Today we are going to talk about Bridget “Biddy” Mason, the grandmother of Los Angeles, one of the most influential Black women in California. She overcame unimaginable prejudice and inequity and was one of the first prominent landowning citizens of Los Angeles.

Briget was born into slavery in Georgia on August 15 of 1818. Her parents were of mixed African American and Native American descent. She wasn’t given a last name. Because of this common practice with slaves, many African Americans can only go back so far in their ancestry. Stolen.

One of her several slaveholders in Georgia and South Carolina started calling her Biddy. Biddy spent much of her childhood enslaved on John Smithson’s plantation in South Carolina, performing tasks in the cotton fields, the South's most important crop. Biddy was forbidden to learn to read or write but she learned about herbs and midwifery from the older enslaved women.

Smithson gave her, two other female house servants, and a blacksmith as a wedding gift to his cousins, Robert and Rebecca Smith. The Smiths were successful landowners in Logtown, Mississippi. Biddy was 18. Smith was Mormon convert who cultivated cotton and traded slaves. Although, Mormons were better known as opponents of slavery.

For the Smith family, Biddy did domestic work, toiled hard in the cotton fields and performed farm labor. At other times, she worked as a midwife and house nurse — a job she liked. Biddy took care of Rebecca Smith, who was often ill and helped her during the birth of her six children.

During her years in Mississippi, Biddy gave birth to Ellen, Ann and Harriet, aged ten, four, and a newborn. It’s likely that Smith himself fathered these children. Like countless other enslaved women, Biddy was almost certainly the victim of sexual violence.

In 1848, Smith decided to follow the call of the church with his fellow Mississippi Saints in the great Mormon Exodus to Utah. He moved his family and his 14 slaves west to the Salt Lake Valley where Joseph Smith established a new Mormon community seventeen years prior. The area was still part of Mexico at the time but would soon become Utah.

Smith, his wife and children sat in the wagon on the journey while Biddy, her daughters and the other slaves walked barefoot behind the 300 wagon caravan. Biddy was in charge of herding the animals for the 1,700 mile trek.

While they walked from Mississippi through Illinois and Colorado towards Salt Lake City, Biddy had a ton of responsibilities, including herding the cattle, preparing and serving the campfire meals and setting up and breaking down camp. All this while acting as the midwife and herbalist for the party, and still tending to her three young daughters.

The trail must have been disturbing, frightening and strange. There were moments when surely there was a chance to escape, and for this reason, Biddy's value increased on the trail. With young children, she didn’t have the option to leave.

They lived in Utah for three years until Governor Brigham Young authorized another Mormon community, this time in San Bernardino. Brigham Young warned Smith that California, had been admitted to the Union as a free, non-slave state the year prior. Smith ignored his warnings and set out with his family and slaves and a 150-wagon caravan in 1851, to establish the Mormon settlement and extend the reach of his Church.

When Smith arrived in San Bernardino, he became one of the counselors to the bishop and owned a very large property. He was among the wealthiest settlers in San Bernardino. Held in bondage in the Mormon colony were dozens of African Americans as well as an untold number of local Native Americans, as well as an untold number of local Native Americans. San Bernardino was built, in part, by enslaved laborers like Biddy.

Even though California was technically a free state, it was a land made up of unfree laborers of various kinds. Many indigenous people weer being forced to work in the Los Angeles "slave mart." This "slave mart" was the second most important source of municipal revenue in Los Angeles after the sale of licenses for saloons and gambling venues. On the weekends, local authorities would seek out and arrest intoxicated natives on dubious vagrancy charges. The Native Americans were thrown in a pen, and their labor for the coming week was auctioned off. If they were paid at the end of that week at all, they were usually paid in alcohol so they could get drunk, be arrested and continue the cycle.

In California, Biddy met two sets of couples who were free blacks. Charles and Elizabeth Flake Rowan and Robert and Minnie Owens. They urged her to legally contest her slave status in California. But she did not.

