Salem[, N.J.] 24 Sept[ember] 1862[.]

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).

ISprague, 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. anxiously awaited an answer to my last letter and last evening was
greeted with one,¹Douglass’s letter to his daughter has not survived. it found me in a new home. Father your conjectures were right—when you supposed my home with UncleWilmer, Perry

²A reference to Perry Wilmer. was growing unpleasant—My reason for not saying much of them [earlier] was because I could not speak of them as I had done and I did not wish to utter any more complaints—for two reasons, 1st because I told you much of my disappointment in Philadelphia, that I thought if I began to utter morefrom here you would begin to think me a great fault finder, and 2d I was anxious to obtain this situation since I was from home to make a beginning when if I should come home and I should want to get another place would have money to start out with without calling on you for I thought if I was not successful after having asked you to give me a little start you would not feel like risking again so that I was determined to make one desperate effort even if I did undergo a few hardships, though when I begin to enumerate these trials they will appear trifling to those you have undergone. I am now with a family of the name of Gibbs³Rosetta Douglass was probably boarding in Salem with the family of Joseph Gibbs (c. 1831-?), an African American born in Maryland, who worked as a steward. In 1860, Gibbs’s household included not only his wife, Sarah (c. 1834-?), and their infant, but also Anna M. Brown (ca. 1810) and her daughter Tacy (c. 1848-?). 1860 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 64-65. friends of Mrs Reckless!⁴Amy Hester Reckless. During my stay in Uncle’s family they never exacted board from me not from the time I went there until I left when I had money the most of it went in the family. [I]f I had not done so I should many times have gone supperless to bed as Uncle is busy paying for his house and his family were obliged to just live on as little as possible. When I went there I found they had but one towel and every body used it I could not get use to that, I bought three towels. I found that while I was going to bed the rest remained in the dark and as I usually take my time when I am in my room I was often hurried so that I bought myself Candles which the family used also: and so I went on getting little things when I had money only saving enough for myself to buy my paper and ink and postage stamps and thread, this I considered with what saving I could do would go towards my board. [S]ee the money that I made in my little school last summer amounted to nearly ten dollars. [A]ll went in the family except what I spent for my paper and stamps, so that I feel I have been more a help than a hindrance to them with the $10— you sent, and they tell I have done more for them than Uncle’s own daughters, that is the reason I did not say anything about that, viz. the board money. But towards the end my reasons for becoming disconsolate are these, Uncle’s wife was repeatedly

