Final Draft Civic Season 2024 Guidebook (3) - Flipbook - Page 34
Your Guide
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Polly Bemis
I am Polly Bemis, born in China around
1853. I was smuggled into San Francisco,
California, as an enslaved person when I
was 19. I was then taken to a mining camp
in Idaho, but eventually gained my
freedom and opened a boarding house
where I did laundry for miners. Although I
cultivated a community by opening my
home to others, it wasn’t easy. Pioneer life
on the Salmon River was rugged and
challenging, and I faced prejudice against
Chinese people. In my life, I met many
different kinds of people and changed the
course of history in a place and time when
laws around property, freedom, women’s
rights, and interracial marriage were still
catching up with the rapidly changing
United States.
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