Biddy remained enslaved in a “free” state for five more years as Smith maintained his southern way of life in California. He found himself increasingly at odds with fellow colonists and his own church who favorably disposed toward the practice of slavery.

In 1855, the leaders of the Mormon colony in San Bernardino thought they were paying top dollar for 80,000 acres of land but had purchased only 35,000 acres. Fine print fuck up. When the colony sued the people who had sold them the land, they lost. The court allowed them to choose up to 35,000 acres anywhere in the larger area.

The church chose Smith's ranch. It was turned over to them without any compensation and Smith was pissed. Without his property in California and in fear of losing his slaves, he sold off his cattle and conspired a plan to quietly leave the colony and move to Texas.

Biddy and her fellow slaves did not trust Smith and they feared they were going to be sold and separated from their children. Smith lied to Biddy, promising her and her family’s freedom in Texas. He needed her cooperation to get there and considered her valuable property. Without his land, he needed a place for them to all stay as he secured provisions for the ride east.

He chose a camp of settlers originally from the American South in the Santa Monica Hills. Surely a more hospitable place for a slaveholder than Mormn san Bernardino.

One of Biddy’s daughters was romantically involved with the Owens son. In December, Robert Owens and Elizabeth Rowan tipped off the local authorities. There was a group of Black Americans that were being illegally held in Santa Monica Canyon and they were about to be taken across state lines to the slave state of Texas.

The sheriffs from San Bernardino and Los Angeles approached Judge Benjamin Hayes. Hayes issued a writ of habeas corpus, widely used against slaveholders in free states.

Late on the night of New Year's Eve 1855, as Los Angeles residents celebrated the new year, sheriffs raided Smith's camp in the Santa Monica mountains.

Biddy’s children were taken into protective custody at the city jail at the corner of Spring and Franklin Streets in downtown L.A. They let Biddy stay with the Owens family. Judge Hayes ordered Smith to bear all costs associated with the case and caring for those placed in guardianship of the sheriffs as they prepared for trial.

Los Angeles was then still a small town and the three day court hearing, starting on January 19, 1856 was a huge event.

Smith argued that Biddy and the rest of his slaves wished to go to Texas with him. Under state law, Black Americans could not testify against white Americans. Judge Hayes brought Biddy and her eldest daughters into his chambers along with two trustworthy local gentlemen who acted as observers. Hayes asked Biddy if she was willingly leaving for Texas and Biddy told him, “I always do what I have been told, but I have always been afraid of this trip to Texas.” Biddy also told the judge about the kind of treatment they had been subjected to over the years.

Hannah, who was one of the women enslaved by Smith, gave an unbelievably damaging testimony in the courtroom. She reluctantly said that she wanted to go to Texas. There were long silences. Hannah had given birth to a baby boy only two weeks earlier and was terrified of what Smith would do to her if she refused to go with him to Texas. Hayes sent the San Bernardino sheriff up to talk with her and she said, I promised I would say in court that I wanted to go but I don't want to go. If you bring me back to court, I'll say I want to go but I don't want to go. The sheriff returned with an affidavit saying that, in fact, she did not want to go.

Smith’s behavior before and during the course of the hearing made it clear she had good reason to be afraid. It was awful. He threatened the Owens family, a neighborhood grocer and a doctor in the courtroom yelling “If this case isn't resolved on Southern principles, all people of color will pay the price.”

A gang of Smith’s sons and workers went to the jail and tried to intimidate the jailer and lure Biddy’s daughters away from the jail with alcohol. Biddy’s lawyer abruptly withdrew from the case after being threatened and offered a bribe of $200.

Judge Hayes was furious with Smith, and clearly rattled by what he had heard. His family was behaving like thugs. Robert Smith was lying about trying to take them out of California and this disturbed Hayes. Smith, who was not being held, was a no-show on the last day of the trial, Monday, January 21. He ran off to Texas. He knew his reputation was ruined and was unwilling to pay court costs.

