Bournemouth

Hampshire

April 5^th/ 65

My very dear Friend I enclose Rosetta's letters to you thinking it safer—I want so much to write to you but will wait a little that I may tell you when we send this for Hunts. Beloved Friend I am rejoicing in seeing the progress of Emancipation and I feel that your own heart is more than hopeful. The great day is drawing near, it was five years yesterday Since you left England—how sad were your prospects then! Thank God for what he has done for us—I know all that which goes on but I long to know what you my beloved friend are doing—And how you are. I look through the columns of the papers for your

dear honored name. but do not find it. I want to see it so much. I read that you had had great inundations at Rochester—and felt very anxious about you. I do trust you have not suffered from them—God preserve and save you from all harm!—I have been very busy working for the Emancipation and have sent all my work & collections to Mrs. Carpenter who is preparing some boxes for them—It is my dearest greatest joy to do something for your dear people. You are ever remembered, prayed for and loved. I hope Mr Coote's note has reached you—I do trust he will give something worth giving by & bye—These rich people feel it hard to part with their idol—money—Farewell my dear dear friend

For ever yours

Rosine A D

give a kiss for me to Sweet Baby please

Mr. Coote has promised to give me something for your work—I have just asked him to send it himself to you. I thought he would then send more than he would perhaps give me—Dear friend—if he does send something—will you write to him a few lines at least—as soon as you do receive it because he is a man of business and I suppose he will look for an answer soon.

Oh—I do trust he will send you something often I believe he is very much interested in you. He says you must come to stay here when you visit England—I want to send this off without delay. God bless you, my dear friend. God be with you.

[will] you give & kiss to darling sweet AnnieSprague, Annie Rosine

for me—God bless her and you all. With very kind remembrances to M^rs DouglassDouglass, 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 remain for ever yours most affectionately & faithfully

Rosine Amé-DrazAmé-Draz, Rosine

A Swiss national, Rosine Amé-Draz (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; “England, Alien Arrivals, 1810–1811, 1826–1869,” Ancestry.com.