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  • Exploration, Pioneering, and Native Peoples x
  • Antislavery and Abolition x
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Article

Horse, John  

Kevin Mulroy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Seminole Maroon leader and Mexican army officer, also known as Juan Caballo, John (or Juan) Cavallo, John Cowaya, John Coheia, Gopher John (beginning in 1826), and Juan de Dios Vidaurri (during and after 1856), was born in the Florida Alachua savanna west of Saint Augustine. His father is believed to have been of mixed American Indian and Spanish heritage and his mother of African and American Indian descent. Until his early thirties he was considered a Seminole slave. His surname is a translation of that of Charles Cavallo, his Indian owner. Cavallo might also have owned Horse's mother and been his father.

The Seminole Maroons were mostly runaways from South Carolina and Georgia plantations together with slaves captured by Seminoles from Florida plantations and some free blacks Some were considered Seminole slaves but servitude among the Seminoles was based upon tribute and ...

Article

Pleasant, Mary Ellen  

Lynn Hudson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 May 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Mary Ellen Pleasant arrived in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, probably sometime in 1852. For the next fifty years, she worked as cook, accountant, abolitionist, and entrepreneur in the bustling town on the bay. Histories of the West describe her as madam, voodoo queen, and prostitute. Pleasant herself requested that the words “she was a friend of John Brown’s” be printed on her gravestone, indicating her own desire to be remembered as an abolitionist. She was the target of what one historian has called an “avid conspiracy” that sought to silence her, and it was said that she harbored the skeletons of San Francisco’s elite in her closet.

The folklore about Pleasant reveals conflicting stories of her background (some say she was from Georgia, others Virginia), but Pleasant herself claimed she was born in Philadelphia She described her mother as a free colored woman and her ...

Article

Pleasant, Mary Ellen (“Mammy”)  

Kate Tuttle

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

One of San Francisco's most colorful and controversial characters in the late nineteenth century was Mary Ellen Pleasant, a former slave who moved to the city in 1849. She began managing a boarding house whose reputation for cards, liquor, and beautiful women—it is likely her services included procuring prostitutes—earned it a devoted following.

No mere businesswoman, Pleasant involved herself in both local and national politics. In 1858, she personally presented abolitionist John Brown with a $30,000 U.S. Treasury Bond, after which she traveled south to promote his upcoming revolt. When Brown was captured at Harpers Ferry, Pleasant returned to California under an assumed name, where she raised money for the Union cause in the Civil War, and continued her work for civil rights.

Throughout her life Pleasant helped escaped and former slaves find work in San Francisco mostly as domestic servants Some historians speculate that Pleasant ...

Article

Prince, Nero  

Cynthia Staples

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
23 September 2021

was born in the late eighteenth century in Marlborough, Massachusetts. His status at birth is unknown. In his youth he lived with and worked for different families. Prince was an active member of the free Black communities that existed in parts of Boston, Gloucester, and Salem, Massachusetts and in Henniker, New Hampshire. He was associated with Prince Hall, abolitionist and founder of Black freemasonry in the United States. In 1784 Hall formed the African Grand Lodge of North America, a political and social organization for African Americans. Hall served as Grand Master until his death in 1807. Prince, a founding member of the lodge, succeeded him as leader of the lodge.

In 1810 Prince moved to Gloucester Massachusetts and sailed with Captain Theodore Standwood for Russia Upon their return to Gloucester Prince remained as a servant with the Standwood family While there he was able to engage ...

Article

Washington, Harry  

William J. Harris

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Revolutionary-era runaway slave, British Loyalist, and early settler in Sierra Leone, is believed to have been born in the Senegambia region of Africa. George Washington, then a colonel in the army of the British Empire, purchased Harry in 1763, along with Nan (believed to have been his wife) and four other slaves as a part of Washington's Great Dismal Swamp plan. According to this plan, Washington and five other planters would each provide five slaves to form a workforce to drain sixty square miles of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and establish a rice plantation. By 1766 Washington had moved both Harry and Nan to work on his Mount Vernon Plantation in Virginia.

In 1771 Washington sent Harry to work on the construction of a mill approximately three miles from the Mansion House Clearly not content with his lot as a slave Harry made his first ...