asking me questions about my former habits. [S]he had heard I was not altogether what I should be, I was driven from my home on account of my growing intimacy with men,⁵Stories about Rosetta, especially regarding her supposed “growing intimacy with men,” and the possibility that such behavior was the real motivation behind Rosetta’s leaving her parents’ home in Rochester, were more than likely sparked by rumors that began circulating following Louise Tobias Dorsey’s public outburst on that subject months earlier in Philadelphia. The resulting gossip probably contributed to Rosetta’s decision to seek employment in Salem, New Jersey. The move apparently failed to silence the rumors, and the stories continued to spread. Rosetta Douglass to FD, 4 April 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 713-17, FD Papers, DLC; Sterling, , 138-39. and again on account of my quarrelsome disposition towards my mother that there was some minister had come from Rochester who was acquainted knew of you having been obliged to send me away, and some Lucy Oliver⁶Although Rosetta identified the source of those rumors about her that originated in New Bedford as coming from “some Lucy Oliver,’ efforts to discover anyone by that name living in either New Bedford or Bristol County, Massachusetts, at the time in question bear questionable results. Given Rosetta’s apparent unfamiliarity with “Lucy Oliver,’ it is possible that she might have confused the name. There were two women named Oliver living in New Bedford in 1862. Born in Massachusetts, Lucy A. Oliver (c. 1822-81) was the wife of Aberdeen Oliver, an English-born stevedre and the mother of six. A dressmaker, Sarah A. Oliver (c. 1837-?) and her husband, Richard W. Oliver, a barber, were both black natives of Virginia. (New Bedford, Mass., 1859), 135; 1860 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 71, 144 ; 1865 Massachusetts State Census, Bristol County, New Bedford, 65.from New Bedford had said I was in New Bedford living at our Martha Fletchers'⁷An African American native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Martha Bailey Fletcher (c. 1811-75) was a confectioner by trade. The daughter of Abram and Rebecca Bailey, she married David S. Fletcher, a founding member of the antislavery New Bedford Union Society, in 1839. A widow by 1841, Martha Bailey Fletcher opened her home at 19 North Street to noarders, one of whom is known to have been William Wells Brown's daugher Josephine. 1840 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 230; , 3 vols. (Boston, 1932), 2:38; Kathryn Grover, (Amherst, Mass., 2001), 122; Sterling, , 144-46. but had gone astray from there and my father had come and removed me, he had taken much pains with my education having taken me to England for that purpose. This part of the story I knew who was meant Wm Brown’s daughter⁸Known as Josephine Brown, Elizabeth Josephine Brown (1839-74) was the youngest daughter of William Wells Brown and his first wife, Elizabeth Schooner. Josephine was born in Buffalo, New York, but after her parents separated in 1847, she and her older sister Clarissa were taken by their father to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they were enrolled in public school and placed in the home of a local black family. By 1850, Josephine was living with Martha Bailey Fletcher. The following year, William Wells Brown arranged to have his daughters join him, briefly, in England before placing them in a boarding school in Calais, France. In 1853 both sisters passed the Home Colonial School examination and were admitted to the Preceptor’s College in London, where they trained to become schoolteachers. A year later, Josephine (then only age fifteen) was mistress of the East Plumstead School in Woolwich, England, where she was in charge of over one hundred pupils. In 1855, she left her teaching position and returned to the United States (she was escorted on the trip by Horace Greeley), where she joined her father, who had moved to Boston. In the months that followed, Josephine Brown accompanied her father on the lecture circuit, and that December she published Biography of an American Bondsman, a biography of her father that she had begun writing while a student in Calais. In 1856, after a brief lecture tour of her own, Josephine Brown is thought to have returned to England, but at the time of her death, she was staying in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where her father and step-mother lived), and was known as Mrs. E. Josephine Brown Campbell. 1850 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 230; William L. Andrews, (New York, 1991), xxxiv-xxxv; Sterling, , 144-47; (online). I supposed the girl meant. I was questioned had I been in New Bedford, did I know the Fletcher’s, I told them yes New Bedford was by birth place but I left when but little more than a baby. I knew of Mrs Fletcher that she was a lady of respectability living there but I was too small to have any recollection of her, That was enough I had been in New Bedford [illegible] of Mrs Fletcher the fact is not beleived that I left a mere child and the story goes, I wanted the school and I became a little frightened about these stories but did not heed them much as those circulating them I cared little for until some of the QuakersQuakers

