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. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival.
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.
Charles Goodall Lee was an American dentist, and the first licensed Chinese American dentist in California. Lee financed the building of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance lodge in Oakland, California. He graduated from the School of Dentistry at University of the Pacific.
The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racial massacre targeting Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California, United States that occurred on October 24, 1871. Approximately 500 white and Latino Americans attacked, harassed, robbed, and murdered the ethnic Chinese residents in what is today referred to as the old Chinatown neighborhood. The massacre took place on Calle de los Negros, also referred to as "Negro Alley". The mob gathered after hearing that a policeman and a rancher had been killed as a result of a conflict between rival tongs, the Nin Yung, and Hong Chow. As news of their death spread across the city, fueling rumors that the Chinese community "were killing whites wholesale", more men gathered around the boundaries of Negro Alley. A few 21st-century sources have described this as the largest mass lynching in American history.
William Taylor (1821–1902) was an American Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1884. Taylor University, a Christian college in Indiana, carries his name.
Robert Samuel Maclay, D.D. was an American missionary who made pioneer contributions to the Methodist Episcopal missions in China, Japan and Korea. He served as the first president of Aoyama Gakuin University.
The Women's Home Missionary Society had joined with the Women's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast in 1893. Together they opened the "Oriental Home for Chinese Women and Girls" at 912 Washington Street in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1901.
Stockton Street is a north-south street in San Francisco. It begins at Market Street passing Union Square, a major shopping district in the city. It then runs underground for about two and a half blocks in the Stockton Street Tunnel, passes through Chinatown and North Beach, and ends at Beach Street near the Pier 39 shopping center and tourist attraction.
The Peniel Mission was an interdenominational holiness rescue mission that was started in Los Angeles, California, on 11 November 1886 by Theodore Pollock Ferguson (1853–1920) and Manie Payne Ferguson. It was dissolved in 1949.
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First transcontinental railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson was the wife of the Methodist missionary Otis Gibson.
Mary Fletcher Benton Scranton was an American Methodist Episcopal Church missionary. She was the first Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church representative to Korea and the founder of the Ewha Girls School under Emperor Gojong. Today, the Ewha Girls School is the Ewha Womans University, one of the most prestigious women's schools in Asia. Scranton also founded the Tal Syeng Day School for Women in Seoul and the Training School for Bible Women.
Ross Alley is a north–south alley in San Francisco's Chinatown. Ross Alley lies between and is parallel to Stockton and Grant, running one city block between Jackson and Washington.
Daniel Gee Ching Wu, an Episcopal priest and missionary, became a leader among Chinese Americans, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lucinda L. Combs-Stritmatter was an American physician who was the first female medical missionary to provide medical care in China. She is credited with establishing the first women's hospital in Beijing. Combs was a pioneer in women's medical care while serving the Women's Foreign Ministry Society's North China Mission for seven years.
William Speer (1822–1904) was an American pioneer Presbyterian missionary and author. He was missionary to the Chinese in Canton (1847–1850), where he helped establish the first Presbytery in Canton, and to the Chinese in California (1852–1857), where he founded the first Chinese Protestant church outside of China and became a strong advocate for the Chinese in California. Later (1865–1876) he served in Pennsylvania as the Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Education.
Mary Elizabeth Simpson Sperry was a leading California suffragist who served as president of the California Woman Suffrage Association.
The California Equal Suffrage Association was a political organization in the state of California with the intended goal of passing women's suffrage.
