The people who helped Biddy Mason bring her case to court — Robert Owens and his family, the other free Black residents who intervened — operated within this environment. They knew the legal constraints. The fact that they found a path through those constraints, using a habeas corpus petition and the judge’s willingness to conduct informal interviews, reflected both their legal awareness and the specific circumstances of Smith’s departure attempt, which created a moment when the law could be invoked.
## The First Years of Freedom
After January 22, 1856, Biddy Mason was free and in Los Angeles with her family. She had, in terms of material assets, essentially nothing: no property, no savings, no documents establishing her history, no employer. She had skills, a network of connections built through the Owens family, and a city that was small enough that individual reputation mattered.
She moved in initially with Robert Owens and his family. The connection was personal as well as practical: Ellen Mason and Charles Owens were making their relationship permanent, and the extended families became linked. Within this household, Mason began to establish herself as a nurse and midwife in the local community.
A significant professional connection came through Judge Benjamin Hayes himself, who introduced her to Dr. John Strother Griffin, one of Los Angeles’s prominent physicians. This introduction was not incidental. Griffin was a figure of some standing in the city’s medical establishment, such as it was, and working with him gave Mason access to patients she would not have reached on her own. The relationship formalized her professional identity in the community as a medical practitioner, even though the professional categories of the period did not formally include midwifery as a licensed occupation.