WAR DEPARTMENT

Bureau Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands,

OFFICE GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT SCHOOLS.

Washington, D. C., June 23^rd 1868

Dear Father:

I am requested by Capt. O. S. B. WallWall, O. S. B.

to write to you and ascertain whether you received a letter from him a short time ago with regard to your accepting a position as one of the Board of Directors of the "Howard Fraternal Union," and if so would you be kind enough to drop him either a letter of acceptance or one giving your reason for not coöperating. The object of getting a letter from you is to publish it, thereby securing your influence. Mr. Langston has accepted as one of the Board.

Miss AssingAssing, Ottilie

Ottilie Assing (1819-84) was born to Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline Assing, a Christian, and Assur David Assing, a Jew, in Hamburg, Germany. Assing received an accelerated education from her mother and was generally described as bright and vivacious. After the death of her mother in 1840 and father in 1842, Ottilie and younger sister Ludmilla spent time with relatives, but she grew depressed and attempted suicide in 1843. After returning to Hamburg, Assing began writing reviews of local culture. In 1851 she became a correspondent for the German periodical Morganblatt fur gehildete Leser. Assing first met Frederick Douglass when she came to America in 1855, supposedly inspired to make his acquaintance after reading My Bondage and My Freedom. She arrived in Rochester and interviewed him for an article that subsequently appeared in Morganblatt. Thereafter Assing published numerous articles about Douglass for her German readership, and also translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, contributing an introduction. The two began an intimate friendship in 1856 that lasted twenty-eight years. During that time Douglass and Assing corresponded regularly. When in the United States, Assing was a regular visitor at the Douglass home in Rochester. She was friendly with his children, although his wife, Anna Murray, did not approve of her husband's relationship. Douglass and Assing often appeared in public together, but no contemporary public speculation questioned the propriety of their relationship. Following Anna Murray Douglass's death in 1882, Assing hoped that she might become Mrs. Frederick Douglass. However, in January 1884, while Assing was in Europe, Douglass married his secretary, Helen Pitts. Becoming increasingly more ill, possibly with cancer, and despondent from Douglass's rejection, Assing committed suicide in a Paris park on 21 August 1884. She left her entire estate to Douglass. Christoph Lohmann, ed., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing's Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 69, 329-62; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 23, 38, 56, 184, 368, 371. & Mrs NickertNickert

are here and we are all going to have a little picnic to Mt. Vernon tomorrow. Miss Assing will leave for

Rochester this week.

Love to all

Affectionately Your Son

Chas. R. DouglassDouglass, Charles Remond

Charles Remond Douglass (1844–1920), named after the abolitionist Charles Remond, was the youngest of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s sons. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and, like his brothers, was both educated in Rochester and trained by his father in the newspaper office. Like Lewis H. Douglass, Charles enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, but mainly served with the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, where he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. After the war, Charles settled in Washington, D.C., and found employment first as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau (1867–69) and later in the Treasury Department (1869–75). After his father purchased the in 1870, Charles acted as a correspondent for the newspaper. In 1871 he served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission, and President Ulysses S. Grant later appointed him consul to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo. From 1875 to 1879 he was a clerk in the U.S. consulate in Santo Domingo. Returning to the United States in 1879, he entered the West Indies import-export business while living in Corona, New York. In 1882, Charles moved back to Washington, D.C., and took a job as an examiner in the Pension Bureau. He remained there until 1892, when he entered the real estate business. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 239, 257–58, 272; EAAH , 1: 407–08.

P.S. The funeral of Alfred LeeLee, Alfred

the wealthiest colored man in the District takes place this P.M. C.R.D.