FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE

Washington[,] D.C. 30 June [1875].

MY DEAR DAUGHTER:

Your dear letter with one to mother each containing an excellent picture
of Estelle¹Estelle “Stella” Irene Sprague (1870–1927) was the fourth child and fourth daughter of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague. Although her death certificate mistakenly lists her birthplace as Maryland and year of birth as 1876, she was in fact born at her maternal grandparents’ home in Rochester, New York, in August 1870, and was living there when the house burned on 2 June 1872. Estelle spent much of 1875 living with her maternal grandparents (Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass) in Washington, D.C. In 1876, she, along with her mother and surviving siblings, took up permanent residence in the Douglass household while her father was jailed for mail fraud in New York. Even after her father’s release from jail, both Estelle and the rest of the Sprague children continued to live for long stretches of time at Cedar Hill, into the early 1890s. In 1891, she moved to Cappahosic, Virginia, and began teaching at the Gloucester Agricultural and Industrial Institute. In 1897 she married one of the cofounders of the Gloucester School, David D. Weaver, and, along with her husband, took up farming. Over the next fifteen years the couple had eight children. Following her husband’s death (at the time, the family was living in Newport, Virginia, where Weaver was employed as a shoemaker) in 1913, Estelle was forced to place her underage children with relatives and return to teaching. By 1920, she was living alone and teaching at Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. At the time of her death in 1927, however, she appears to have joined her sisters Fredericka, Rosabelle, and Harriet in Kansas City, Missouri. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 52; 1900 U.S. Census, Virginia, Gloucester County, 3B; 1910 U.S. Census, Virginia, Warwick County, 25B; 1920 U.S. Census, Texas, McLennan County, 14B; Death Certificates, Missouri Digital Heritage, Mo.gov; “District of Columbia, Marriage Records, 1810–1953,” Ancestry.com; “Virginia, Death Records, 1912–2014,” Ancestry. com; Fought, Women, 211, 216, 220, 225, 267–69, 271, 275, 310, 376n. has just come to hand. This, being almost daily in communion
with you, makes it unnecessary for me to be running backward and forward at heavy expense—and great loss of time on Rail Roads to see you.
Emerson²Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), essayist, philosopher, and poet, was born to a prominent family in Boston, Massachusetts. After retiring from pastoral duties in 1832, Emerson returned to Concord, where he lived out the rest of his years. His eight-chapter essay Nature (1836) reflects the transcendentalist philosophies of comity, beauty, language, and discipline. These principles appear throughout Emerson’s works, in particular his poetry. His best-known works include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and the essays “Self-Reliance” (1841) and “The American Scholar” (1837). Emerson also published regularly in the Dial and the Atlantic Monthly. Although he never identified himself with them fully, Emerson embraced the sentiments of abolitionists, frequently opening the doors of his pastorate to them. He later gave a strong public endorsement to John Brown following the Harpers Ferry raid. ACAB, 2: 343–48; NCAB, 3: 416–18; DAB, 6: 132–41. says that those who made Rome worth going to see staid there.”
And I may say, that people who make houses worth visiting stay there. I
have my little garden, and my horse and carriage and my house duties to
look after. The demands upon my time and attention by my Books and
papers, and by visitors are incessant. Besides, I am beginning to look
upon a journey as a positive misfortune. My long public career of travelling has cured my desire for change in location—and I now like to remain
in the same place, dine at the same table, sleep in the same bed—bath in
the same tub, and do an hundred other same things. I suppose, if I were
in Rochester, I should manifest the same love of locality that I do here. A
thousand times I have wished I never had left it. I have been nearly ruined
financially by coming here—I have things to tell you concerning my affairs which trouble me very much and lead me to fear the worst. Age and
want are an ill matched pair. I should have been glad to have dropt in upon
you while Molly³The editors have not been able to ascertain the identity of the Molly Douglass referred to in this letter. There are no known members of the family named Molly. The only known members of Douglass’s extended family named Mary at this time were his niece Mary Douglass Mitchell (b. 1856) and his granddaughter (Charles’s daughter) Mary Louise Douglass (b. 1874), and neither seems a likely candidate. The same holds true for the Douglass family’s circle of friends and in-laws; there are a number of women named Mary (although there does not appear to be anyone named Molly), but again there is also no obvious candidate for the Molly who was visiting Douglass’s daughter in Rochester. Fought, Women, 306–10. was with you, but that is out of the question. I have told
mother to take Dear Lew⁴Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague.—and have her answer your note to her. It will
seem more like coming from her if Lew: writes than if I should. Your
Dear little Estelle is doing very well. My letter to dear Hattie⁵Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague. will give
you some idea of Estelle’s daily life.

Yours Lovingly

FATHER

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 24–36L, FD Papers, DLC.