Mary Ellen Pleasant (August 19, 1814[a] – January 11, 1904[b]) was an American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist.

The "one woman social agency" served African Americans before and during the Civil War, as well as meeting a different set of needs after Emancipation.

[11] Realizing that she was in a tenuous position as a black woman who had gained political and financial power, she sought ways to blend in to the culture of the times.

In the 1870s, she made the acquaintance of Thomas Bell, a wealthy banker and capitalist, which helped her make money and keep her riches and true financial status a secret.

Author Edward White said of her: "As an entrepreneur, civil-rights activist, and benefactor, Mary Ellen Pleasant made a name and a fortune for herself in Gold Rush–era San Francisco, shattering racial taboos.

[15] Mr. Williams brought her to Nantucket, Massachusetts, to be a domestic or indentured servant to the Hussey-Gardner family, who were Quakers and abolitionists.

[2][13] Mrs. Hussey in her shop sold everything from fish hooks to a ton of coal... Buying wholesale and selling retail was the way she did it and it paid.

[16] She said of that time: "I was a girl full of smartness [who] let books alone and studied men and women a good deal … I have always noticed that when I have something to say, people listen.

[4][14][15][h] Her husband was an abolitionist and together they helped people who had been enslaved make it north to freedom in Nova Scotia via the Underground Railroad.

[19] A number of fellow abolitionists from Boston, Philadelphia, and New Bedford migrated west to California c. 1850;[21] There were more than 700 people, at least 25 of whom were Hussey and Gardner family members, who left Nantucket for the gold coast in 1849.

[3] Since only one out of ten pioneers coming to the state were women, Pleasant realized that she could seize a very lucrative opportunity to cook and provide lodging for the miners.

[21] She worked as a live-in domestic[19][15] and made investments based upon conversations that she overheard from wealthy men as she attended to them during meals and conferences.

[21][15] For her own safety, she initially went by the name Mrs. Ellen Smith, rather than Pleasant, and was considered by her neighbors to be a white landlady and cook.

Among the transactions that she made during Underground Railroad activities, she assisted fugitive slaves in obtaining safe transportation, housing, and jobs.

[15] She attained legal resources for black people when attempts were made to extradite them out of California and return them to slavery.

[14] For instance, she paid for legal fees and housing for Archy Lee during his case of 1857, in which a judge from Texas ultimately ruled against California's state constitution and for the slaveholder.

There was a note from her in his pocket when he was arrested after the Harpers Ferry Armory incident, but as it was only signed with the initials "MEP" (which were misread as "WEP") she was not caught.

"[23] When the abolitionist John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read, "The ax is laid at the foot of the tree.

Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown's attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia.

[12] Pleasant told Davis, "Before I pass away, I wish to clear the identity of the party who furnished John Brown with most of his money to start the fight at Harpers Ferry and who signed the letter found on him when he was arrested.

[27] In the spring of 1865, her daughter Lizzie married R. Berry Phillips[19] at the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church in San Francisco followed by a reception.

[28]) Pleasant successfully attacked racial discrimination in San Francisco public conveyances after she and two other black women were ejected from a city streetcar in 1866.

[29]: 51  The second case, Pleasant v. North Beach & Mission Railroad Company, went to the California Supreme Court and took two years to complete.

"[16] A court battle with Sarah Althea Hill and Senator William Sharon, involved the breakup of their arrangement and whether there were damages.

[3][27] She was presumed to have an evil intention for listening to Hill's concerns, as if "confiding one's secrets in a mammy was simply what well-brought-up white ladies do."

[35][36] Teresa, who had emotional and mental instability,[27] claimed that tens of thousands of dollars had been stolen by Pleasant and that her husband had been manipulated.

As soon as she made arrangements, she moved into a six-room apartment on Webster Street and began a legal crusade of her own to recover her property, including a diamond collection.

Her gravesite is marked with a metal sculpture and the site was dedicated on June 11, 2011,[38] and her gravestone contains the words "She was a friend of John Brown", as she had requested before her death.

Michelle Cliff's 1993 book Free Enterprise is subtitled "A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant" and features her abolitionist activities.

[40] She was an important character in Andre Norton's Velvet Shadows, a romantic suspense novel set in San Francisco.