said that her brother’s family were not too proud to come and see her. Aunt Eliza lives a little more than a half mile from St. Michaels towards Capt Auld’s⁵ Thomas Auld. place on what is called the County road.⁶Eliza and Peter Mitchell, along with Peter’s brothers, James and Washington Mitchell, each rented an acre of land on the Perry Cabin Farm, the estate of the brothers Samuel and John N. Hambelton. The Mitchell brothers built small houses on the land, where they farmed pigs, chickens, and vegetables to sustain their families. The “county road” is now known as Mitchell Street in St. Michaels. Preston, , 164-65. They rent about an acre of ground on which they raise vegetables enough for the family; they raise their own meat. There are seven of the nine children at home or in the neighborhood. John Edward and Peter⁷It is difficult to confirm the identities of all the members of the large family of Eliza Bailey Mitchell and Peter Mitchell. Three of their sons were John Emory (1843-?), Edward Napoleon (1840-?), and Peter II (c. 1842-?). 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 99; Preston, , 164-65, 206-07. are farmers and work like Turks. Susan⁸Susan Mitchell (c. 1849-?) was the daughter of Peter Mitchell and Eliza Bailey Mitchell. 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 99; Preston, , 206-07. the oldest girl at home lives out to service, also the little girl named Mary Douglass⁹Mary Douglass Mitchell (1856-?) was the daughter of Peter Mitchell and Eliza Bailey Mitchell. She was named in honor of Eliza’s brother, Frederick Douglass. 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland,Talbot County, 99; Preston, , 164. Aunt Eliza says after you, then there is Ellen¹⁰Lewis refers to Ellen or Ella Mitchell (1851-?) and Richard Mitchell (1859-?). The two eldest Mitchell daughters, Jane (c. 1834-?) and Louisa (1835-?), had already married and left the family household by 1865. Preston, , 164-65, 206-07. and Richard at home.

Aunt Eliza regested me to thank yourself and mother for the presents sent her. Your cousin Tom Bailey¹¹Tom Bailey (1814-?), the fourth of Milly Bailey’s seven children and Douglass’s cousin, was a slave belonging to Aaron Anthony. When Anthony died in 1826, Bailey became the property of Thomas Auld. Auld granted Bailey his freedom in 1845. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; Preston, , 91, 174, 206, 221, 230. called on me. He said he remembered you well. I showed him your photograph he remembed the scar over your
nose.¹²At the age of nine, Douglass got into a fight with another slave, Ike Copper, one year his senior. Copper struck Douglass in the face with a piece of iron-fused cinder, leaving a permanent cross-shaped scar on his forehead. , ser. 2, 2:75; Preston, , 54. He stutters. He stammers a great deal. He told me that your grandmother was of Indian descent.¹³There is no solid evidence of Douglass’s grandmother, Betsey Bailey, being of Native American descent; however, family tradition claimed so. Aaron Anthony, Douglass’s childhood master, often referred to him as his “little Indian boy,” and on several occasions Douglass was mistaken for a Native American because of his facial features and yellow-brown skin. Preston, , 9. I saw a daughter of Perry’s¹⁴Perry Bailey (1813-80), Frederick Douglass’s brother and the eldest of seven children born to Harriet Bailey, was the slave of Aaron Anthony. When Anthony died in 1826, Perry was inherited by Anthony’s son, Andrew S. Anthony. Andrew died in 1832, leaving Perry, by then married to a slave named Maria, to John P. Anthony, who sold Maria to a slave owner in Brazos County, Texas. Perry followed his wife to Texas, where a postemancipation labor shortage allowed him to earn “fifteen dollars gold wages a month.” In 1867, Perry, Maria, and their four children traveled to Rochester to
reunite with Frederick. Elated by this reunion, Douglass built a cottage for them on his Rochester estate, where the family stayed for two years. In 1869, Perry and Maria returned to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where Perry died sometime after 1878. Perry Downs to Douglass, 21 February 1867, FD Collection, DHU-MS; Douglass to J. J. Spellman, 11 July 1867, reprinted in New York , 25 July 1867; Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 September 1867, FD Papers, NHi; Anna Downs to Douglass, 5 October 1869, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 497-99, FD Papers, DLC; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; Preston, , 175-77, 206. she goes by the name of [illegible] her father was sold about three years ago. Jim Mitchell wished to be remembered to you, also a Betsey Wells¹⁵Betsey Wells (c. 1823-?) was possibly a slave of Polly Harrison and could have known Douglass as a child. 1870 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 24. when you used to get milk at Miss Polly Harrisons,¹⁶Probably Mary Harrison (c. 1792-1877), more commonly known as “Miss Polly.” She was married to her distant cousin Joseph Harrison (b. 1780-1835) and lived at the Haphazard Plantation on Broad Creek in St. Michaels, Talbot County, Maryland. 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 11. also Lloyd Mitchell¹⁷Lloyd Mitchell (c. 1807-?) was of mixed descent and possibly the slave of Denny Marshall. In the 1870 census his occupation was listed as “catches oysters.” 1870 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 41. Denny Marshall’s Lloyd.¹⁸Denny Marshall (b. 1805-?) was listed as owning three slaves on the 1830 census and may have owned Lloyd Mitchell, as suggested by Lewis Douglass. 