ROSETTA DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK AND ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS

Salem[, N.J.] 31 August [18]62[.]

MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHERDouglass, Anna Murray

Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813-82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape, and she joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September 1838. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845-47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. She gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C., and died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington (D.C.) Post, 5 August 1882; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Delivered before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552-53 (6 April 1895); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132-37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,’ Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39-42 (Spring 1995); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32:306-10 (October 1975).

I postponed writing to you until now that I might send you some pleasing news. I passed an examination last Wednesday in Arithmetic, Geography. Grammar Reading [illegible] and spelling and have obtained the Situation at the Salem School and to morrow I begin my labors.¹Rosetta Douglass studied arithmetic, geography, and grammar at the Salem Normal School in 1862. Her successful completion of the final examination qualified her to teach in the Salem schools. She taught both day and evening classes until she returned to Rochester in 1863. McFeely, , 220–23. I have had many little trials to contend with while waiting for this situation and when I see you I can talk them all over with you. I am thinking strongly of moving to

a more convenient boarding place and should do so pretty soon if I could. You have been so good and kind in sending me money and you have never inquired how I was spending it. I will now tell you how I spent it.

I bought a few necessary articles for my self and the remainder I spent for creature comforts. I found Uncle²Although “Uncle Perry” is identified as Anna Murray Douglass’s brother, he does not appear to have used the surname Murray. Instead he can probably be identified as Perry Wilmer (c. 1815–?), an African American native of Maryland, who was recorded in both the 1860 and 1870 Salem, New Jersey, Census. By 1862, the Wilmer household would have consisted of Perry, a mason whose home was valued at $2,200 in the 1860 census; his wife, Elizabeth; and three young children, Gertrude, Hetty, and Perry. 1860 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 44; 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 82. in rather a cramped place when I came to see him and after hearing that I might possibly obtain this school I remained and so as not to entirely be a burden on him I taught at School in Claysville³Rosetta Douglass taught in Claysville for eight weeks before her successful completion of the final exam at the Salem Normal School. McFeely, , 221. partly for that reason and partly for the children sake. That School afforded me but little and that little except what amount it took to do my washing went in the family. Uncle never requested any thing from me but I did it for my own sake for the whole eight weeks I taught that school I never had any dinner but would wait from morning until night so that I was sometimes very faint. I am glad I did so now though at the time it was sometimes hard. Aunt Lizzy⁴Probably Perry Wilmer’s wife, Elizabeth Wilmer (c. 1820–?), who was described in the census as being a native of Salem, New Jersey. 1860 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 44. came home the other day and told methat some Quaker lady had said it was a pity I was here on Perry as he was struggling to pay for his house, but I am glad to say as they will that I have been of some help instead of hindrance. I have deprived myself of many little things that the money you sent me would have afforded me but I lived in hopes of getting this school and then I could get what I wished and repay you for your kindness for if it had not been for your aid I could not have felt so well while waiting for this school. I am quite glad since so much gossip has been about me.⁵Although it is impossible to determine the specific gossip to which Rosetta refers, it probably stemmed from problems that arose while she was staying with the Dorsey family in Philadelphia. In April 1862, Rosetta complained bitterly to her father that Mrs. Dorsey had publicly humiliated her by stating, in front of a room full of guests, that she had been specifically instructed by Douglass to keep his daughter “away from boys,” thus, in Rosetta’s opinion, creating the impression amongst Philadelphia’s African American community that Frederick Douglass had reason for concern over his daughter’s reputation because “that was her particular failing.” Consequently Mrs. Dorsey felt justified in berating her in public—the mildest rebuke being that she had acted no better than a “street runner”—for leaving the house on more than one occasion without first informing her hostess where she was going or whom she was meeting. Rosetta Douglass to FD, 4 April 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 713–17, FD Papers, DLC; Sterling, , 138–39. Every thing that is vile has been said of me by persons living here and strangers coming here pretending to have known me. One man whose name I cannot get a minister he has told it that Fred. Douglass himself was a very nice man but this daughter of his is one who has become low while others believe me to be still an imposter passing for your daughter as a means of getting along, but despite these rumors and various others I have this school. I think of leaving Uncle not because he is unkind nor Aunt either except that Aunt Lizzie is rather a passionate person and I have received harsh language from her that my own mother never gives me now still in many things she is kind, but I wish to leave for my own comfort. There are three small children here and she does her own work and I cannot receive just that board I should wish. All those who leave their home will certainly learn by experience that home is the best place after all and even if it were necessary for a person to leave home it adds something to one’s happiness to that there is a home to go to. I have done many things I never have done at home or scarcely ever do and I have had to be very courageous not to write for money to come home but I hope I shall earn money to come home with myself. I heard

