FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM ALLING¹William Alling (1811–90) was born in Ballston, New York, and settled in Rochester in 1826. He worked as a clerk for Elihu F. Marshall, who owned a small publishing and stationery business. In 1834, Alling bought the business from Marshall and partnered with his son William S. and his cousin David Cory in 1859, forming the Allings & Cory Paper Co. Following his son’s death in 1872, the company became the Alling & Cory Paper Co. The company became the largest printing-paper supplier in Rochester, with warehouses throughout the state of New York and in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Alling oversaw the operations of Alling & Cory until his death in 1890. Beyond his business ventures, Alling was a prominent member of the Presbyterian church. In 1844, he became a ruling elder of the Washington Street Church in Rochester. He was also the president of the Monroe County Bible Society during the 1880s. William Alling’s youngest son, Joseph Tilden Alling (1855–1937), is reported to have acted as superintendent of the Rochester A.M.E. Zion Church’s Sunday schools for a number of years. Rochester Daily Democrat, 10 January 1852; Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 27 August 1885; Ingrid Overacker, The African American Church Community in Rochester, New York, 1900–1940 (Rochester, 1998), 180; One Hundred Twenty-Five Years in the Paper Business, 1819–1944, Being a Brief History of the Founding of the Paper Business of the Alling & Cory Company (Rochester, 1944).

Washington, D.C. 8 July 1879[.]

MY DEAR SIR:

I cannot send you “fifty or one hundred dollars” to aid in paying for the
new zion church. Your letter asking for such a donation is only one of
a score of the same sort that reach me nearly every week in the year.
My purse is light and the demands upon it heavy—I give when I can
and refuse when I must. You have called upon me at an unfortunate moment—when our Extra Confederate Brigadier Congress²In 1878 the Democratic party took control of the U.S. Senate. While in control, Democratic senators attempted several times to roll back some of the civil rights acts that had been passed during Reconstruction by attaching repealing provisions to routine appropriation bills. Hayes consistently vetoed such underhanded legislation, in order to protect African American rights. But as a result, parts of the government went underfunded or unfunded at times. This included the U.S. marshals, who were ordered by the Enforcement Acts to protect voting rights across the nation. The Democrats sought to limit their power in this by either eliminating the Enforcement Acts or ensuring they went unfunded. Charles W. Calhoun, From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail: The Transformation of Politics and Governance in the Gilded Age (New York, 2010), 64; DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question, 85. has cut off my
resources—my best wishes for Zion.

Yours truly

FREDK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU.