Philedelphia April 4th/62

My Dear Father

To night your letter has reached me You cannot imagine how grateful I was to receive it--for I need something to cheer me for I am gloomy. I thank you so very much for reminding me I have a home and parents to come to I did not know I could be so unhappy and friends so false or at least unkind but six weeks have shown me. To night for the first time in my life have I ever heard anything detrimental to my character and I ought not to be so surprised if I would consider the source and know I am amidst slanderers. Since I have been here I have felt more or less constrained. M^rs Dorsey told me to night that I was a steet runner and used some pretty harsh language She said that my father had told her that she has to keep me from the boys, and said it to me before a room full of

folks and it sounded quite badly that you should send me here but that I must be kept from the boys as if that was my particular feeling and she was to watch me. Now the reason for her passion, twice since I have been I went out walking by myself so as to feel at home in the City and feel a little independent, and also because Mr. Dorsey who is quite genial told me he would like to see me go out and walk that I staid in the house too much that white ladies walked out but colored ones were too lazy to dress and go and talked much the same as you do. So yesterday afternoon I dressed myself and told M^rs. Dorsey I was going out for a walk I went out and called on a Miss Gordon a young lady who had previously made me a call after stopping she ask to accompany in a walk and show me a part of the city. I accepted and we went and she came around by M^r. Dorsey's and left me at the door before tea time. Mr. Dorsey appeared to be much pleased

M^rs. Dorsey was out. About noon to day I went out to mail a letter of course I did not think it necessary to tell M^rs. Dorsey I was going out though I might have done it if I had thought. I mailed my letter and found my way to M^rs. William Dorsey's she was glad to see me and as I had been there but once since my arrival she had wondered why I had not been and prevailed upon me to stay to dinner I did so and got back before tea and now M^rs. Dorsey calls me a street runner I asked what she meant by that term and she said I know devilish well or something to that amount for words of that kind escape her lips often. One would think she would be glad to have me enjoy myself and in connection with street running she told me what you should have said about keeping me from boys which sounded significant and wounded me I never had any one speak to me in that manner before and even Sarah

and Mary. I would not have minded it so much if she had not spoken before strangers in that manner who would take it and even M^rs. Seville. My opinions of her are none of the best if observation is any thing. I am surprised and grieved with those around me M^r Dorsey I like very much. M^rs. Dorsey is tyrannical Sarah is the same. You and Mother are satisfied of my capability to take care of myself I see no reason why others should doubt it, and I had no idea of being a hermit. If I should leave the city I would leave it with such little knowledge of either the city or its people. It is to be supposed I would wish to see all that is to be seen or my visit is nothing. There are plenty of young ladies who are ready and willing to take me about but M^rs. Dorsey will not allow it and would treat them in such a way they dare not approach. Martha [Zachearst?] wishes me to go with her to school and one

evening to go to M^rs. Minton's if I go I go at the risk of another out burst of temper from both M^rs. Dorsey and [Serelle?] and that is something Mother and yourself never did if you were satisfied that those with whom I went were respectable. M^rs. Minton was quite disappointed that I did not come she wished to show me some respect on your account—and M^rs. Dorsey thinks if she wishes me she ought to make a party for me, as if that was necessary. Miss Ada Hinton is coming tomorrow to ask me to go walking with her. I do not know how M^rs. Dorsey will receive her but I am fearful of an explosion. But two gentlemen have called and they have called twice M^r Minton the young man and M^r Catts a teacher in the school both times they came and asked for me the family did not like it and they are respectable too. I anticipated so much pleasure in an innocent way and nothing but unhappiness

has followed and M^rs. Dorsey has intimated she did not wish me to write to you how Sarah insults me and yet threatens to write to you about me when she knows if she did she would be obliged to fabricate something. For as to my running the streets that is all nonsense for every time I have been out—it has been with her excepting the couple of times I have already mentioned. All the time I am here I feel in bondage for I must not even go out which is necessary to get or at least to try and negotiate for a school. M^rs. Dorsey does not wish me to go out unless I tell her when I am going and where I am going. I am willing to tell her when but I wish people to think me capable of going just where is right. That's more than mother and yourself have required of me to always tell when I am going. After this I never expect to visit any colored family who make such great pretensions. I cannot tell all that experience

I have had in my six weeks sojourn here I try never to complain unless there is some cause. I have ample cause here. Yesterday I had a most pleasant little visit from Esther Peirson who had found out where I was and came to see me I enjoyed it so much. I would like to come home but feel ashamed because I did so very much wish to get a school and pay my board and I then could feel independent, but a school here I cannot get. I am going to see M^r. Milner but if I am to come home soon I will go before I come. I do stay in the house very much and my health is not so good for it—I acted upon M^r. Dorseys advice and to night I have been obliged to listed to M^rs. Dorseys temper. M^rs. Dorsey said if I came here to do as I did when I was home to go home. I told her I had never been considered a street runner at home but when I felt like walking out it was my privilege that

I did not think you meant me to stay in entirely, then she replied as I have mentioned. Such things wound me for I do not desire to quarrel with any one and I try and have always tried to govern my temper but I do not wished to be tyrannised over, D^r. Rock speaks here next week again. I hope all enjoyed the surprise party on Thursday night.

I was so glad your letter came to night. Please give my love to my mother and the boys

Much love to yourself

Yours affectionately

Rosetta DouglassSprague, 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.

Father please write soon. Are there to be meetings in New York in May if so are you going? I might wait until then, if best.

Your affectionate Daughter

R. D