from Laura Wheeler⁶Probably Laura Wheeler Moody (1843–1921), the daughter of George D. and Cordelia Whipple Wheeler of Lockport, New York. In 1863 she married George H. Moody, who operated a very successful nursery business for many years on a farm located near Lockport. He also served as a trustee of the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Lockport and was active in several state and national horticultural organizations. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 312; (Chicago, 1889), 736–38; William Richard Cutter, , 3 vols. (New York, 1912), 2:735. in Lockport⁷Settled in 1821 and incorporated in 1865, Lockport, located in Niagara County, New York, was built on the old Erie Canal around a series of locks. The area surrounding the city was know for its fruit and dairy production in the early nineteenth century, and Lockport itself was known as a significant manufacturing center. Cohen, , 2:1765. the other day and I received a long letter from Miss [Amé-Droz]⁸A Swiss national, Rosine Amé-Droz (c. 1816–?) first arrived in England on 11 July 1838, listing her profession as teacher. In 1841 she was teaching and living in the parish of Egg Buckland, Devonshire. After spending an undetermined length of time back in Switzerland, she returned to England in July 1848, this time listing her profession as governess. According to the 1861 English Census (where she was recorded as “Rosine Ann Davy,” a native of Neufchatel, Switzerland), she was staying in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Read of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire. By 1871 she was serving as governess to the children of George S. Kemp, a wealthy Lancashire manufacturer. 1841 England Census, Devonshire, Egg Buckland, 11; 1861 England Census, Yorkshire, Ecclesfield, 56; 1871 England Census, Lancashire, Castleton, 1; (online). last Saturday week. She tells me she wrote to me a letter to Philadelphia and sent me a necktie in it I have seen nothing of it I cannot believe but that it is there I left my shawl at the Dorsey’s⁹ Thomas Joshua Dorsey (1810–75), one of the leading caterers in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, was born a slave in Liberty, Maryland. In 1856, William Still, an agent for Philadelphia’s Underground Railroad, helped Dorsey escape there. Abolitionist friends later raised $1,000 to purchase the fugitive’s freedom. Following his emancipation, he married a free woman by the name of Louise Tobias (?–1879) and established a popular dining establishment on Locust Street, which served many prominent individuals in the antislavery movement, such as Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, and Douglass. Douglass remained good friends with the Dorseys throughout their lives; in fact, Mrs. Dorsey accompanied Douglass to Lincoln’s second inauguration, in 1865. Philadelphia , 17 October 1896; Roger Lane, (New York, 1991), 2, 301; John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, (Westport, Conn., 1994), 226; Randall K. Burkett, Nancy Hall Burkett, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., , 3 vols. (Alexandria, Va., 1991), 1:364; Dubois, >, 34; , 20:775–76. and have sent for it several times but have not yet received it perhaps my letter and shawl will come together I expect soon to write for it. After this letter I will be destitute of money even so much as to mail my letters. I was examined by a Southern minister whose son last week was sent last week, to Fort Delaware for giving information to the enemy and his father we have every reason to believe is a secessionist. After examining me he asked me very politely to attend his church saying when he preached South his galleries used to be filled with my color and he use to take much pleasure &c &c, I thanked him but did not say really what I wished as I thought of this school. Now I have the school and he being Superintendent he will ask me again, I can now answer him. That is one thing that I am much questioned about my religious views. I am never seen going to church and I never talk of the Bible and I am a sort of mystery. In the colored church here is a Sabbath School where the children are taught to read the Bible I was asked several times to take the Bible class and at last I consented and now every Sunday at two o’clock I go to hear these large girls read and answer questions from their question books.

