Mew Yit Quong moved to Fort Bragg in 1930 after marrying Chan Young Quong, who worked as a cook for Union Lumber Company. Chan Young lived at the lumber camps but would return home on Saturday until Sunday, leaving Mew Yit in charge of raising their five children for most of the week. In an oral history interview later in her life, she recalled feeling isolated during that time, frequently calling her father in San Francisco to have someone to talk to. She discusses combating her loneliness by starting to work outside of her home.
Mew Yit ran a successful seaweed business for at least ten years. She bought dried seaweed, prepared and packaged it in her home, and resold it to locals in Fort Bragg’s Chinatown. Orders for her seaweed were also sent to San Francisco, Hawaii and Hong Kong.
In 1944, Mew Yit bought the Rivera Café in Fort Bragg from the Benassini brothers. She had been a regular at the restaurant, and the owners approached her to buy the business. The purchase included the cocktail lounge next door and apartments above the restaurant.
Mew Yit admitted that she wasn’t a great cook, so she learned how to serve and asked her husband to quit his job to work at the restaurant instead. While running the restaurant, she began using the name “Helen” because people couldn’t remember her name. Several years later, she and her husband sold the restaurant. The Fort Bragg Advocate noted that the business was successful and busy under their leadership, especially “during the strenuous days of rationing.”
In the late 1940s, the family was looking for another business venture. Chan Young traveled to San Francisco in search of work. While he was gone, Mew Yit struck a deal to buy a grocery store on Redwood Avenue in Fort Bragg from the Handelin family. She called her husband and told him to come home. They renamed the store City Grocery.
Mew Yit continued performing domestic duties while working at the grocery store. She’d sometimes travel between home and work multiple times a day to cook, clean, and care for her children. When a young boy was bullying one of her sons, Mew Yit confronted and “yelled at” the boy’s father, who was startled at being confronted.
In the 1970s, Mew Yit’s daughter Helen wrote several letters to Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins about her family’s history and her mother’s accomplishments.
Averee McNear is the curator at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, Calif.