OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Hoboken[, N.J.] 10 Dec[ember] 1878.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Anything in the line of success or praise and acknowledgement you win,
very naturally gives me pleasure and consequently I felt gratified in reading the article of the Eastern Gazette,¹Assing refers to an article about Douglass that appeared in the 30 November 1878 edition of Talbot County, Maryland’s Republican newspaper, the Easton Gazette. The article described Douglass’s first visit to his birthplace since his escape from slavery. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 180–97; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 839n. although I think that aside from
that part which treats exclusively of you the author takes a view by far too
sanguine and rosy of the condition of the South and the prospects for the
future. True, we are rid of slavery, but that is about all and no likelyhood
of any progress for many years to come. A solid South,²The term “Solid South,” referring to a single Democratic voting bloc on the national level, was popularized by a former Confederate general, John Singleton Mosby, who used it in a widely circulated letter regarding the Tilden-Hayes election. Mosby, who shocked his peers by endorsing Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 presidential election, had questioned what Hayes’s response would be if he were elected with a “solid South against him.” The term was picked up and widely used by numerous newspapers and periodicals. William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary (1968; New York, 2008), 680. the Republican
party there virtually dead, the Blacks virtually disfranchised even where
they form the majority, ku-kluxed, defrauded, really without any rights
which white men are bound to respect,³Assing alludes to language used in the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) U.S. Supreme Court decision. there is indeed no cause to boast
and crow over. Your own position is entirely an exceptional one, owing
to your exceptional gifts, to your being a unique specimen of mankind, a
y. m. in short, yet we know very well that just on that account you are the
more a thorn in the flesh of every good Democrat. Yet the article is well
intended, friendly to you and that is always to be appreciated.

I anticipated nothing better on the part of the Pitts set and those connected with them. Mrs. Pitts⁴Assing appears to refer to Helen Pitts’s aunt, Emily Frances Post Pitts (1824–?). The daughter of Grove and Nancy Woodbridge Post, Frances Post Pitts was born in Rutland, Vermont, but grew up in Oneida County, New York, where her father moved sometime before June 1830. By 1855 the family was living on a 100-acre farm in Cattaraugus County, New York, where they remained for many years. In 1856 she married Hiram Pitts (1802–1901), and the couple moved to a small farm in Rock Island County, Illinois. Within a few years, they relocated to the District of Columbia, and Hiram Pitts found long-term employment as a clerk in the Treasury Department. By 1880 the Pittses had adopted a daughter, Lillian (1868–1960), who also worked as a clerk for a governmental agency. Lillian Pitts later married an engineer named John Kennedy Butler (1853–1927). The Pittses purchased property adjacent to Douglass’s home, Cedar Hill, and built a large house that was eventually known as Butler Heights. Frances Post Pitts was still living at Butler Heights with her daughter’s family in 1910. She died sometime before 1920. 1830 U.S. Census, New York, Oneida County, 293; 1855 New York State Census, Cattaraugus County, 15; 1860 U.S. Census, Illinois, Rock Island County, 328; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 43C; 1910 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 12B; Louis Mitchell, The Woodbridge Record; Being an Account of the Descendants of Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Mass. (New Haven, Conn., 1883), 121; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 654; Fought, Women, 240, 368n. is a crafty, plotting woman, not at all better
or less unscrupulous than any of the Colman family.⁵Douglass had a long friendship with Lucy N. Colman, a Rochester reformer, but no connection can be established between her family or any other Colmans and the Pitts family. Fought, Women, 62, 138, 171. I only wish you
will not hesitate to take possession of the land which they have bought
with your money. Lending is a bad business anyhow and far from making friends and earning thanks those whom you have obliged are but too
ready to turn against you the moment they find that you don’t mean to
make them a present of the amount. The falling off in Mrs. Pitts’ visits I
should however consider a gain at any rate. There is a distressing lack of
genuineness about her, which I imagine even to notice in her face. I should

rejoice anyhow to see you keep aloof from anybody and anything at all
connected with that infamous Alpha.⁶This is a reference to the Alpha, a feminist newspaper published by the Moral Education Society of Washington, D.C. Edited by the society’s president, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, the Alpha began publication in 1875 and ran for thirteen years. Scholars have long associated Douglass’s future wife, Helen Pitts, with this publication, but Assing is clearly linking the Alpha with her aunt, Frances Post Pitts, who was a member of the Moral Education Society and served as its recording secretary from 1882 to 1884. Willard and Livermore, Woman of the Century, 791; Fought, Women, 368n; George B. H. Swayze, “Sanitary Social Clearance,” Medical Times, 39: 36 (February 1911). If you had read it as I have, notwithstanding my disgust, just for the sake of having a right to denounce
it, you would agree with me that no good and pure-minded woman can
advocate those monstrous doctrines, allow her imagination to run always
in that same channel, read all that obscene stuff hidden under religious
cant without being shocked unless she is so incurably and irredeemably
stupid as to be considered altogether irresponsible.

