ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE¹Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52: 145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4: 30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32: 306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Rochester, [N.Y.]²Following her signature, Sprague supplied additional address information: “62 Pearl St.” 11 April 1867.³Here the latter stated: “Wednesday Afternoon”.

MY DEAR FATHER

I presume you looked for a letter from me at Pittsburg and again at Zanesville.⁴Although the editors cannot confirm that Douglass spoke in Zanesville during this trip, it is quite plausible that he might have done so, since he spent at least a week traveling across Ohio at the beginning of April 1867. Douglass had been invited to deliver the ninth lecture in a series of eleven sponsored by Marietta College at the Marietta Baptist Church in 1866–67. According to his itinerary, he spoke in Cincinnati on 2 April and delivered his lecture “Sources of Danger to the Republic” for the Marietta College series on 6 April, leaving several days in which he could easily have found time to stop and speak in Zanesville. On 7 April, Douglass delivered a second lecture, “The Assassination and Its Lessons,” at the Athenaeum Hall in Marietta before traveling to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he spoke on 8 April. His final lecture of the tour took place on 9 April in Pittsburgh. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxiii; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 8 February 1867; Chicago Tribune, 23 March 1867; NASS, 9 March 1867; New York World, 26 April 1867; Owen Hawley, “The Marietta Lecture Series of 1866–1867: Emerson, Douglass, and Others,” Studies in the American Renaissance (Boston, 1980), 436–38, 444n. I should have written to you at Pittsburg but I desired to tell you
all I could about Nathan’s⁵Born a slave in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Nathan Sprague (1840–1907) married Rosetta Douglass on 24 December 1863 in Rochester, New York. On 3 September 1864 he enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry in Rochester, listing his occupation as gardener. After spending his entire military career as a private with that regiment’s Company D, Sprague mustered out of the service in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on 20 August 1865. Lacking either a trade or an education, he found it very difficult to obtain steady employment after the war. Relying upon his father-in-law’s influence and resources, Sprague returned to Rochester in 1865 and spent the next decade pursuing one failed career after another. Between 1865 and 1876, he tried his hand at farming, driving a hack, selling chickens, and working as a gardener. At one point, he left his family and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he hoped to succeed as a baker. Failing once again, he returned penniless to Rochester several months later. Following that, Frederick Douglass arranged for his son-in-law to get a job with the post office in Rochester. In 1877, however, Sprague was sentenced to spend a year in the Monroe County jail after being convicted of opening the mail and stealing valuables from it. That same year, Rosetta and the children joined her parents in Washington, D.C., after being evicted from their home in Rochester by Sprague’s creditors. Following his release from jail, he followed his family to Washington, D.C., where he once again failed to find steady employment. Among his various jobs, Sprague worked for a time as a stable hand at the home of Salmon P. Chase’s daughter, Kate Chase Sprague (no relation). For much of their time in Washington, D.C., however, Rosetta Douglass Sprague supported the family by clerking in governmental offices. Before his death in 1907, Sprague was working as a real estate agent. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 52; 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 4B; Luis F. Emilio, History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863–1865 (Boston, 1894), 358; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 205; Christopher B. Booker, “I Will Wear No Chain!”: A Social History of African-American Males (Westport, Conn., 2000), 100–01; Rose O’Keefe, Frederick and Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York: Their Home Was Open to All (Charleston, S.C., 2013), 70, 90; L. Diane Barnes, Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman (New York, 2013), 101, 107, 114, 117; Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 418–23; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 222–23, 248, 287. hack. He took out his license Monday and has
been on the stand every day. His hack is the finest that can be found on
either stand and he has a handsome span of greys: the whole establishment
is very nice and grand and attracts much attention. I had the first ride in
the hack last saturday when Nathan brought it home. N. has some trouble
among the hackmen they insult him and threaten his hack. A policeman
came up to him on the stand by the Osburn house⁶Built by Nehemiah Osburn in 1857, the original Osburn House Hotel was considered the finest hotel in Rochester. The five-story building on the corner of Main and St. Paul streets housed shops and restaurants on the ground level, and 150 guest rooms on the top four floors. In 1880, the owners of Sibley’s Department Store purchased the property. In 1959, the building was taken down and replaced by the Granite Building. William Farley Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York from the Earliest Time to 1907, 2 vols. (Rochester, 1908), 1: 159, 694–95; Andrew D. Wolfe, 1868–1968, Bold Century: 100 Adventurous and Happy Years Merchandising; The Story of Sibley, Lindsay and Curr Company of Rochester, Monroe County, New York (Rochester, 1968), 14–15. and told him that he
had better go to the other stand in front of the Court house⁷Located at the corner of Main and Fitzhugh streets, the second Monroe County Courthouse was built at a cost of $72,000 in 1850–51. In 1896 the county built its third courthouse, on the same site, at a cost of just under $900,000. In 1964, the courts were moved to the newly constructed Hall of Justice, and the former (1896) courthouse was converted into the Monroe County Office Building. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1: 55–56; “History,” MonroeCounty.gov. that there were
too many hacks already on the Osburn house stand. Nathan refused as the
Mayor⁸A lifelong Democrat, Henry L. Fish (1815–95) served two consecutive terms as mayor of Rochester (1867–69). Fish was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, but spent most of his early life in Wayne County, New York. In 1840 he settled in Rochester, where he made a fortune running both the Albany & Rochester Packet Line and the Rochester Transportation Company, which hauled goods and merchandise between Buffalo and New York City. Before becoming mayor, Fish spent nine years as a member of the Rochester Common Council. In 1873 he served one term representing Monroe County and the Second District in the New York General Assembly. The Biographical Record of the City of Rochester and Monroe County, New York (New York, 1902), 162–63; Find a Grave (online). told him he could stand at any place where hacks were allowed.
The Policeman said I shall have to move it for you then, N. says there they
are move them, he walked off. Another policeman came to him and said
Mr Sprague if there is any trouble from any quarter let it be known and all
will be righted. Nathan does not know either one of them but the last one
knew Nathan and his name too. The first day he made three dollars and
every day besides a dollar. The weather is now cold and damp. He bought
the hack of Mr Cunningham⁹In all likelihood Rosetta is referring to James Cunningham (1815–86), a native of County Down, Ireland, whose family immigrated to Coburg, Canada, when he was a child. In 1834, Cunningham settled in Rochester, and in 1836 he became co-owner of a buggy and hackney (carriage) repair business, Kerr, Cunningham & Company. In 1847 he founded James Cunningham Son & Company, which became an extremely successful manufacturer of carriages and other types of vehicles, including automobiles in the early twentieth century. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 2: 800–03; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” for $640, paying $200 down and the rest in
$40 instalments monthly with eighteen months to pay it in and six months
out of the eighteen he is not to pay the installment, that is to allow him
time. Nathan said Mr Cunningham asked him many questions and after
finding out who he was sold him the hack on such easy terms. Mr C. told
him he knew you. Father I cannot thank you too much for your kindness
to Nathan and myself, and I can assure you Nathan is grateful and proud
of your good opinion of him.