The Religious Society of Friends was founded by George Fox in Great Britain during the mid-seventeenth century. Fox emphasized the immediacy of Christ's teachings and therefore found ordained ministers, a set liturgy, or consecrated buildings to be irrelevant. Central to the sect's teachings is the "Inner Light,'' an innate sense of the divine and direct working of Christ in the human soul that results in the moral attributes of simplicity, purity, and truthfulness, as its central doctrine. During their early history Quakers faced persecution, mostly due to their refusal to take oaths, pay tithes, or enlist in military service. As a result, the colony of Pennsylvania in North America was founded in 1682 as a refuge for Quakers. In 1743 the Society of Friends became the first religious denomination to condemn slavery as morally evil and to require its members to free their slaves. The Quakers were strong adherents of gradual emancipation, and they dominated the ranks of Revolutionary-era abolition societies that persuaded the northern states to end slavery. Three basic Quaker tenets led to support for abolition. First, the belief that all people are equal in the sight of God led to concerns that through forced slavery, masters were denying their slaves the chance to reach God. Second, Quakers held to a tradition of nonviolence and pacifism that did not agree with the constant threat of violence and force that kept people in bondage. Finally, Quaker abhorrence of ostentation or sloth in their daily lives led to dismissal of slavery on grounds that slaves were used as symbols of conspicuous consumption. Although the public controversy stirred up by abolitionism caused many Quakers to turn away from participation in the post-1831 antislavery movement, such prominent abolitionists as Benjamin Lundy and Angelina and Sarah Grimke were members of the Quaker sect. Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 17-18; F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London, 1974), 538-39; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 22, 28, 37; Miller and Smith, Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery, 303, 607-13. getting hold of some little came and questioned me, where was thee born? [W]as thy father married to Perry’s sisterDouglass, 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). ⁹Presumably Anna Murray Douglass. before he left Slavery? [A]nd many more inquisitive questions. One day a lady and daughter called and talked about many things questioning mostly about my school in Claysville as those in that district were very low indeed the daughter said I wonder at thee going there to teach them. I told her I did not feel the least ashamed of the task admitting that they were of course much neglected and were quite low and degraded. She curled her lip she said I would not care to go to school with such children and would not be engaged in teaching there[.] She could not do it she was sure. I was, quite indignant then and I tried to show as well as I could that much of degradation was owing to The white’s, much was said on both sides. A week or so afterwards Uncle who having heard the conversation repeated by some one came home and told me he had not liked it. I asked why, but he could say no more he did not think it was proper to say such things to persons who were our friends and a number of things he said were not worth while to mention for I know he did not understand me or the Quakers whose name are Gibbons.¹⁰Probably members of the family of Anna Denn Gibbons (1811-92). Following the death of her husband, William Gibbons, Anna returned to Salem in the 1840s. The Denn and Gibbons families were Quakers, and Anna Gibbons’s mother had at one time been recognized as a minister in the Society of Friends by the Salem meeting. By 1862, Anna Denn Gibbons’s household would have included her daughter Susan Gibbons as well as her sisters Susan Denn and Mrs. Rachel Denn Griscom. 1850 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 132; 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Salem County, 176; Thomas Shourds, (Bridgeton, N.J., 1876), 236; , 2 vols. (New York, 1900), 2:27. I told him I should certainly say what I thought when people speak so Carelessly of Slavery. Well he says you cannot speak here I saw he was cross and said many things concerning these stories about me that I need not mention here, but I certainly did not wish to hear them and as soon as I could conveniently proceeded to go to my room, when

his wifeWilmer, Elizabeth

!¹¹Elizabeth Wilmer. jumped up and dodged me first one way and then another to prevent my going up stairs, I seated myself and waited patiently her [illegible] and seized another opportunity and started up when she followed accusing me of closing my door in her face and shook her fist in my face saying what she should do if I did it again. I knew I closed the door but she had seated herself then and was dressing her baby and knowing just how she was to the door, I laughed and said you seem determined to have a little row with me Aunt Lizzy for I left you to escape and you have followed me here. I thought I had made a pretty mistake in the character of the household and if it were not that I was soon to be employed I would not have staid. I remained until now which is three weex Since The above happened she did not wish me to go off then although I spoke of doing so as she said Uncle had promised himself if I left he should report it that I was saucy and was quite unruly and as he went among those who had shown a friendly interest for me she [illegible] I had better leave quietly. I yeilded though I blamed her for many things that was said that day and for Uncle’s singular behavior for some time for I began to distrust her over fondness for me. During this time three weeks she after persisting on my staying was more exacting and overbearing than ever and last sunday coming in my bed room for something she on going down stairs left my door open after I heard the bottom door close I closed mine returned to my seat and scarcely seated before she was up and by me shaking her fist in my face accusing me of closing the door in her face again, lately it has been a great way with her to shake her fist in my face. I left her and went down stairs out of her way she followed I said nothing to her. I started up again she followed and prevented me I went out doors and staid and determined to find a place to board. I have done so, Monday she shook me as if I were a child and threatened to pitch me out doors and my washing after me I was washing preparing to leave, I washed took my things [illegible] [letter fragment ends here]

ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 736-40, FD Papers, DLC.