Priscilla Henry traveled from a plantation in Alabama to St. Louis, where she found work cleaning a hotel. But when the hotel burned down, she became a laundress at a “boarding house,” and made extra coin turning tricks on the side.
In the 1870s, St. Louis was the heart of the sex trade. The city was the first in the U.S. to legalize prostitution, requiring licensing and providing free medical care for sex workers.
Henry's life changed when she met Tom Howard, who became her lover and financial backer. He helped her buy two brothels in the red-light district. Business boomed.
Known from New Orleans to Minneapolis, she out-hustled other madams when competition grew stiff. But Henry had a shameful secret: She was illiterate. Even though she couldn’t read or write, she could count; she kept a stash that she used to make her boldest purchase: the Alabama plantation where she had been enslaved.
Having failed to defraud Henry of her fortune (worth about $3.7 million today), Howard poisoned Henry's sister and possibly her, too. Ultimately, Henry got the last laugh when her nieces inherited everything, and Howard ended up floating in the Mississippi River. Priscilla Henry's life shows our ancestors' gift for doing remarkable things with nothing – even when the system is stacked against them.