“Queen of the Voodoo.”
At 1661 Octavia Street you will find a plaque honoring African-American Mary Ellen Pleasant. In the mid to late 1800’s this was the site of her 30-room mansion. Mrs. Pleasant used some of her $30 million fortune working with the Underground Railroad to help slaves find freedom. When she was kicked off a streetcar, because she was black, she sued the city of San Francisco, and won. Though Mary Ellen gave much to her community she also had a dark side…
Mary Ellen’s home was a mysterious place fertile with rumors of secret orgies, and she was said to have cooked up schemes blackmailing many wealthy victims. It is not certain that the rumors were true, but this speculation gained her the title, “Queen of the Voodoo.”
Though Mrs. Pleasant was buried in Napa, when near the eucalyptus trees at Octavia and Bush Streets, move with caution. For there have been reports of spitting, strange whisperings, and attacking black crows.
If I dont meet you no more in this world then uh
Ill meet ya on the next one
And dont be late
Dont be late
- Jimi Hendrix Voodoo child Lyrics · 1983.
Well, as usual and ever since she came of the scene in SF in the late 1850’s, misinformation about Mary Ellen Pleasant still abounds. I have studied her for many years, the SF public Library History room still being one of the primary sources of info on her, and the whole story is still murky and may never fully be deciphered. I will adress what is written above.
The mansion on Octavia, sometime referred to as “The House of Mystery”, was built in the 1870’s and was always regarded as the home of Mary Ellen’s business partner and close friend, Thomas Bell, vice-president of the Bank of California, at one time the most powerful institution in California when there were more millionaires and banks in San Francisco than Boston and New York combined, bulging from the riches of the Comstock Lode. Although society regarded Mary as the “housekeeper”, she probably desgned, supervised, furnished, hired and fired and paid the bills: in short, she lived there and it was her house as much as Thomas Bell’s.
As far as using “some of her $30 million fortune to aid the Underground Railrod”, Mary was a wealthy entrepnuer who started business like laundries and boarding house but the $30 million figure that is much bandied about is what Thomas Bell’s estate was estimated at at the time of his death in the mid 1880’s. Mary defintely “controlled” this vast fortune but her civil rights work started much earlier including what she always considered her most important work: helping John Brown execute his raid on Harper’s Ferry. There are unsubstatiated stories of her providing money to JB (though he asked money of everyone), of Mary disguising herself as a jockey and going to plantations in the Harper’s Ferry area to prepare slaves to join the rebellion, of JB jumpng the gun and starting to rebellion too soon, of Mary having to escape the federtal authorities because they found a note but thought it was signed WEP instead MEP and allowed her to escape back to California. Sjusheel Bibbs, an early MEP researches says she has records of Mary and her husband being in Canada with JB.
Now for Mary’s purported dark side…BULLSHIT!!!
When “rumors” are never confirmed, then they’re ususally LIES and should be considered so until they’re confirmed. What really happened is Mary backede a young lady in THE divorce trail of the 19th century (with daily international coverage)between one of the richest men in California, Senator William Sharon and a beautiful woman Sarah Althea Hill (whose brother has a local town named after him: Morgan Hill). This was one of the dirtiest trials ever!(look it up) and here is where the first accusations of Voo Doo show up. There is no record of anyone ever mentioning this before this trial. It is an INSULT to the pioneer black community of SF to think that they could be swayed or engage in such practices. But thanks to a thouroughly tainted biography from the 1950’s MAMMY PLEASANT (the title alone tells you BULLSHIT!) these demeaning stories about her dark side still persist. She is one of the most dynamic women from the 19th century EVER, no matter what her color. But people will always be tatilized by lurid stories rather than the truth. I have written a screenplay about Mary but Hollywood has different agendas and period pieces about dynamic black women are not high on their list.
If yuo want real info on Mary, check out THE MAKING OF MAMMY PLEASANT by Lynn M. Hudson, the best book written on Mary. I could go on forever but I have to go to work. Feel free to write with questions and I’ll do the best I can with them. Don’t fall for the hype: Mary Ellen Pleasant was a hero with no dark side.
steven Carey Lassoff
lassoff@gmail.com
Mr. Lassoff, I did state: It is not certain that the rumors were true..
I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, for Halloween, but it sounds as though you found me coming across rather foot-in-mouth.
You are most likely correct. It would seem out of character for such an otherwise giving woman to have such an evil dark side.
Thanks for the information.