Julia Flynn Siler

The women who ran the Mission Home in THE WHITE DEVIL’S DAUGHTERS crossed the country for their work. They pursued sex trafficking cases and checked up on former residents in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

The charitable organization that supported them, the Occidental Board, was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area. And surprisingly, many of the places those 19th and early 20th century churchwomen founded are still around, providing education and social services to their local communities.

Here are some of the most notable settings for the book, as well as links to the non-profit groups that now occupy those same buildings. I originally compiled as part of a Q&A with longtime Mills College journalism professor Sarah Pollock for Local News Matters. You can read her excellent piece here.

The main entrance today to Cameron House in San Francisco, photo courtesy of Julia Flynn Siler

• 920 Sacramento St.,San Francisco: Since the 1870s, the Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House has stood on the same steep hillside site on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake, this is where Donaldina (Dolly) Cameron and Tien Fuh Wu lived for most of their working lives. An estimated 3,000 women passed through its doors on their way to freedom. It is now a faith-based community center, with a food pantry, after-school programs, and adult education. www.cameronhouse.org
• Ming Quong home, Mills College campus, Oakland:A home for younger girls that was an offshoot of the Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco, funded in large part by the shipping magnate Robert Dollar. The pioneering woman architect Julia Morgan designed the building, which now sits at the entrance to the Mills College campus and has become the Julia Morgan School for Girls. One of its rooms is named in honor of Donaldina Cameron. https://www.juliamorganschool.org/
• San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo: A castle-like seminary overlooking the Ross Valley in Marin County, this is where the residents of the Mission Home sought refuge after the 1906 earthquake, staying in a barn on its campus for about a week. The seminary is also where Ng Poon Chew studied to become a minister: he soon abandoned preaching and instead formed the Chung Sai Yat Po, or Chinese Western Daily newspaper. https://sfts.edu/about/
• 3 Bayview, San Rafael: The Victorian home that the 60 or so earthquake refugees from the Mission Home nicknamed “The Fairy Palace.” This home still stands today and is tucked down away near San Rafael’s Panama Hotel. The 60 or so girls and young women from the home soon found the space too cramped and moved to a larger home in Oakland in the autumn of 1906. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3-Bayview-St-San-Rafael-CA-94901/80732020_zpid/
• Cameron Park, Palo Alto: This is a small park in Palo Alto’s College Terrace neighborhood named in honor of Donaldina Cameron. It is only a few blocks away from the tidy home and cottage where Cameron and Wu lived for decades at 1020 California St. in the same neighborhood as the park in Palo Alto. https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=103
  

  Photograph courtesy New Museum Los Gatos
  This old photograph shows the entrance to the Ming Quong Home n Los Gatos whenit was still an orphanage. Although Ming Quong started out as a haven for Chinese girls, children from other races and boys were admitted beginning in 1953.

• Ming Quong orphanage, Los Gatos: The original home for younger girls moved to Los Gatos in the mid-1930s, on Loma Alta Avenue. Part of the original 13-acre site is now occupied by Uplift Family Services, a behavioral health provider. One of Ming Quong’s former residents, Nona Mock Wyman, later wrote about her experience there in her memoir, “Chopstick Childhood In a Town of Silver Spoons.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/25/lighting-the-way-orphanage-for-young-sex-slaves-is-now-modern-treatment-refuge/