Frederick Douglass's Children:

Charles Remond Douglass

 

In 1843 [Charles] Remond and the abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass toured and lectured against slavery throughout New York State, accompanied by the Hutchinsons, a family of abolitionist singers. On this tour, part of the famous One Hundred Conventions tour, British and American audiences began to take note of Douglass. That same year, Remond and Douglass quarreled openly with John A. Collins, their white Garrisonian colleague, and both were reprimanded. Douglass's admiration for Remond was so profound that in 1844 he named his third son Charles Remond Douglass (Greenidge-Copprue 1).

 

Charles was born October 21, 1844, in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Four years later his family moved to Rochester, New York, and he was educated in the public school system.  He helped deliver his father’s abolitionist newspaper, North Star.  In 1859, he served John Brown as a mail messenger when Brown lived for three weeks at the Douglass family home.

 

Douglass became the first African-American man to enlist for military service in New York during the American Civil War when he volunteered for the 54th  Massachusetts Infantry Regiment .[The official records listed him as 19-years-old; five feet, eight inches tall; with black complexion, black ryes, and black hair.]  His oldest brother Lewis Henry Douglass (1840–1908), also served in the 54th, ultimately becoming a sergeant major in that regiment. Due to illness [lung problems] in November of 1863, Charles was not able to deploy with the troops, remaining at the training camp in Readville, Massachusetts. Illness prevented Charles from participating with his brother Lewis in the assault on Fort Wagner on Morris Island, near Charleston Harbor.  Charles went on to join another black military regiment, the 5th Massachusetts Calvary, in which he rose to the rank of first sergeant. The following year of 1864 [September 15], Charles was discharged from service [at the request of his father] due to poor health (Who 1).

 

Charles planned to go to Tennessee to invest in cotton lands.  Instead, he tended the family farm and lived in his parents’ house [in Rochester] for two years, finding it difficult to secure an income-producing job.  He married Mary Elizabeth Murphy, called Libbie, in 1866.  Although this marriage was troubled by Libbie’s accusations of infidelity and Charles’s counter-accusations of jealousy, the couple had six children: Charles Frederick, Joseph Henry, Annie Elizabeth, Julia Ada, Mary Louise, and Edward (Emerson 1)

 

Moving to Washington, D.C., Charles served as one of the first black clerks in the Freedmen’s Bureau from 1867 to 1869 and in the Treasury Department from 1869 to 1875.  When his father purchased the New National Era in 1870, Charles became one of the journal’s correspondents, while his older brothers … were in charge of editorials and business management… (Emerson 1).  For several years Charles lived in the Hillsdale/Barry Farm area of Anacostia. 

 

With more than $50,000 set aside by General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, in a trust to develop “normal collegiate institutions or universities” these funds were used to purchase 375 acres from the descendents of James D. Barry in 1867. Sitting just beneath the Government Hospital for the Insane, which saw its first patient in 1855, the sale of lots would help relieve “the immediate necessities of a class of poor colored people in the District of Columbia.” Within two years, more than 260 families had made Barry Farm their home, the Douglass boys included. 

 

Writing in his autobiography General Howard recalled, “Some of those who bought one acre or two-acre lots were fairly well off. I found it better to have a few among the purchasers who were reasonably educated, and of well-known good character and repute, to lead in the school and church work, and so I encouraged such to settle alongside the more destitute.”

 

Charles and Lewis would move across town while Frederick, Jr. would spend the rest of his life on nearby Nichols Avenue, today Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue. In the early years of the 1870s, when in Washington to run The New National Era and serve on the Legislative Council, records indicate Frederick was living in the Anacostia area with one or all of his sons (Muller 1, 2).

 

As early as the mid-1800s, black baseball in Washington, DC, according to a local newspaper, was a mania of sorts.  Throughout the city, a sight of balls and bats wielded by black kids was not unusual.  Some teenagers and young men formed teams and played wherever they could scratch out a ball field.  Gradually, such teams as the Mutuals and the Alerts began playing some serious games.  Charles Remond Douglass … played on both those teams (Bruns 1).

 

By September 1869 Charles Douglass was serving as President of the city’s Mutual Base Ball Club, negotiating with opposing teams what field to play on, the rules which would govern the still-evolving game, and how to share the gate proceeds (Muller 1).

 

In the fall of 1870 the Washington Mutuals Base Ball Club, of which Charles Douglass was a member, toured “through the western part of the state of New York” and promptly defeated the Arctic Club of Lockport, the Rapids Club of Niagara Falls, the Mutuals of Buffalo, and a “picked nine” at Rochester, – the city in which Charles was born and raised by his father, Frederick, and mother, Anna Murray.

 

This box score from The New York Clipper shows Charles (his last name misspelled) playing right field and batting eighth in a game the Mutuals won 23-19. Charles, the youngest son of Frederick Douglass, accounted for one run and made four outs (Muller 1).