1830 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 37. A white woman by the name of Harriet Auld¹⁹Possibly misidentified by Lewis. This woman could be one of several female Aulds living in St. Michaels at the time of Lewis’s visit who were old enough to have known Douglass in the 1830s. Ann Harper Auld (c. 1806-?), who married Thomas Auld in 1865, lived in St. Michaels in the 1830s and could have known Douglass. Another possibility is Sarah E. Battee Auld (c. 1813-?), who was married to a different Thomas Auld. Her father, John W. Battee, lived in Talbot County in the 1830s, and so it is possible that she knew Douglass. Other possibilities are Mrs. Sarah Auld (c. 1816-?), married to James Auld in the 1860s, or Rebecca Auld (c. 1795-?), who was living in St. Michaels at the time of Lewis’s visit. 1830 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 31; 1850 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 96A; 1860 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 78, 185, 219, 234; 1880 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 497C. called to see me, she said she used to know you. A white man named Ned Hamilton²⁰Probably Ned Hambelton, not Ned Hamilton, a white constable who was among the white men who arrested Douglass and Charles Roberts, Henry Bailey, and John Harris for attempting to run away. The constables marched the men to St. Michaels to allow Captain Thomas Auld to determine their fate. After an interrogation by Auld, the constables marched the would-be fugitives twelve more miles to the county seat of Easton to be put in jail. , ser. 2, 3:125-37; Preston, , 136-38. told cousin John yesterday that he was the last man that took you to jail. I kept pretty quite while in St. Michaels because I know it to be one of the worst places in the South. A colored was mobbed there about two weeks ago²¹The Easton (Md.) Gazette of 20 May 1865 reports that the circuit court for Talbot County fined Alex W. P. Robinson, William Willis, and B. F. Newman $10 each for assault and battery on Harrison Hopkins. Census records reveal two men named Harrison Hopkins living in Talbot County: a black man born c. 1824, and a mulatto born c. 1847. It is possible that this is the mobbing to which Lewis refers. Easton (Md.) , 20 May, 1865; 1870 U.S. Census, Talbot County, Maryland, 34, 94. for advising the colored people to do business for themselves those who were not able to work to open stores and the rest should trade with them, the white shopkeepers took offense at that and broke up his meeting. The white people will do any thing they can to keep the blacks from advancing. There seems to be a combination among the white people to keep the blacks from buying land.²²Following emancipation, many former slaves were left disoriented and confused by the transition from slavery to freedom. Southern whites intent on maintaining their dominance sought to control the land and labor market. Laws were enacted that made it difficult for blacks to buy land or obtain honest work. Many were left with no option except to work on their old masters’ plantations for menial wages. Most of those freed had little or no money, and white landowners charged high interest when lending money to blacks to rent parcels of land. These systems of land and labor control kept many former slaves in extreme poverty and indentured servitude. According to one study, in eight Maryland counties in 1880 (Anne Arundel, Charles, Dorchester, Montgomery, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s, and St. Mary’s), only about 2 percent of free blacks owned land, and the rest depended on tenant farming. Michael W. Fitzgerald, (Chicago, 2007), 30-35; Fields, , 175-76. Large tracts of woods that the white will neither use nor sell to the blacks is idle, and wasting. There are a great many colored people who would buy land if the whites would sell The whites think to control the labor by <not> selling land to the black. The highest price paid a farm hand now is fifteen dollars a month. A large number of colored men make from eighteen to twenty dollars a month oystering.²³Oyster fishing was a popular occupation among blacks on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Men would move through the shallows in a boat and use tongs, resembling two long-handled garden rakes hinged together, to skim the oyster beds. They would shuck the oysters in the boat, returning the shells to the oyster bed. Besides requiring strength, the difficult job involved long hours and exposure to bitterly cold winds. By the 1870s, laws had been passed that required oyster fishers to obtain a license, which made it more difficult for people to oyster without paying hefty fees and taxes. Lewis’s claim that black men could earn $18-$20 a month would have been a substantial wage for blacks at that time. Fields, , 183-85; Preston, , 107, 164-65. They have surplus mony and can’t use it to any advantage around here; and they do not want to move away. My school owing to some repairs in the church will not open until Monday the 12^th inst.²⁴Public discussions concerning the education of local blacks were well underway in Talbot County by mid-1865. One letter to the editor of the Easton Gazette, dated 10 June 1865 and signed “J.V.,” discussed the importance of making blacks literate: “now that the negro is free, our next duty will be to educate him.” No specific details about Lewis’s attempts to open a school in St. Michaels can be found, but it appears that he was working with the “Northern” Methodist Episcopal Church in the nearby town of Royal Oak around this time. Easton , 10 June 1865; L. M. Hagood, (1890; Westport, Conn., 1970), 116, 118, 142. I will have about thirty scholars to commence with. Whether they are paying scholars or not is yet to bee seen. Once in awhile I would like to see