This portrait by Sherman Beck memorializes Bridget “Biddy” Mason. Though Mason lived to be 73, Beck portrays her here as a young woman. Mason was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1818, and was traded many times to slaveowners in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1848, Mason’s last slave owner, a Mississippi-based Mormon named Robert Marion Smith, forced Mason to tend to his train of 300 wagons as he moved his family and livestock across country to help establish the Mormon settlement that would eventually be called Salt Lake City. Mason walked the entire 1,700 mile journey, all the while mothering her own three children and performing daily labors such as cooking, minding the animals, setting up the camp, and being a midwife to the pregnant women on the trip. Three years after arriving at their destination, Smith decided to move his family once again, this time to California, a free state. Once they arrived in California, Mason lobbied for her freedom in the courts and won. In response, Smith attempted to remove her and her children illegally to Texas, a slave state. The Los Angeles County Sheriff gathered a posse and intercepted Smith en route, releasing Mason and her family to freedom. Mason then studied to become a nurse, began investing in real estate, and earned a reputation as a generous philanthropist, in addition to becoming one of the founders of the first Black church in California.