FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER¹Samuel D. Porter (1808–81), a prosperous land agent, moved to Rochester, New York, from Waldosborough, Maine, in 1835. He served as the first president of the Western New York AntiSlavery Society, and his wife, Susan Farley Porter, founded and belonged to several reform organizations. The Porters aided fugitive slaves in crossing the border into Canada, and their barn was reputed to be a common hiding place. In the 1840s, Samuel joined the Liberty party and supported the Free Soil party while attempting to mediate between Garrisonian abolitionists and those who, like himself, sought the end of slavery through political agitation. Additionally, he was a perennial candidate for mayor, running on an antislavery platform. Although he became a Republican in the late 1850s, he broke with that party in the 1870s, charging that it had abandoned reform and the plight of the freedmen. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 92; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 60, 120, 149, 180, 206; Dexter Perkins, “Rochester One Hundred Years Ago,” RH, 1: 1–24 (July 1939).

Washington[,] D.C. [1872.]

SAM[UE]L D. PORTER ESQR

ROCHESTER N. Y.

MY DEAR SIR:

Your note of the 26th expressing a wish on the part of friends of mine,
in Rochester N.Y., that I would sit to Mr Mund[y]²Johnson Marchant Mundy (1831–97) was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but moved with his family to Geneva, New York, in his youth. Failing eyesight caused him to withdraw from school at a young age, but he studied for six years under the sculptor Henry K. Brown of Brooklyn. Mundy eventually settled in Rochester, where he made a living as a portrait artist. Also a talented sculptor, he is best remembered for his statue of Washington Irving, erected in Tarrytown, New York. Ezra F. Mundy, Nicholas Mundy and His Descendants Who Settled in New Jersey in 1665 (Lawrence, Kans., 1907), 13–14; “The Late Johnson M. Mundy: The Blind Sculptor,” Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, 104: 190 (October 1897). a bust (of marble or
bronze) designed to be placed in some pu[blic] Hall of that city, has just
been handed me by the distinguished artist selected for the work.³A short unsigned article in the Boston magazine Folio provided details about the work underway on the bust of Douglass: “A number of influential citizens of Rochester, N.Y., the former residence of Mr. Douglass, having commissioned the sculptor Johnson M. Mundy to visit Washington for the purpose of modeling a bust of this distinguished orator, to be placed in one of the public halls of that city as a mark of esteem, the artist began his work a few weeks from sittings, and has succeeded in producing an unusually characteristic portrait bust.” Boston Folio, 8: 70 (March 1873).

I am very sincerely obliged to you for your respected note and am
deeply sensible of the honor implied in the request it contains. I beg to assure you and such of any friend as takes an interest in the matter, that it will
give me very great pleasure to sit as requested to Mr Mundy, both because
I desire to gratify my friend in the beautiful City of Rochester, and because
I know something of the talents, skill and fidelity of the sculptor to whom
you have been pleased to commit the work of producing my featu[re]s⁴The marble bust of Frederick Douglass was formally presented by its sculptor, Johnson M. Mundy, on 17 June 1879 in Sibley Hall at the University of Rochester. Joining Mundy as speakers at the ceremony were D. M. Dewey, a member of the committee that commissioned the bust a few years earlier, and Martin B. Anderson, the University of Rochester’s president. Established in 1877, the two-story Sibley Hall contained the university’s library and museum and was named after its benefactor Hiram Sibley, a successful businessman in the telegraph industry who donated $100,000 for the building’s maintenance. The bust was later relocated to a permanent position in the university’s Frederick Douglass Building. In 1880, Douglass wrote the sculptor and said, “I am content to be made known through this specimen of your art to all who may come after me, and who may wish to know how I looked in the world.” Douglass to Johnson Mundy, 23 March 1880, Frederick Douglass Collection, NRU; Rochester Daily Union & Advertiser, 18 June 1879; Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 28 June 1879; Arthur J. May, A History of the University of Rochester, 1850–1962 (Rochester, 1977), 67, 69, 219; Nancy C. Curtis, Black Heritage Sites: An African American Odyssey and Finder’s Guide (Chicago, 1996), 331; Carol Summerfield and Mary Elizabeth Devine, International Dictionary of University Histories (New York, 1998), 599–603; DAB, 17: 145–46.

I am, dear sir, very truly yours,

FREDK DOUG LASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 636, FD Papers, DLC.