be called mammy by everybody.
Put.
that.
down.
I am not mammy to everybody in California.
I received a letter from a pastor in Sacramento.
It was addressed to Mammy Pleasant.
I wrote back to him on his own paper that my name was Mrs.
Mary E.
Pleasant.
I wouldn't waste any of my paper on him." In her autobiography, published in San Francisco's Pandex of the Press in January 1902, she said her mother was a full blooded Louisiana Negress and her father was a native Kanaka (Hawaiian), and when she was six, she was sent to Nantucket to live with a Quaker woman named Hussey.
She worked on the Underground Railroad across many states and then helped bring it to California during the Gold Rush Era.
She was a friend and financial supporter of John Brown and well known in abolitionist circles.
After the Civil War she took her battles to the courts and won several civil rights victories, one of which was cited and upheld in the 1980s and resulted in her being called "The Mother of Human Rights in California".