Judge Hayes stated "all the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom and are free and cannot be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this State. It is therefore argued that they are entitled to their freedom and are free forever."

Amasa Mason Lyman was the mayor of San Bernardino and a Mormon Apostle. Biddy was a friend of Lyman and was fond of the Lyman family. Biddy took the surname Mason. It was her first last name.

With Smith gone, her daughters were released from protective custody and Mason moved her family into the Owens family home. They were now citizens in rough-and-tumble Los Angeles, where only around 80 of its 4,000 residents were Black. Her oldest daughter, Ellen, married the Owens' son, Charles. Owing to her experience and quality of work, she became one of the most popular midwives of that state, using the skills she learned as a slave.

Judge Hayes had a brother-in-law famous for being one of the first formally trained doctors in Southern California. Dr. John Strother Griffin, the “Father of East Los Angeles”. Griffin was impressed with her nursing skills and hired her as a nurse and midwife. She made $2.50 per day. That would be about $85 dollars in 2022. About 10 bucks a day for an 8 hour day.

Griffin’s office was on Main Street in the same county building as the jail in which she’d taken refuge with the 13 other enslaved people fighting for freedom. She offered her services to the prisoners free of charge.

Biddy delivered hundreds of babies in Los Angeles and braved a smallpox epidemic, risking her life to tend to the sick. In her big black medicine bag, she carried the tools of her trade, and the papers Judge Hays had given her affirming that she was free.

Biddy Mason worked as a midwife for ten years, saving her earnings carefully. When she was 48, she purchased her own property on the outskirts of Los Angeles where there were more gardens and vineyards than paved streets. She was the first African American woman to buy property in Los Angeles. It had a water ditch, and a willow fence running around the plot. Two lots for $250. Mason initially used the land for gardening and lived with the Owens. This purchase made her one of the first pioneers of Los Angeles. A remarkable feat for a woman who had spent the first 37 years of her life enslaved.

In her home, she established the city's first child care center for working parents. The First African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest African American church in the city. It was established on her Spring Street property. The initial meetings were held in Mason’s home in 1872. She paid taxes and all expenses on church property to hold it for her people. The permanent church was eventually erected on land she donated at Eighth and Towne. Mason was quickly beloved and “known by every citizen” as “Aunt Biddy.”

She was also well received in the Los Angeles Spanish-speaking community. She could not read or write, but had become a fluent Spanish-speaker. She befriended Pio Pico, Mexico’s last governor in California. Pico, Owens and Griffin were involved in real estate and all encouraged her to invest her money wisely and purchase property. Biddy invested in real estate in what is now the heart of downtown L.A.

Finally, in 1884 Mason finally moved to her own land at 311 Spring Street and what is now Broadway. On one of the two lots, she built a two-story brick building which she rented the first floor to commercial interests and lived in an apartment on the second.

Los Angeles was booming, and rural Spring Street was becoming crowded with shops and boarding houses. She sold the north lot for $1,500. A gain of nearly $13,000 today. She sold a property she had purchased on Olive Street for $375 in 1868, for $2,800. $82,000 today. Basically, in 1884, Biddy had over a 100,000 year in today’s numbers.

There were dirt streets and unpaved sidewalks, with curbs and gutters. The drainage system was primitive. Water was still channeled through the city through open ditches and bricklaid channels. Only fifteen streets had sewers running below their surface via riveted iron pipes. Three hundred foot tall poles holding electric lights had recently been erected on the major streets, illuminating with 3,000 candle power.

Early that year, storms in February of 1884 caused the Los Angeles River to swell and cut new channels and the city’s streets began to flood. The Aliso Street Bridge broke in two, part of the bridge was pushed down the river with half a dozen homes and they all lodged against the First Street Bridge, creating a dam. The water rose, the river overflowed its banks and flooded the streets. Finally, the pressure from the rising water and the piled up homes and portion of bridge was too much for the First Street Bridge.

