Pleasant is thought to be the first female black millionaire in the US:
"In 1848, the California Gold Rush began and word soon spread that even blacks were free to seek their fortune on the West Coast. Pleasant heeded the call. She moved to San Francisco and found work as a cook, invisible and unimportant once again. She shrewdly eavesdropped on the wealthy people she served, and using the information, invested bits of her inheritance. “It’s quite possible that the jobs she had as a domestic were a cover that she was using because she clearly made her money from investments,” Hudson, the biographer, said in an interview.
Her portfolio grew to include shares in businesses that ranged from dairies and laundries to Wells Fargo Bank. She owned restaurants and boardinghouses, which locals whispered were actually brothels. In the 1890 census, she stated that she was a “capitalist” by profession.
“One of the reasons that she’s not known to students of U.S. history and Americans is because a lot of the activities that she was involved in were either controversial or secret,” Hudson said.
...
Sixty years after her death, her gravestone was amended with a line that she had asked for on her deathbed: “A Friend of John Brown.” As Pleasant herself once put it, “I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/mary-ellen-pleasant-overlooked.html
"In 1848, the California Gold Rush began and word soon spread that even blacks were free to seek their fortune on the West Coast. Pleasant heeded the call. She moved to San Francisco and found work as a cook, invisible and unimportant once again. She shrewdly eavesdropped on the wealthy people she served, and using the information, invested bits of her inheritance. “It’s quite possible that the jobs she had as a domestic were a cover that she was using because she clearly made her money from investments,” Hudson, the biographer, said in an interview.
Her portfolio grew to include shares in businesses that ranged from dairies and laundries to Wells Fargo Bank. She owned restaurants and boardinghouses, which locals whispered were actually brothels. In the 1890 census, she stated that she was a “capitalist” by profession.
“One of the reasons that she’s not known to students of U.S. history and Americans is because a lot of the activities that she was involved in were either controversial or secret,” Hudson said.
...
Sixty years after her death, her gravestone was amended with a line that she had asked for on her deathbed: “A Friend of John Brown.” As Pleasant herself once put it, “I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/mary-ellen-pleasant-overlooked.html