The Paper Daughters of Chinatown - Heather B. Moore Page 0,150
ordeal for Donaldina and the mission home employees. Not only did they have to seek shelter and provide food, but danger still lurked, with opportunists looking to capitalize on misfortune.
Chapter Thirty-One
Epigraph citation: Donaldina Cameron, report of events following the 1906 earthquake (quoted in Wilson, Chinatown Quest, 78).
Miracle after miracle happened to get the girls out of San Francisco, and Donaldina’s ragtag group finally secured passage at the Ferry Building. In her own words: “It was a thankful, though a completely exhausted company that sank down amid bundles and babies on the lower deck of the steamer, too weary to walk to the saloon. . . . But tired and homeless, knowing not where that night we were to lay our heads, our only feeling was one of gratitude for deliverance as we looked over the group of more than sixty young faces and realized how God had cared for His Children” (quoted in Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 107).
Donaldina told the story of Yuen Kum and Henry Lai in her own words, a remarkable event considering the devastation of the earthquake: “Long before the eighteenth of April the cards were out for a wedding at the Home. Yuen Kum, a clear, bright girl who had been with us several years, was to be the bride of Mr. Henry Lai of Cleveland, Ohio. The date set for the wedding was April twenty-first. And to prove the truth of the old adage ‘Love will find a way’ let me tell you that the wedding did take place on that very date! The ceremony was performed by Dr. [Warren H.] Landon in the beautiful, ivy-covered chapel at San Anselmo, and notwithstanding all the difficulties the young man had gone through in finding his fiancée, on his arrival from the East the day of the earthquake, and all the trying experiences through which Yuen Kum had passed, they were a happy couple as they received the congratulations of those present. Just after the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lai started for their home in Cleveland amidst showers of California roses and the best wishes of their many friends. So romance with its magic touch helped us for a time to forget our great losses” (SFMuseum.net).
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epigraph citation: Poem by Imperial Chinese Consul-General Huang Zunxian in San Francisco, translated by J. H. Laughlin, cornerstone ceremony for new mission home, August 1907. Poetry collection found in J. D. Schmidt, Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian, 1848–1905 (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions, Cambridge University Press, 1994).
The need for rescue work continued even when Donaldina left San Francisco after the earthquake. The underground slave trade of women and girls unfortunately shifted from San Francisco to surrounding communities. Donaldina went on rescues not only in the cities she lived in, but in other locations as well. During her two years living in Oakland and San Rafael, she helped to rescue sixty more women. Some of them were losses, and in those cases Donaldina left blank spaces below ledger entries, with the hope that a later rescue would prove successful (Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 114).
Joyous was the day when Donaldina and her daughters entered the rebuilt mission home on 920 Sacramento Street. The Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board had been allotted $11,000 toward the new structure, and all other funds were raised through donations (Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 111).
An article in Woman’s Work magazine described the interior of the newly finished mission home: “The whole furnishing of the Home is eloquent with love. . . . Each dormitory is a memorial gift either in the memory of those ‘gone before,’ or to the zeal and love of auxiliaries and young people’s societies. Chinese friends have lavished bronzes, brass ornaments, embroideries, carvings. . . . Oh, that dear friends everywhere might catch an echo of the laughter and song that floated down the halls, or see the happy faces of these jewels of great price rescued from the filth of sin! Then would you know that your gifts have not been in vain” (quoted in Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 118–19. Original reference: Woman’s Work magazine, vol. XXIII, 168).
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epigraph citation: E. French Strother, “Setting Chinese Slave Girls Free,” The California Weekly, February 26, 1909, 213, 216.
The dedication of the new mission home at 920 Sacramento Street took place on April 14, 1908. Well wishes came from all over the country in the form of telegrams and letters. The chapel filled with guests, and reporters eagerly took notes for their articles (Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 121), and the portion of Donaldina’s speech is recorded by Martin (Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 122). Although the day was filled with celebration and visiting dignitaries, the rescue work was far from over. The rebuilding of Chinatown included the reestablishment of human trafficking.
Sai Mui, a paper daughter forced into prostitution, ran away from her captors, only to run into rival tong men. Donaldina’s interference was both courageous and dangerous. With the help of the police and her interpreter, Donaldina was able to secure the girl. To Donaldina’s surprise, she was cheered in the streets as they hurried to the mission home. The victory was sweet, but the journey was far from over for Donaldina. Children, teenagers, and women were still being trafficked, and Donaldina felt the need to be ready to aid where she could (Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 125–27).
Tien’s education sponsor was Horace C. Coleman, who paid for all six years of her schooling. She attended four years in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and two years at the Bible Training School in Toronto, Canada. Tien kept her promise to Donaldina and returned to the mission home, playing an integral role in guiding the work forward (Martin, Chinatown’s Angry Angel, 153).
Annual Reports of the Mission Home to the Woman’s Occidental Board of Foreign Missions, written by Directors Sarah M. N. Cummings, Margaret Culbertson, Mary H. Field, and Donaldina M. Cameron, and their assistants, matrons, and housekeepers. San Anselmo, CA: San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1874–1920.
Asbury, Herbert. The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1933.
“Cameron House.” Cameron House, https://cameronhouse.org/.
Donaldina Cameron’s San Francisco Mission Home for Chinese Girls—1906, http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew15.html.
Harris, Gloria G., and Hannah S. Cohen. Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012.
Lloyd, B. E. Lights and Shades in San Francisco. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Company, 1876.
Logan, Lorna E. Ventures in Mission: The Cameron House Story. Wilson Creek, WA: Crawford Hobby Print Shop, 1976.
Martin, Mildred Crowl. Chinatown’s Angry Angel: The Story of Donaldina Cameron. Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1977.
Nee, Victor, and Brett de Bary. Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
New Era Magazine: Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General Assembly. New York [etc.]. February 1920, vol. 26, no. 2.
One Hundred Fourteenth Annual Report of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. New York: Presbyterian Building, 1916.
Pryor, Alton. Fascinating Women in California History. Roseville, CA: Stagecoach Publishing, 2003.
Siler, Julia Flynn. The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.
Wilson, Carol Green. Chinatown Quest: One Hundred Years of Donaldina Cameron House. San Francisco: California Historical Society with Donaldina Cameron House, 1931.
Woman’s Work magazine. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church. New York: Presbyterian Building, 1908.
Wong, Edward. “The 1935 Broken Blossoms Case—Four Chinese Women and Their Fight for Justice.” Atavist, 23 July 2015. https://edwardwong.atavist.com/the-1935-broken-blossoms-case-four-chines.... See also https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2016/spring/blossom....
Wong, Kristin, and Kathryn Wong. Fierce Compassion: The Life of Abolitionist Donaldina Cameron. Saline, MI: New Earth Enterprises, 2012.
Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995.
Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestseller and award-winning author of more than seventy publications. She’s lived on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, including Hawaii, and attended school abroad, including the Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. She loves to learn about anything in history and is passionate about historical research.
Contents
Author’s Note
Character Chart
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
Chapter Notes
Selected Bibliography and Recommended Reading
About the Author
Landmarks
Cover