If it were not for the proximity of the fatal house,⁷This is probably a reference to the building at 128 Bloomfield in Hoboken that Assing reluctantly took ownership of in repayment of the loan she had made to the Fehrs. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 340; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” I should be quite
satisfied with my interim state. To be sure, the house and the street are far
inferior to 300 Washington Street,⁸The son-in-law and daughter of Assing’s former landlady, Mrs. Werpup, lived at 300 Washington Street. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” but what a contrast between warmhearted, kind and cordial Mrs. Cronemeyer⁹A native of Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, Ida Fehr Cronemeyer (1834–1911) was Dr. Julius Fehr’s sister and the wife of a toy importer and fellow German named Wilhelm Gustav Cronemeyer (1832–93). Ida Fehr immigrated to the United States in 1855. She and Gustav Cronemeyer were married in Manhattan in 1865, after which they settled in New Jersey. By 1878, they, along with their three young children (Charles R., Dorothy, and Albert L. Cronemeyer, ages ten, seven, and four, respectively), were living at 237 Bloomfield in Hoboken. In 1900, Mrs. Cronemeyer and her children were living in Manhattan, but by 1910 she was living with her surviving son (Albert) and daughter in Philadelphia, where she died the following year. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 32; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 284A; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Church and Town Records, 1669–2013,” Ancestry.com; “New Jersey, Birth and Christenings, 1670–1980,” FamilySearch.org. and empty, shallow, indolent
and selfish Mrs. Heyne!¹⁰10. Christened Georgine Auguste Elwire Sophie, “Ella” Werpup Heyne (1841–?) was the only surviving child of John D. and Eliza Werpup. A native of Bremen, Germany, she arrived alone in New York City on 18 April 1864. Under the name Elwire Werpup, she married Prussian-born Johannes Fredrich Heyne on 30 August 1865 in Hoboken, New Jersey. In the 1880 census, her husband, mistakenly identified as Robert, was listed as a broker, and the household, at 300 Washington Street, included three children ranging in age from six to thirteen, along with Eliza Werpup, who was Assing’s former landlady as well as Mrs. Heyne’s mother. By 1910, the widowed Mrs. Heyne was living with her daughter’s family at 217 Washington Street in Hoboken. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 32D; 1905 New Jersey State Census, Hudson County, 11B; 1910 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 9B; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 345, 347, 353, 364n; “New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957,” Ancestry.com; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639–1989”; “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558–1898.”

Indeed, I almost wonder now how patiently I stood company so entirely uncongenial to me for so many years merely out of friendship for
Mrs. Werpup.¹¹Eliza Werpup. The children too are quite amiable and never disturb by
their presence like young Heynedom. Mr. Fehr¹²Julius Fehr. is running into debt in
New-York and seems doomed to ruin. It is a pity; there are so many truly
good and noble qualities in him but so much mixed up with folly, confusion in his ideas and the like that he makes either enemies or is laughed
at. I keep yet on good terms with him, although he has ruined me.—
Mr. Lange¹³Johannes D. Lange. has forfeited his claim to atheistic saintship by consenting
to be married by a clergyman. Queer that a sensible man should allow
himself to be thus henpecked by such an inferior woman!

I rejoice that your menagery is so well provided and I thank you in
their name. <For> Any kindness done to animals I feel personally thankful. My Maca is the favorite of the children and allows them to play with
him. If the poor little piece of humanity should live, it will be chiefly
owing to Madam’s and Louisa’s care.¹⁴Assing probably alludes to Anna Murray Douglass and her granddaughter Alice Louisa Sprague, who were at that time attending the grievously ill Mary Elizabeth Murphy Douglass, Charles R. Douglass’s wife, who died early the following year. Lohmann, Radical Passion, 365.—It is a great thing that you can
yet write without spectacles, though I don’t know whether you would not
benefit your eyes by wearing them.

Yours ever

OTTILIA

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 297L–99L, FD Papers, DC.