Known around town as "Queen," Emily Edwards Casement was a beautiful creole woman who had once run a saloon, dance hall, and place of doubtful repute in San Francisco in the 1850s and 1860s. She gained her nickname by responding to a massive fire in 1851 and to another fire in 1855, when she dragged four men from a burning building. In 1880, she lived in Colfax and kept a house of ill fame just up the street from this location. She made many friends in town, including many upright citizens. When she died in Colfax in 1885, she left her money to many charities and to the children of Auburn and Colfax citizens.