Donaldina Cameron House | |
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Location | 920 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Coordinates | 37°47′36″N122°24′31″W / 37.793467°N 122.408552°W |
Founded | 1876 |
Built | 1908 |
Architect | Julia Morgan |
Designated | October 10, 1971 [1] |
Reference no. | 44 |
The Donaldina Cameron House, formerly known as the Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House and Chinese Presbyterian Mission House, is a historic building built in 1908, and located in Chinatown in San Francisco, California. The initial use of the building was as an early 20th-century safe house for Chinese girls and women. [2] Donaldina Cameron, the namesake for the building had served as the house director. [3] Due to the unsettling social history of the building, it is sometimes referred to as a haunted house. The building currently houses the Chinese community nonprofit, Cameron House.
It has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark since October 10, 1971. [4] [1]
Many Chinese emigrants came to California during the 1849 Gold Rush, they made up one-fifth of the population in four of the largest mining counties. [5] [6] [7] The Chinese were treated poorly, and they often worked low wage jobs in mines and on railroads. As a result, few Chinese women were able to join their partners in California, and the male Chinese population was disproportionately represented.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, began further limiting Chinese immigration. The Tongs exploited the situation by creating a human trafficking network and by setting up brothels in Chinatown. [8] The women brought from China were often sold as wives, prostitutes, and household slaves. [8]
In 1873, five women organized the Presbyterian Women's Occidental Board of Foreign Missions. The Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House building was formed in 1876 in Chinatown in San Francisco, under the leadership of Margaret Culbertson (1834–1897). [3] [9] It was established as a home for Chinese girls that were escaping abusive employment, or prostitution. [3] [2] The first location of the organization was a wooden building located across the street at 933 Sacramento Street. [3]
Donaldina Cameron, joined the Mission House in 1895, where she taught sewing classes and worked alongside Culbertson. [10] Cameron started to serve as the house director starting in 1897, after the death of Culbertson. [3] Tien Fuh Wu worked as Cameron's aide, [11] and Samantha Knox Condit was a teacher at the organization. [12]
During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires, the building was destroyed by the San Francisco Fire Department in hopes of creating a firebreak. [4]
The Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House was rebuilt in 1908 under architect Julia Morgan and moved to 920 Sacramento Street. [3] The new building was built using salvaged clinker bricks. [2] Girls and mui tsai would hide in the basement from their captures.
With the falling numbers of girls being rescued throughout the late-1930s and the Magnuson Act of 1943 (a repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act), the needs of the community changed. Cameron retired in the late 1930s, and at this point the building was turned into a language school. [2]
Rev. F. S. "Dick" Wichman led the Donaldina Cameron House from 1947 to 1977. [2] Under Wichman, Cameron House expanded their youth programs and created mixed-sex and male classes. [2] Wichman was later accused of sexual abuse and misconduct in the 1990s. [2] [13] [14] Wichman had denied the allegations before his death. [15] Because of the statute of limitations, the San Francisco DA's office never prosecuted. [15] [16] In 2004, the church's "Healing Task Force" released a final investigative report and found Wichman had abused and molested 18 males, including minors from the Cameron House and the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown. [13] The church has made efforts towards collective community healing, which included public acknowledgment of the crimes and an apology. [15]
Diana Ming Chan was the first Chinese social worker at Donaldina Cameron House. [17]
Rev. Harry Chuck led the Donaldina Cameron House starting in 1977. [16] Chuck had also worked for the Chinatown Coalition for Better Housing in the 1970s; [16] and he had documented on film Asian-American activism in the 1960s, which became part of the documentary film "Chinatown Rising" (2020). [18] [19]
The Donaldina Cameron House building is considered haunted by some because of its unsettling social history. [2]
Julia Morgan was an American architect and engineer. She designed more than 700 buildings in California during a long and prolific career. She is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
Donaldina Cameron was a New Zealand-born American Presbyterian missionary who was a pioneer in the fight against slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown, who helped more than 2,000 Chinese immigrant girls and women escape from forced prostitution or indentured servitude. She was known as "Fahn Quai" or the "White Devil" of Chinatown, as well as the "Angry Angel of Chinatown" and "Lo Mo".
Otis Gibson was a Methodist pastor, best known for his missionary work to the Chinese in Fuzhou, China and in San Francisco, California.
This is an alphabetical index of topics related to Asian Americans.
