Rochester March 10^th/69

My Dear Father

It has been sometime since you have heard from home. I endeavored to get a letter to you before you reached Minn. but it failed to reach you and was returned to me. My last letter from you was dated from Monticello. I am sorry to think you believe NathanSprague, Nathan

is offended he was hurt supposing you alluded to him as well as the rest for he has been very sensitive all winter because he has laid idle so long and had more than once said to me he believed father thought he could get work. I told him that you know the difficulty of getting employment in the winter and when your letter came he felt confirmed in his earlier impressions. I know

Nathan’s desire to receive or be worthy to receive your approbation and has been willing to take the taunts of the rest of the family so long as he could be worthy of your approval. I do not know that Nathan has ever been seriously offended with me since our marriage only as he has been conscious of the feeling of the family towards him excepting yourself. I do not consider his harshness towards me just but thanks to your good advice I am able to bury it in the past as I know that our happiness mainly depends on me. You say to me Husbands first and fathers second. I know it but I cannot help it my affection for you is of the warmest kind and your words whether of censure or praise remain with me always and affect me accordingly. Nathan knows it and has listened to me so that I have remained in and around home all this time making it appear that we were hangers on for a purpose. I see now that Nathan feels himself in a sort of tight jacket and is uncomfortable because he knows however much you may be satisfied he is the subject for all kinds of unkind remarks from the rest—he thought it best to float free but in so doing has perfect respect and appreciation of yourself and your kindness.

You say you are a lonely man no one knows it better than myself and the causes. I have felt it for years for I have been in a measure lonely myself but would not allow myself to analyze my feelings as I was the daughter and had duties to fulfill in that relation. I know

where my sympathies were. I do not know whether you ever thought much about it having so many things to occupy your mind, but my position at home was any thing but pleasant. You used often to say that we were all glad when you left, something that was so far from what was true as far as I was concerned. I never dared to show much zeal about anything where you were concerned as I could never bare ridicule and as jealousy was is one of the leading traits in our family I could very readily bring a storm about my ears if I endorsed any of your sentiments about means pertaining to the household. I do not wish to pain you but I must say I have no pleasant remembrances of my brothers. I had my faults no doubt but none so great that their feelings of dislike should follow me to this day.

I ought not I know trouble you with such things but I should feel lonely indeed if I had no family and anything should happen to you. My being obliged to more gives me pain just so far as your feelings are concerned and Nathan feels it to be so.

The weather is becoming more Spring-like though the snow is lying several inches deep and sleigh-bells are jingling as merrily as at New Years. I sent to Boston for the registered letter but cannot get it from the office without your signature.

Nathan took advantage of the low rate of of free inauguration week to go to Washington and see his father the fare being for both ways $13.55 tickets holding good

ten days. He saw nothing of the boys but heard of them he went to see them but they were not at home he called twice at CharlesDouglass, 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. house and once at the office, but Charles was not in. Charles wrote to mother some time since that his wife was coming to Rochester and then again that he had changed his mind and sent for her sister Livy who is by this time there. There is a letter awaiting you from G. W. StebbinsStebbins, Giles Badger

Giles Badger Stebbins (1817–1900), an abolitionist and author, first toured on the lecture circuit in 1845 in the company of Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster. Stebbins’s writings focused on such diverse subjects as transcendentalism, abolition, temperance, industrial and agricultural development, and later Spiritualism and “psychic science.” His views on abolition found him firmly in Garrison’s camp, but he retained a cordial relationship with politically minded abolitionists, including Douglass and Gerrit Smith. In 1853 Stebbins published a book outlining the opinions of prominent blacks in opposition to colonization. Giles B. Stebbins, Upward Steps of Seventy Years (New York, 1890), 86–90, 102–05; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 118. urging the necessity of a paper in Washington and yourself as chief Editor. He said he met the boys at Downings and speaks especially of Frederick whom he thinks is a young man full of promise. It is [not?] well that he is able to make so favorable an impression the next is to sustain it.