I have not been bothered about church much since J have been here. In Philadelphia¹⁰In her correspondence, Rosetta Douglass indicates that by early April she had been in Philadelphia for six weeks. By the end of August 1862, she had been living in Salem, New Jersey, long enough to have spent eight weeks teaching in Claysville, a predominantly black community that bordered Salem. Accordingly, she must have arrived in Philadelphia by late February 1862 and relocated to Salem no later than early June. Thomas Cushing and Charles E. Sheppard, (Philadelphia, 1883), 440; Sterling, , 138. I was worried with questions but I answered in such a manner as not to leave much doubt as to how I felt. If from reading and observation at home I became acquainted with enough to disgust me I have seen more since leaving home to make me believe that most of this religion is a cloak for sin. In Philadelphia one thing I disliked much was the feeling of caste that prevails there even in the family I was in.¹¹Thomas and Louise Dorsey had three children: William Henry, Sarah, and Mary Louise. Sarah Ann Dorsey Seville (c. 1839–1871), born in Philadelphia, married John Seville in 1858. The marriage produced two sons, Dorsey and John C. Seville, who were taken in by their maternal grand- parents following their mother’s death. 1850 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 147; 1870 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 52; Lane, , 2, 60, 113, 301–03. For Sarah herself told me in the presence of her mother, she did not like too dark a face to come in their house to make much of a stay there. I have been launched among strange people during the past six months. I received the Monthly with your letter.¹² That letter has not been located. Mrs Reckless¹³(Amy) Hester Reckless (1793–1881) was born into slavery in Salem, New Jersey. She escaped slavery with her child and fled to Philadelphia in 1826. Reckless joined the Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society and worked with Lucretia Coffin Mott to organize that society’s projects with local free blacks. She cherished a photo of the organization’s members and a flag with inscriptions containing antislavery sentiments. A courageous woman, Hester assisted many runaway slaves in their escape to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad and ran a safe house in Philadelphia on Rodman Street. Reckless resided in Philadelphia until after the Civil War, when she returned to her hometown of Salem. Robert Clemens Smedley, (1883; New York, 1968), 348. is the only person here that sympathises with my movements and is much grieved at the gossip, though she says it is more from envy than any thing else. I lend her my monthly every time it comes. I will probably stay here until you come but if I board I must have as many conveniences as I can get for my board. Uncle and Aunt hardly wishes me to leave them but after being in a noisy school all day one like quiet at night and the children are rather unruly. My love to Mother I hope to send Mother. and yourself something in a little while, My love to Miss

AssingAssing, Ottilie

Ottilie Assing (1819-84) was born to Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline Assing, a Christian, and Assur David Assing, a Jew, in Hamburg, Germany. Assing received an accelerated education from her mother and was generally described as bright and vivacious. After the death of her mother in 1840 and father in 1842, Ottilie and younger sister Ludmilla spent time with relatives, but she grew depressed and attempted suicide in 1843. After returning to Hamburg, Assing began writing reviews of local culture. In 1851 she became a correspondent for the German periodical Morganblatt fur gehildete Leser. Assing first met Frederick Douglass when she came to America in 1855, supposedly inspired to make his acquaintance after reading My Bondage and My Freedom. She arrived in Rochester and interviewed him for an article that subsequently appeared in Morganblatt. Thereafter Assing published numerous articles about Douglass for her German readership, and also translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, contributing an introduction. The two began an intimate friendship in 1856 that lasted twenty-eight years. During that time Douglass and Assing corresponded regularly. When in the United States, Assing was a regular visitor at the Douglass home in Rochester. She was friendly with his children, although his wife, Anna Murray, did not approve of her husband's relationship. Douglass and Assing often appeared in public together, but no contemporary public speculation questioned the propriety of their relationship. Following Anna Murray Douglass's death in 1882, Assing hoped that she might become Mrs. Frederick Douglass. However, in January 1884, while Assing was in Europe, Douglass married his secretary, Helen Pitts. Becoming increasingly more ill, possibly with cancer, and despondent from Douglass's rejection, Assing committed suicide in a Paris park on 21 August 1884. She left her entire estate to Douglass. Christoph Lohmann, ed., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing's Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 69, 329-62; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 23, 38, 56, 184, 368, 371. ¹⁴ Ottilie Assing. and LewisDouglass, Lewis Henry

