ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Rochester[, N.Y.] 21 Feb[ruar]y [18]65.

MY DEAR FATHER

Yours dated Feb. 18th Phila.¹Douglass lectured in Philadelphia on 16 February 1865 and on the next night in nearby Wilmington, Delaware. On 21 February, he spoke in Baltimore. No letter from him to his daughter from this period has survived. , ser. 1, 4:xx. reached me last night it found us all well and Lewis²Lewis H. Douglass. at home, he still has his sick times though not as violent as in the early part of winter. I have heard from Nathan³Nathan Sprague. he is at Hilton Head, he writes that after having been placed in the regiment he was changed to the 21st South Carolina regiment⁴The Twenty-first Regiment of South Carolina Colored Infantry was organized in March 1864 by consolidating the Third, Fourth, and Fifth South Carolina U.S. Colored Regiments, which were understaffed. It was attached to the Third Brigade of Vogdes’ Division, District of Florida, Department of the South, in April 1864. In October the regiment was deployed to Morris Island, South Carolina. From February through August 1865, the Twenty-first served as part of the garrison of Charleston, South Carolina. After being moved from Charleston, the regiment was stationed at a number of posts across South Carolina and Georgia until being mustered out in October 1866. Walter B. Edgar, (Columbia, S.C., 1998), 373-74; Dyer, , 1:1727; Westwood, , 138. but on refusing to do duty in that regiment he was sent back to the 54th and now they tell him they (they meaning the officers) will send him to the 55th⁵ The Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. doing duty at Savannah and Nathan says he will go there willingly I am waiting anxiously to hear from him and to know really where he is. Fred. has also sent two more letters to you⁶These two letters from Frederick Douglass, Jr., to his father have not survived. he says he is well and doing well, having just at the moment comparatively nothing to do but his pay is; running on. There are no more letters of importance arrived Since I wrote to you last.

We live very quietly no one coming and with the exception of my going to the office for the mail no one going any where. I have been so housed all winter I am glad of the chance to go to the office and Hannah says it makes her ache to walk so much so that I go with pleasure, mother takes charge of little Annie.⁷Annie Rosine Sprague (1864-93) was the eldest of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s six children and the first grandchild of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Born in November 1864 in Rochester, New York, eleven months after her parents’ marriage, she was named after the Douglass’s youngest child, Annie, who died in 1859. Annie Sprague spent most of her childhood living in her maternal grandparents’ homes in Rochester and Washington, D.C. After Anna Murray Douglass’s death in 1882, Annie Sprague assisted her aunt, Louisa Sprague, in managing her grandfather’s home at Cedar Hill. On 6 April 1893 in Washington, D.C., she married her grandfather’s former secretary, Charles Satchell Morris (1865-1931). After her marriage, she joined her husband in Ann Arbor, where he was a law student at the University of Michigan, but in November, Annie, who was pregnant, fell ill and died. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 143; Herbert Shapiro, (Amherst, Mass., 1988), 483; Genna Rae McNeil et al., (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2013), 61-68; McFeely, , 222, 248, 312-13, 372-73; District of Columbia Marriages, 1830-1921 (online). She grows more and more playful each day she lives. Mother⁸Anna Murray Douglass. sends love also Lewis and baby would send hers if she could speak. I am happy to know that you had such a pleasant time in Phila.⁹For most of the latter half of February 1865, Douglass’s itinerary was filled with speaking engagements. On 16 February he spoke at Concert Hall in Philadelphia at a meeting of the Social, Civil and Statistical Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania. The following day he spoke in Wilmington, Delaware, and on the 22nd he was in Baltimore, Maryland. Apparently, his son Charles (who had been discharged from the army in 1864) accompanied him on this speaking tour. , ser. 1, 4:xx; , 2:407. Give my love to Charley¹⁰Charles R. Douglass. I intend writing him Soon.

Affectionately Your Daughter

ROSA D SPRAGUE.

[P.S.] Please give my love to Mrs Gordon and Mary,¹¹Probably Sarah Gordon (c. 1813-98) and Mary A. Jones (c. 1838-?). The wife of Henry Gordon, a wealthy and successful mixed-race Philadelphia caterer, and a schoolteacher in her own right, Sarah Gordon ran a private school that attracted students from Philadelphia’s elite black families. Mary A. Jones, who may have been related to Mrs. Gordon, resided (along with her husband, John W. Jones) with the Gordon family for many years and served as their housekeeper. 1860 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 88; 1870 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 156-57; 1880 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 421; (online); Monroe N. Work, ed., (Tuskegee, Ala., 1922), 247; Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, eds., , 2 vols. (New York, 2000), 1:65. if you see them.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 92-93, FD Papers, DLC.