*  The assertions that Pleasant was a former slave, a mammy, a Voodoo priestess, or a madame are apocryphal. They are based almost solely on the accounts of Charlotte Dennis Downs, the daughter of one of Pleasant’s employees, whom Pleasant did not know well. Downs claimed that Pleasant had dictated her “true” memoirs to her in the 1880s. Downs was never able to produce the manuscript, claiming she lost it.