Biddy Mason

Born into slavery in 1818, Biddy Mason lived the first thirty years of her life in Georgia and Mississippi. She was not allowed to learn to read or write, but she learned other things and learned them well: cultivating cotton, working with livestock, using herbal medicines, and nursing. But where she shined was in midwifery.  

In 1948, her owner headed west, Biddy walking behind the wagon train for 1,600 hundred miles to Utah, her newborn daughter strapped onto her, and herding livestock. She also helped women in their wagon train, who gave birth along the way. 

In 1851, they wound up in California. 

Biddy’s Surrender 

In 1856, thirty-eight-year-old Biddy sat in a jail cell, waiting for her trial. But she hadn’t committed any crime but was there for her own protection. She was there as an act of God. Her Savior was saving her in more ways than one. 

Biddy and her daughters, Ellen (eighteen), Ann (twelve), and Harriet (eight), had been slaves—human beings owned by one Robert Smith—living in California, which became a non-slaveholding state in 1850, just one year before Biddy and her daughters had arrived. They immediately became friends with free black people. Whisperings among them about their freedom must have run rampant. 

After living there for four years, the sentiment against slavery was growing, and it was inching closer and closer to Biddy and her owners. Smith grew anxious that his slaves might flee. So he planned to get them out of California and to a state that allowed human beings to own one another. Their destination: Texas. There were no free black people in Texas.  

The taste of freedom, at Biddy’s fingertips in California, was slipping away from her. But if there was no slaveholding in California, surely Smith couldn’t force them to leave the state. 

Scared and worried about going into Texas, Biddy didn’t know how to stop it. She shared her fears with her new friends, and through them, God intervened. They contacted law enforcement in Los Angeles County, alerting them of Biddy’s fears for herself and her daughters, and the sheriffs acted.  

The sheriffs went before the Judge and asked for a writ of habeas corpus, which was common to use against slaveholders in free states. Then they surprised Robert Smith and his family at their camp and handed him the writ.  

Smith argued, insisting Biddy and her children were going with him voluntarily, that this was what they wanted. But the writ allowed the Sheriffs to take Biddy and her daughters into protective custody. They were placed in the Los Angeles County Jail, where they awaited a trial that could grant them freedom or hand them over to an angry slaveholder.  

Biddy prayed for deliverance. She’d have to dig down deep to find the truth and speak it, knowing full well that if she lost her case and was forced to go to Texas with Robert Smith, her punishment would be severe, including her or her children being sold. 

In 1856, black people were not allowed to testify against a white man in a courtroom. But the judge wanted to hear from Biddy herself. He needed to know if she truly wanted to go with Smith.  

The judge took two white men into his private chambers as “gentlemen witnesses” and called Biddy into the room with them. And there he questioned her. In this moment, Biddy had a choice to make. She could lie and say that she was willingly going with Robert Smith to Texas, for fear of what would happen to her and her children if she didn’t. Or she could surrender her will to God, no matter what it cost her, speak honestly from the depths of her soul, and let Him decide. 

When the judge questioned her, she found the courage to tell the truth.  

“I have always done what I have been told to do,” Biddy told the judge, “I always feared this trip to Texas since I first heard of it. Mr. Smith told me I would be just as free in Texas as here.” 

Biddy’s truth revealed Smith’s lie. And once the words were out, the rest was in God’s hands.  

After twenty-one days of Biddy and her daughters being in jail, the judge’s order came down: “All of the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom and are free forever.” 

Biddy’s surrender had brought freedom for her children and herself!  

They remained in Los Angeles and made a home for themselves. She moved in with the very friends who had intervened and rescued them and was eventually offered a job with a doctor as a midwife and nurse. Some of those they tended were in the county jail.  

Biddy returned again and again to that county jail and was looked up to as a kind, courageous woman. She continued to visit the prisoners and even care for those who got hit with smallpox during the epidemic, even at the risk of catching the illness herself.  

She worked hard and became a millionaire by buying and selling land. After major flooding in the 1880s, Biddy set up accounts at a local grocery store for the poor and displaced, so they could purchase groceries as she discreetly paid for everything.  

She helped thousands in need, fed and sheltered the poor, and visited prisoners. She also purchased the freedom of many black children, established schools in the poorest communities, and donated land for the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, even paying their taxes every year. 

Biddy had a saying that was passed on through her family’s generations: “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.”  

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV).