The Voodoo Queen of San Francisco

 

 

One of the tours we took was the famous Voodoo Queen of San Francisco Mary Ellen, it was intrastate to find out about another voodoo woman besides the famous new Orleans voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Mary Ellen was soo please to meet her mentor Marie Laveau when Mary Ellen Pleasant spent time in New Orleans. Jim took us in front of what ounce stood Mary Ellen mansion but they city of San Francisco made a plack on her honor and next to it is a Australian rubber tree which was Mary Ellen’s favorite and if you mock her in any way the tree will throw a rubber ball from it branches smacking you in your head. It hit a couple of smart asses like for instance a teenager girl and a man who thought it would be funny to be insulting to Mary Ellen Pleasant. People ask me if I say anything, “hell No” I replied I wasn’t about to test her I’m not stupid but I was hoping someone in the group was so I could take a picture but no.  

 

 

She has been called the "Mother of Civil Rights", a Bordello Madam, a Voodoo Queen, and even a murderer. Mary Ellen Pleasant was black, and a mistress, lover, or consort to wealthy banker Thomas Bell. Her nemesis, Teresa Bell claimed she was held voodoo orgies at the Bell mansion. Others claimed she was one of the first civil rights crusaders. She was mysterious, wealthy and controversial.

Mary Ellen Pleasant (died January 4, 1904) was a 19th Century female entrepreneur of partial African descent who used her fortune to further abolition. 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 1980’s and resulted in her being called, “The Mother of Human Rights in California”

Mary Ellen Pleasant was born a slave around 1814, on a plantation near Augusta, Georgia. In her own memoir, she claimed that her mother was a voodoo priestess, descended from a long line of “voodoo queens” of Santo Domingo. She said that her father was John H. Pleasance, the White son of a governor of Virginia.

Mary Ellen was said to practice her powerful voodoo to control people, and people claimed she had “hypnotic powers”. She ran a boardinghouse for her young female “protégés” who socialized with the wealthy and powerful men who knew Pleasant through business dealings; some accounts referred to her as a madam. Rumors circulated regarding mysterious deaths of several people connected with her, but she was never charged with a crime. In 1935 a San Francisco newspaper reported that a family acquaintance of Thomas Bell, the banker, swore before he died that Pleasant had given Bell drugged wine and pushed him over a banister to his death. Afterwards, Bell’s house was said to be haunted.

 

In any case, Mary Ellen Pleasant was one of the most influential women in San Francisco’s early history. She increased her fortune through speculation on mining ventures and investment in other businesses. Pleasant died in San Francisco at the age of 89. While accounts of her life are full of controversy, there is no question that she was a major force in San Francisco’s early days, and was the first powerful person to fight for the civil rights of Black Californians

A court battle between Sarah Althea Hill and William Sharon smeared Mary Ellen badly, but the job was finished later when Teresa Bell, Thomas Bell’s widow, sued Mary Ellen over Thomas’ estate. The house Mary Ellen had designed for Thomas Bell and herself became known as the “House of Mystery” and the peculiar arrangements with Thomas’ farce of a “marriage” were exposed and paraded through the courts.
The Hill/Sharon battle and Sharon’s newspaper allies, publicly named Mary Ellen as a "Voodoo priestess", but went on to say that she was a baby stealer, a baby eater, a multiple murderess, a madam, a lying, conniving, cunning, schemer, and maybe, worst of all, hung the epithet of “Mammy” upon her. All the press from the 1880s and beyond was extremely negative to an aging Mary Ellen. She was quoted on more than one occasion as saying, “DON’T call me Mammy. Got this info thanks to Wikipedia.