The west bank eroded when the First Street Bridge collapsed and thirty-five more houses were carried away. Along the riverbed, people sifted through the debris. Cradles, baby wagons, doors, cupboards, fences, pigs. Looking for something. Someone. Brooms, chickens, orange trees, beds. It was a dreadful sight. People were killed. Obviously, city lighting could not slow fooding, but it would aid in the recovery from the storm that had put a third of the city under water for hours.

After the flood, Biddy arranged a deal with a grocer on Fourth and Spring. All of the families who lost their home were able to sign off for all of their groceries. Biddy Mason would pay the tab.

Biddy owned land on San Pedro Street in Little Tokyo and was renting to over twenty tenants on three large plots near the now Grand Central Market. For the next three decades, she continued her real estate venture, participating in the frontier town’s transformation into an emerging metropolis. She used her wealth, a fortune of $300,000, the equivalent to $9.5 million in 2022 to feed and shelter the poor. She would visit the jail to leave a token and a prayerful hope with every prisoner. She opened a foster home, an elementary school for black children and a traveler’s aid center. She was charming, effective and was deeply appreciated. In so many ways, she became the backbone of society.

She helped her family buy properties around the city. She deeded a portion of her remaining Spring Street property to her grandsons “for the sum of love and affection and ten dollars.” She signed the deed with her customary fancy “X.” Still, never learning to read or write. Too busy making that cash. Her success enabled her to support her extended family for generations.

Los Angeles had become a bustling city with 50,000 residents in the late 1880’s. She was so well-known, at dawn each morning, a line would form in front of Mason’s gate. Swarming with people in need of assistance. Her neighborhood developed quickly around her homestead and by the early 1890s, the main financial district of Los Angeles was one block from Mason’s property. As she grew old and became too ill to see visitors, her grandson Robert was forced to turn people away each morning.

On January 15, 1891 Bridget “Biddy” Mason died at her beloved homestead in Los Angeles. She was 73 years old, one of the wealthiest Black women in the country. When she was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, her grave was left unmarked. The family held onto Mason’s cherished “first homestead” until the Depression. Today the Broadway Spring Center Parking garage stands on the site.

Ninety-Seven years after her death, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, and members of the church she founded held a ceremony, during which her grave was finally marked with a tombstone.

Biddy Mason Memorial Park in downtown Los Angeles was erected one year later in her honor. Behind the Bradbury Building near Third and Spring, a memorial on an 80-foot-long poured concrete wall shows the timeline of Biddy Mason’s life. November 16 was declared “Biddy Mason Day” in Los Angeles.

Jackie Broxton said this, "She showed people what could happen when they were free and could set their own destiny". Jackie Broxton is the CEO & President of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation. The Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation was established in 2013 and began as an outreach ministry of the church Biddy founded. The Foundation caters to current and former foster youth in the local community.

It should also be noted that Biddy’s success story was the exception and not the rule. I believe that she attained so much, because she gave so much. As she navigated multiple levels of oppression, Biddy advocated for her community. When it comes to movements advancing our communities, culture, and policies in more equitable directions, it seems that women have always been at the forefront. Biddy Mason once said, “If you hold your hand closed, nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives.” She is an inspiration that when given the support and opportunity, it is possible to overcome even the toughest of circumstances. Her story is one of resilience, compassion, and triumph. The fight continues today against the inherited systemic racism, sexism, and each and every intersection.

Sources:

Los Angeles Almanac

Free Forever: The Contentious Hearing That Made Biddy Mason A Legend By Hadley Meares

The Life of Biddy Mason: From Slave to a Master by Fareeha Arshad

Biddy Mason Collaborative

National Park Service

Biddy Mason: One of LA’s first black real estate moguls By Hadley Meares

Los Angeles Western Corral

Honoring the legacy and 200th birthday of slave-turned-entrepreneur Biddy Mason by Michael Livingston

Negro Trail-Blazers of California by Delilah Beasley

The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden

https://kentakepage.com/bridget-biddy-mason/

Bridget "Biddy" Mason: From Bondage to Wealth - Kentake Page

Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation

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