The Women's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast of the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded on October 29, 1870 by Methodist Rev. Otis T. Gibson, with eleven women he recruited in August 1870, for the purpose of working among the slave girls in Chinatown, San Francisco, California. By the end of 1870, Rev. Gibson had erected the building of the "Chinese Mission Institute". In October 1871, the first woman, Jin Ho, was rescued from the bay where she had attempted suicide. She then worked in a Christian family and in two years married a Christian Chinese. In 1873 a school was opened with Miss L. S. Templeton as teacher. The school mainly taught English and other necessary skills to Chinese and Japanese women and girls who had been rescued from slavery or prostitution in San Francisco Chinatown.
The Old Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception is a proto-cathedral and parish of the Roman Catholic Church located at 660 California Street at the corner of Grant Avenue in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It was built in 1854 in the Gothic Revival style, and was made a Designated San Francisco Landmark on April 11, 1968.
The Chinese Historical Society of America is the oldest and largest archive and history center documenting the Chinese American experience in the United States. It is based in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
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Tye Leung Schulze became the first Chinese American woman to vote in the United States when she cast a ballot in San Francisco on May 19, 1912. She also became the first Chinese American woman to pass the civil service exams and to occupy a government job. The San Francisco Call stated that she was "the first Chinese woman in the history of the world to exercise the electoral franchise." Schulze was also the first Chinese woman hired to work at Angel Island. She is a designated Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
The Tong Wars were a series of violent disputes beginning in the late 19th century among rival Chinese Tong factions centered in the Chinatowns of various American cities, in particular San Francisco. Tong wars could be triggered by a variety of inter-gang grievances, from the public besmirching of another Tong's honor, to failure to make full payment for a "slave girl", to the murder of a rival Tong member. Each Tong had salaried soldiers, known as boo how doy, who fought in Chinatown alleys and streets over the control of opium, prostitution, gambling, and territory.
Julia Morgan School for Girls is an all-girls middle school in Oakland, California, named for Julia Morgan, the building's architect and the first woman to be licensed in California as an architect. The school is housed in a historical and architecturally significant building that she designed. The building was constructed in 1924 and was originally used for The Ming Quong Home for Chinese girls, an orphanage. It was purchased and donated to Mills College in 1936 and became known as Graduate House. After 1960 it was known as Alderwood Hall. In 2004, the building was renovated for use as the Julia Morgan School for Girls. The building is located at 5000 MacArthur Boulevard.
The Women's Building is a women-led non-profit arts and education community center located in San Francisco, California. The center advocates self-determination, gender equality and social justice. The four-story building rents to multiple tenants and serves more than 20,000 women a year. The building has served as an event and meeting space since 1979, when it was purchased by the San Francisco Women's Center. The Center is shielded from rising real estate costs in the Mission District because it owns the building free and clear, having paid off the mortgage in 1995.
As of 2012, 21.4% of the population in San Francisco was of Chinese descent, and there were at least 150,000 Chinese American residents. The Chinese are the largest Asian American subgroup in San Francisco. San Francisco has the highest percentage of residents of Chinese descent of any major U.S. city, and the second largest Chinese American population, after New York City. The San Francisco Area is 7.9% Chinese American, with many residents in Oakland and Santa Clara County. San Francisco's Chinese community has ancestry mainly from Guangdong province, China and Hong Kong, although there is a sizable population of ethnic Chinese with ancestry from other parts of mainland China and Taiwan as well.
Julia Flynn Siler is an American journalist and nonfiction author.
Diana Ming Chan was an American social worker, philanthropist, advocate, and educator known for her pioneering work in school social work and direct services. She was the first Cantonese-speaking bilingual social worker in San Francisco's Chinatown. She was known for her "dumpling diplomacy", in which politicians were invited to her home to discuss the importance of social workers in public schools over dumplings.
Samantha Knox Condit was an American teacher and Presbyterian missionary, working in the Chinese community of San Francisco, California and surroundings.
Presbyterian Church in Chinatown (PCC), established in San Francisco in 1853, is the oldest Chinese American or Asian American church in North America.
Tien Fuh Wu or Tien Fu Wu was a pioneer in the anti-human trafficking movement in San Francisco, California. After being rescued in childhood from her role as a mui tsai, she worked for decades to free Chinese immigrant women and girls from sexual slavery and indentured servitude. As the long-time aide to Donaldina Cameron, Wu dedicated her life to helping the residents of the Presbyterian Mission Home, a rescue mission in Chinatown.
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