FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER¹Born in Leipzig, Germany, Sylvester Rosa Koëhler (1837–1900) immigrated to the United States with his family and settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1849. Koëhler married Amalie Jaeger in 1859, and they soon had three children. He made a meager living by working as a clerk in Hoboken, New Jersey, so the family took in boarders. In 1868 the Koëhlers resettled in Boston, where Sylvester worked as a manager for the engraving firm of Louis Prang. Koëhler wrote regularly on graphic arts and eventually became a curator of the engraving collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Smithsonian Institution. Koëhler was a close friend of Douglass and the German émigré Ottilie Assing. Assing sometimes boarded with the Koëhler family, and Douglass probably became a friend of theirs on his visits with her. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 126, 263, 275–88, 307; DAB, 2: 485–86; ACAB, 3: 570.

Rochester[, N.Y.] 1 May 1868.

MY DEAR MR KOËHLER:

I am really honored and pleased that among your many occupations (some
of them new to you and therefore perhaps, perplexing and wearing) you
have thus early found twice to send me a letter so full and friendly. I had
been fully informed by our kind friend Miss Assing²Ottilie Assing. of your serious illness—She stated the matter in her peculiarly strong and forcible way, and
left me in a state of alarm for your safety.³Ottilie Assing’s letter has not survived, and the editors have not been able to find any other mention of Koëhler’s illness in the rest of Douglass’s surviving correspondence. It was too bad to be thus struck
down thus in the midst of your new hopes, plans and purposes. I am very
glad know that you fell into hands so free and friendly—It was a serious
blow to Miss Assing, your leaving Hoboken:⁴Sometime in March 1868, Koëhler moved to Boston, Massachusetts, after accepting a job with the publishing firm L. Prang & Company. His wife and children followed him to Boston in May after arranging to rent their home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Charles G. Loring, “Sylvester R. Koëhler,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 36: 556–58 (1901); Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 279. but she is not only a reasoner
she is reasonable, and bears her misfortune with fortitude and without a
murmer. I confess I felt the shock very seriously. Still, I rejoice that you
find yourself in a more congenial field of work⁵L. Prang & Company hired Koëhler to be its technical manager. Sometime over the summer of 1878, he quit his position in anticipation of lining up a backer to establish an art journal, of which he would be the “chief editor.” But in late August, and again in mid-September, Ottilie Assing wrote Douglass that Koëhler’s plans had fallen through and that he was having trouble finding a new job. Ottilie Assing to Douglass, 14 September 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 274R–276L; Loring, “Koëhler,” 556.—So far as friendships

and associations are concerned, you need not look for any which will
seem to you like those about you in Hoboken. You were a peculiar people
zealous in good works, rejoicing in the truth which can alone make men
free. You see that my methodist forms of speech cling to me spite of all
the teachings of Miss Assing.⁶Ottilie Assing’s efforts to convince Douglass to adopt atheism can be traced back to at least 1859 when she gave him an English translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s treatise The Essence of Christianity (1841). Contrary to her belief, there is no real evidence that Douglass, for all his criticism of organized religion and religious hypocrisy, ever abandoned Christianity and became an atheist. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 514–16.

I am just now quite busy with my garden. The season is very backward. December is about as pleasant as may here. The birds are making
a feeble effort to sing—but the frogs—are still silent. The weather effects
me very much. One side of my head seems to be partly frozen and the
other only about half thawed. The snow storms and zeros of Minnesota
are just coming out of me.⁷Douglass’s last known trip to Minnesota was over a year before. He spoke at the request of the Young Men’s Library Association at the Philharmonic Hall in Winona, Minnesota, on 16 March 1867. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxiii–iv. But the weather is so cold under this chalk and
charcoal sky that I almost despair of getting free of my ailments.

You may depend upon me to look you up when I come to Boston—I
shall be delighted to see you where you belong, among works of art. Your
eye, your taste, your judgement, and the thought and study you have given
to the subject makes this your appropriate place. With all the vigor which
can attach to a wish—do I wish you and Mr Prang⁸Louis Prang (1824–1909) was born in the city of Breslau, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. The son of a printer of calico textiles, Prang spent his early years training in the arts of dyeing, engraving, and printing before apprenticing as a chemist in a paper mill. As a young man, he became involved in the revolutionary movement that swept Europe in 1848; he was forced to flee the Continent in the reactionary aftermath. Prang arrived in New York City in 1850, but within a few years had settled permanently in Boston. In 1856, in partnership with Julius Mayer, he established a lithographic printing company called Prang & Mayer. After buying out Mayer in 1860, Prang renamed the firm L. Prang & Company and gained enormous success during the Civil War by partnering with the painter Winslow Homer to commercially mass-produce black-and-white copies of his wartime illustrations. In 1864, Prang returned to Europe to study continental methods of printing color lithographs, and after his return to Boston, his company began producing high-quality color prints. By 1867, Prang’s business had become so successful that he opened a second factory, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In the 1870s, L. Prang & Company entered the greeting-card market, quickly becoming one of the nation’s leading printers of Christmas cards. That same decade, the firm branched out into publishing art education textbooks. By the time Prang sold his business, in 1897, L. Prang & Company had offices in Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco, as well as agents in London, Berlin, and Melbourne, Australia. After retiring, Prang spent his final years traveling the world and promoting the company’s art education textbooks and a line of art supplies. He died while visiting California in 1909. Barry Shank, A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture (New York, 2004), 68–70; “Louis Prang and Chromolithography: Artist, Innovator, Collaborator,” AmericanAntiquarian.org. success—I have seen
many of his pictures. They are among the refiners of the age.

At the beginning of this week I sent my friend Miss Assing my small
photo graph for you. She will see that you get it.

Please remember very kindly to dear Miss Koehler and to all your
kind household⁹Koëhler’s wife, Amalia Susanna Jaeger Koëhler (1825–92), was a fellow German immigrant whom he married in the United States on 9 April 1859. The couple had three children, Walter Jaeger, Hedwig Jaeger, and Hans Jaeger Koëhler, all born in Hoboken, New Jersey. The eldest son, Walter (c. 1861–1901), graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1881. He worked for a series of mining companies in the United States and Mexico before moving in 1887 to Beaconsfield, Australia, where he rose to be chief metallurgist and assistant general manager of the Broken Hill Proprietary Mine. Koëhler’s daughter, Hedwig (c. 1862–aft. 1912), was an assistant in the print department in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Koëhler’s third child, Hans (1866–c. 1940), became a landscape architect. He spent a number of years working in Connecticut, and later in Berks County, Pennsylvania, before retiring to Middlesex County, Massachusetts. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Suffolk County, 332A; 1920 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Berks County, 12B; 1930 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 10B; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Thirty-Fifth Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students with a Statement of Courses of Instruction and a Register of the Alumni: 1899–1900, 238; Launceston (Tasmania) Examiner, 29 April 1901; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 275, 281; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “United States Passenger Arrival Lists, Ellis Island, 1892–1924,” FamilySearch.org; “United States Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” Familysearch.org; Find a Grave (online). should business or pleasure bring you here at any time[.]
Please remember that I have a special claim upon you.

Your friend

FREDERICK DOUG LASS

ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU.