Mason was not a passive landowner. She managed her property actively, apparently making additional purchases and decisions about how to use her holdings. She was building, over the course of two decades, what amounted to a real estate portfolio in a growing Western city — and doing this as an illiterate woman who had been enslaved for the first thirty-eight years of her life.
The question of whether she was “the first” Black woman to own land in Los Angeles is one the article’s prompt appropriately flags as unsupported. The historical record for Los Angeles property ownership in the 1860s is not complete enough to make categorical claims about who was first. What can be said is that she was among the early Black property owners in the city, that her property holdings were substantial and grew over time, and that she used that wealth in ways that had lasting community impact.
## The Midwife’s Work
For the three decades between her 1856 emancipation and her death in 1891, Biddy Mason’s professional work as a midwife and nurse was continuous and wide-ranging. She delivered babies across the Los Angeles population, among families of various ethnicities and economic circumstances. Sources describe hundreds of deliveries over her career, though precise counts are not documented in the surviving record.
The practical dimensions of this work in 1850s and 1860s Los Angeles deserve attention. The city had limited formal medical infrastructure. Physicians were few, hospitals did not exist in the modern sense, and childbirth was managed almost entirely in private homes. Midwives were the primary practitioners of obstetric care for most families. A skilled, trusted midwife with a good reputation and experience with complications was a genuinely valuable resource.