My babies are all well as indeed we all are excepting myself I have caught a cold that is troublesome. AnnieSprague, Annie Rosine

says love to Grandpa I asked HattieSprague, Harriet "Hattie"

what she had to say to Grandpa Annie tells her to say love to Grandpa. I have begun to give Annie daily instruction now she seems ready to learn everything so that I am stirring her up to know her letters against your return. I will write to M^rs CroftsCrofts, Julia Griffiths

A native of London, Julia Griffiths (1811–95) was the oldest of seven children born to Thomas Griffiths, a onetime stationer turned publisher and bookseller, and his wife Charlotte Powis. She first met Douglass during the latter half of 1846 when he lectured in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where she was visiting with friends. Her mother had been a friend of William Wilberforce, who had advocated for the abolition of slavery in England, and she herself was active in the British antislavery movement. Charmed by the American, Griffiths followed Douglass back to the United States with her younger sister, Eliza, in 1848. In 1850, Eliza married John Dick, one of Douglass’s printers for the North Star, and the couple moved to Toronto. Julia became a constant companion and partner to Douglass and a leading antislavery organizer in Rochester for the next five years. She contributed to the North Star as copy editor and journalist, and saved the paper from financial ruin by organizing its books and by aggressively pursuing subscribers and donations. She helped found the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, acting as its secretary, and organized the Rochester Anti-Slavery Fair. Initially, she lived with the Douglass family, which led to tension in the household and to unsubstantiated rumors that Douglass and Griffiths shared more than a business relationship. In 1853, the vicious attacks upon her in abolitionist newspapers drove her from the Douglass home and finally forced her to return to England in 1855, ostensibly to raise funds for the North Star. In 1859 she married a Methodist minister from Halifax, Henry O. Crofts (1814–80), who acted as an agent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Through the Civil War, she continued to organize and revitalize ladies’ antislavery societies and to lecture against slavery. After the war and her husband’s death, she ran a boarding school and worked as a governess. Her friendship with Douglass continued in frequent correspondence, and she welcomed him and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, when they visited England in 1886. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, new ser., 5:82 (1 April 1857); 1871 England Census, Durham County, Gateshead, 41; London, England: Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538–1812, Ancestry.com; Maria Diedrich, Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 179–84; Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 40–41; Janet Douglas, “A Cherished Friendship: Julia Griffiths Crofts and Frederick Douglass,” Slavery and Abolition, 33:265–74 (June 2012); Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–17 (Autumn/Winter 1970–71). but I do not know her address. Please write and tell me of your travels in Minnesota how your health has stood it. I read of you on your way to Peoria and your fur coat it no doubt looked very comfortable to the crowd but I have thought

if you were out in such storms in must be very insufficient covering.

I see that Susan B. AnthonyAnthony, Susan Brownell

Best known for her partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton during the late nineteenth-century woman suffrage campaign, Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) first became an activist through the temperance and abolitionist movements in Canajoharie and Rochester, New York. Anthony spent her childhood in eastern Massachusetts, where she attended Quaker schools and became a teacher. In 1845 she followed her family to western New York, where they had fled to escape financial difficulties and to join a radical branch of Hicksite Quakers that included the Posts, Hallowells, and Porters. Discussions with Abigail Mott, whom she had met sometime before 1845, led Anthony to join the Unitarian Church shortly after her arrival in Rochester. Anthony continued to teach for another four years, but her involvement in the Daughters of Temperance and the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society soon became her priority. By 1851 she also became interested in the women's rights movement, and a common friend, Amelia Bloomer, introduced Anthony to Stanton. For the next half-century she and Stanton devoted themselves tirelessly to the struggle for women's access to education, professions, and politics. Between 1856 and 1866, however, Anthony continued to work for the end of slavery, serving as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, organizing antislavery conventions in Rochester and publishing a newspaper that endorsed suffrage for blacks and women. Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 1898-1908); Stanton and Anthony, Papers, 1:xxvi-xxviii; Blake McKelvey, "Susan B. Anthony," RH, 7:1-24 (April 1945); ANB, 1:547-50. and M^rs StantonStanton, Elizabeth Cady

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was the best-known feminist of her day. Born in Johnstown, New York, and educated at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, Stanton developed an interest in abolition and other reforms during visits to the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. Stanton became determined to work to advance the status of women when she and other female delegates were barred from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Eight years later Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott, organized the first-ever women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where Stanton had settled with her husband, Henry B. Stanton, the antislavery politician. During Reconstruction, she opposed the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they granted equal rights and suffrage to black males but ignored all females. She held to this position in the Revolution, the woman suffrage weekly she edited with Parker Pillsbury, and in the platform of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Susan B. Anthony founded in 1869. Besides presiding over the last organization for more than two decades, Stanton wrote numerous articles and several books, including the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage in collaboration with Anthony and Matilda Gage. Alma Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902 (New York, 1940); Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Woman's Rights (Boston, 1980); NAW, 3:342-47 are occasioning no little ridicule from the Western Press.

Always with love

Your Daughter

R. D. SpragueSprague, Rosetta Douglass

Rosetta 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.