I ran up to the house yesterday to see mother¹⁰Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813–82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape and then joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845–47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. There she gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C. She died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington Post, 5 August 1882; Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her; Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51: 552–53 (6 April 1895); Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 132–37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12: 39–42 (Spring 1995). she was not well at all.
I found her lying down she complained of dizziness in the head I gave
her some pills and tomorrow I am going up again. Annie¹¹Annie Rosine Sprague (1864–93) was the eldest of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s six children and the first grandchild of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Born in November 1864 in Rochester, New York, eleven months after her parents’ marriage, she was named after the Douglasses’ youngest child, Annie, who had died in 1859. Annie Sprague spent most of her childhood living in her maternal grandparents’ homes in Rochester and Washington, D.C. After Anna Murray Douglass’s death in 1882, Annie Sprague assisted her aunt Louisa Sprague in managing her grandfather’s home at Cedar Hill. On 6 April 1893 in Washington, D.C., she married her grandfather’s former secretary Charles Satchell Morris (1865–1931). She then joined her husband in Ann Arbor, where he was a law student at the University of Michigan. That November, Annie, who was pregnant, fell ill and died. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 143; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, Mass., 1988), 483; Genna Rae McNeil et. al., Witness: Two Hundred Years of African-American Faith and Practice at the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, New York (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2013), 61–68; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 222, 248, 312–13, 372–73; “District of Columbia Marriages, 1830–192,” FamilySearch.org. and Harriet¹²Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague (1866–1940) was the second child of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague. When she was a child, her grandfather expressed delight in her intelligence, and like her mother and several of her sisters, Harriet trained to be a schoolteacher. In 1891 she accepted her first professional teaching job, in Jacksonville, Florida, where she taught at the Florida Baptist Academy. In early 1894, however, illness forced her to return to her family in Washington, D.C. Unmarried, she lived with her parents until their deaths in 1906 and 1907, after which she taught in the Conroe Normal School in Conroe, Texas, from 1907 to 1916. She spent 1917 and 1918 serving as the secretary to the principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. She also spent time teaching in the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1920 she joined her sisters Fredericka and Rosabelle in Kansas City, where she lived until her death in 1940. Fought, Women, 206, 267, 272, 275–76, 376n; Find a Grave (online).
are well. Annie is full of fun and getting quite noisy. She walked out

with me a few days ago down to Nagles¹³She is probably referring to the meat market owned by John Nagles, which was located on the corner of South Avenue and Alexander Street. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” which was quite a little step
for her.

Nathan and I went to hear Anna E. Dickinson a week ago Tuesday.
Subject Something to Do: It was a Womans’ Rights lecture¹⁴Anna Dickinson spent a couple of weeks, in late March and early April 1867, delivering her “Something to Do, or Work for Women” lecture, among several others, on a lecture tour of western New York. During the last week of March, she seems to have used the home of Mark Twain’s wealthy in-laws, Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon, in Elmira, New York, as her base of operations, before traveling to Rochester at the beginning of April. Dickinson’s correspondence indicates that she was recovering from some sort of illness during much of this period, which may explain Rosetta’s comments about her uninspired performance. Laura E. Skandera-Trombley, Mark Twain in the Company of Women (Philadelphia, 1994), 145; Laura E. Skandera-Trombley, “ ‘I Am Woman’s Rights’: Olivia Langdon Clemens and Her Feminist Circle,” Mark Twain Journal, 34: 19–20 (Fall 1996). and failed to
make the same impression that some of her former efforts have done, and
there she had it committed to memory and spoke too fast and indistinctly
so that much was lost which may be one reason that the audience failed to
be as appreciative as it might have been. I have not seen a paper containing a notice of the lecture yet. I was up to Miss Porters¹⁵Rosetta is referring to either Maria G. Porter (1805–96), who operated a high-end boardinghouse in Rochester, or her younger sister, Almira B. Porter (1825–79), who ran a school for young ladies. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2: 294n, 3: 785n; Mary Ellen Snodgrass, ed., The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, 2 vols. (2008; New York, 2015), 2: 421.3 last saturday and
got some things that I left there some time ago. She wished me to tell you
she felt quite slighted at your not coming to see <illegible> <her> and said
she had not scratched you off her books but presumed you had scratched
her off yours and requested me to say she should like to see you on your
return. Mother and Nathan send much love.

Affectionately Your Daughter

ROSETTA D. SPRAGUE

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 250R–52, FD Papers, LC.