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
