Mammy Pleasant

Book Description

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1953 First edition. Scarce thus. 311pp. Illustrations from photographs. Cloth-backed decorated boards, silver-lettered spine. Some staining to extreme lower edge of endpapers and extremities of covers. A very good copy. Biography of this well-known San Francisco black woman. Mary Ellen Pleasant came to San Francisco about 1849, ran a boardinghouse, and supposedly a bawdy house, and used her money to aid runaway slaves and other oppressed people of her race. In time she became the housekeeper of a local banker, Thomas Bell, whom she dominated. She also interfered in the affairs of San Franciscan, William Sharon and was responsible for a forged marriage contract used by Sarah Althea Hill in an unsuccessful attempt to claim a share of Sharon's fortune..

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