Lewis Henry Douglass (1840-1908), the second child and eldest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Educated in the schools of Rochester, New York, he learned the printer's trade as a boy working in the North Star office. In 1863 he enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, serving as the regiment's sergeant major and seeing action at the Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July I863. Disabled, he was discharged in 1864. He was a member, along with his father, of the black delegation that interviewed President Andrew Johnson on 7 February 1866. Later that year, after failing to obtain employment as a printer in Rochester because of racial discrimination, he moved to Colorado. There he briefly worked for the Denver Daily Gazette until refused membership in the local printers' union because he was “a colored man." In 1869 he took employment as a compositor at the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. When he attempted to join the Columbia Typographical Union, No. 100, a controlling minority of the membership blocked his election at their May 1869 meeting. For the record, the opposition was based not on his color but on reports that Douglass had “ratted” (worked as a nonunion printer for below-scale wages) in Denver. Dougla,s. who remained at the Printing Office throughout his widely publicized effort to break the union's color barrier, denied the allegation but to no avail. The factionalized union continued to table his application along with those of other black printers (including Frederick Douglass, Jr.) as late as 1871. By then Lewis and Frederick, Jr., had become publishers of the Washington New [National] Era, of which their father was the editor. In 1872-73 Lewis Douglass served on the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia. By the 1890s he was a successful realtor in his adopted city. On 7 October 1869 he married Helen Amelia Loguen, daughter of Reverend Jermain W. Loguen. Lewis H. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 29 October 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 220-22, FD Papers, DLC; Lewis H. Douglass to D. W. Flynn, 24 May 1869, in San Francisco Elevator, 11 June 1869; NASS, 22 May 1869; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 6 August 1869; William H. Boyd, comp., Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia, . . . 1873 (Washington, D.C. 1873), 525; Boyd's Directory, 1893, 371; James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass, the Orator (1893; New York, 1971), 102-03; Foner and Lewis, Black Worker, 1: 370, 374-83. ¹⁵Lewis H. Douglass. and FrederickDouglass, Frederick Jr. (Douglass's son)

Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842-92), was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the second son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Throughout his adult life Frederick, Jr., struggled to achieve success within the same industries as his famous father. For years he tried unsuccessfully to obtain membership in the typographical union; he did, however, work with several newspapers, including the New National Era. He was also a frequent contributor to other newspapers, such as the Detroit Plaindealer, the New York Times, and Baltimore's National Leader, where he worked at the time of his death. He was the only of Douglass's sons not to enlist in the Union army. Henry O. Waggoner, a close friend of his father's, took Frederick, Jr., and his brother Lewis to Denver in 1866, to help them establish their careers. Ultimately their attempts failed, and the two returned east. During an outbreak of influenza in 1890, his wife, Virginia, died. His own son, Frederick Douglass III, as well as several other of the couple's children died at an early age. Frederick, Jr., succumbed to a prolonged and painful illness in July 1892. New York Times, 24 September 1876; Washington (D.C.) Bee, 30 July 1892; Detroit Plaindealer, 12 August 1892; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 97, 145, 248-49, 258, 272, 342, 365. ,¹⁶Frederick Douglass, Jr. What is CharlyDouglass, Charles Remond

Charles Remond Douglass (1844–1920), named after the abolitionist Charles Remond, was the youngest of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s sons. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and, like his brothers, was both educated in Rochester and trained by his father in the newspaper office. Like Lewis H. Douglass, Charles enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, but mainly served with the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, where he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. After the war, Charles settled in Washington, D.C., and found employment first as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau (1867–69) and later in the Treasury Department (1869–75). After his father purchased the in 1870, Charles acted as a correspondent for the newspaper. In 1871 he served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission, and President Ulysses S. Grant later appointed him consul to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo. From 1875 to 1879 he was a clerk in the U.S. consulate in Santo Domingo. Returning to the United States in 1879, he entered the West Indies import-export business while living in Corona, New York. In 1882, Charles moved back to Washington, D.C., and took a job as an examiner in the Pension Bureau. He remained there until 1892, when he entered the real estate business. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 239, 257–58, 272; EAAH , 1: 407–08. ’s¹⁷Charles R. Douglass. address? Please write soon. Please tell MotherDouglass, Anna Murray

Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813-82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape, and she joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September 1838. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845-47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. She gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C., and died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington (D.C.) Post, 5 August 1882; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Delivered before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552-53 (6 April 1895); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132-37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,’ Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39-42 (Spring 1995); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32:306-10 (October 1975). Rachel MasonMason, Rachael

Possibly Rachael Mason (c. 1800–?), a free black living in the Eleventh Ward of Baltimore, where she was recorded as head of a household of ten in the 1850 Census. 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 132 ¹⁸Possibly Rachael Mason (c. 1800–?), a free black living in the Eleventh Ward of Baltimore, where she was recorded as head of a household of ten in the 1850 Census. 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 132. is here from Maryland she goes back Teus day I expect to see her tomorrow.

Your Affectionate Daughter

ROSETTA DSprague, Rosetta Douglass

Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52: 145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4: 30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32: 306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. —

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 727–31, FD Papers, DLC.