 

The first black American seated as a member of the United States Senate was Hiram Rhodes Revels representing Mississippi. Revels filled the seat vacated by Jefferson Davis, who left to serve as the President of the Confederate States of America

 

Up in the Senate Gallery that day, taking all of this in, was Charles R. Douglass. In a February 26th [1870] letter, to his “Father,” Frederick Douglass, Charles wrote,

 

Yesterday was one of the greatest days to me, in the history of this country.  …

 

Many voices in the Galleries were heard by me to say, ‘If it would only have been Fred Douglass,’ and my heart beat rapidly when I looked into that crowded Gallery, and upon the crowded floor, to notice the deep and great interest manifested all around, it looked solemn and the thought flashed from my mind that that honor, for the first time conferred upon a colored man, should have been conferred upon you and I am satisfied that many Senators would much more willingly see you come there than to see that Reverend gentlemen who has just taken his seat.

 

But the door is open, and I expect yet to see you pass in, not though, as a tool as I think this man is, to fill out an unexpired term of one year, earning from a state too that has a large majority – of colored votes; but from your native state to fill the chair for the long and fullest term of either Vickers or Hamilton – who only yesterday, made long wails and harangues against negro citizenship” (Muller 1).

 

Charles also served as secretary and treasurer for the District of Columbia schools after he was appointed a trustee to their school district in 1872.While working in the district he actively employed the first African-American teachers in the county’s schools and assured they received equal pay.  He served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission in 1873 (Who 2).  “The Santo Domingo Commission investigated the possibility of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States.  Grant saw the country as a potential home for southern blacks in the United States, to allow them to escape increasing oppression” (Emerson 3).

 

 

In 1875 Charles was a clerk in the United States Consulate in  Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, where he remained until 1879 when he returned to the United States after his  first wife’s death.   .  At this time Charles’s brothers and father divided Charles’s surviving children among their households in order to care for them.  Charles Frederick and Joseph Henry went to live with Frederick Douglass, Jr.; Julia Ada went to live with Frederick Douglass, Sr.; and Mary Louise went to live with Lewis Douglass (Emerson 2).

 

Joseph Henry would become famous.  Born in the Anacostia area July 3, 1869, the only child of Charles and Mary Elizabeth Douglass to live to adulthood, following “in the path of his famous grandfather and father, Joseph took up the violin at a young age, receiving classical training at the New England Conservatory for five years and later the Boston Conservatory. According to a history of black American music, Joseph would become the “first black violinist to make transcontinental tours and was the direct inspiration for several young violinists who later became professionals.” In his role as director of the department of music at Howard University and headmaster at music schools in New York, Joseph helped cultivate the budding talent of those who came behind him. According to his obituary in the Post from December 8, 1935, “His appearances at the White House were regularly scheduled during administrations of Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, after which he undertook concert work.” If only his grandfather had been there to see it” (Muller 2).

 

In 1880 Charles helped organize the Capital City Guards' Battalion, in which he served as a captain and major. The organization later became the First Separate Battalion, National Guard of the District of Columbia. Douglass would hold several commands in the District of Columbia National Guard, along with several high posts in the Grand Army of the Republic.

 

Charles “settled in Corona, New York, and entered the West India commission business.  He married Laura Haley of Canandaigua, New York, on 30 December 1880, and the couple had one son, Haley George.  Two years later he took a job in Washington, D.C., working as an examiner in the Pension Bureau” (Emerson 3).  In 1892 Charles developed a summer resort in Maryland known as Highland Beach, a twenty-six acre tract with fourteen hundred feet of beach frontage” (Emerson 3).   

 

When the 26 2/3-acre waterfront community was incorporated in 1922, it was the first African-American municipality in Maryland. Its 500 feet of waterfront on the Chesapeake is shared by all the enclave's residents.  Earlier, Charles Douglass, his wife Laura and son Haley George attempted to visit the summertime community of nearby Bay Ridge. They were turned away at the entrance to the resort hotel's restaurant because they were black.

 

Immediately afterward, while crossing a channel bridge over Black Walnut Creek, Charles Douglass encountered a black farmer, Daniel Brashears, who offered to sell Douglass some of his farmland to create a summer resort for blacks. The original offer of 40 acres could not be completed, but Douglass was able to buy 26 2/3-acres for the community he envisioned. The remaining acreage eventually became a second African-American resort community known as Venice Beach.

 

Leaving room for the community beach area and his own housing, Charles Douglass subdivided the remaining land into about 73 lots, most were approximately 50 feet by 100 feet. He sold them to other African-Americans. He selected a corner lot overlooking the beach for his father.

 

Frederick Douglass visited the resort and designed his dream house, a simple Victorian two story cottage. It was built by Charles Douglass  … The elder Douglass planned a small, sheltered balcony tower on the second level, just big enough for a solitary rocking chair. He had said, "I as a free man, could look across the Bay to where I was born a slave." He was born in February 1818 on the Eastern Shore in Talbot County.

 

He never got to live in his summer home. He died of a heart attack Feb. 20, 1895, shortly after his 77th birthday, and just weeks before the house's completion.

 

A succession of Douglass family descendants lived in the house until 1986 (Winters 1).

 

The resentment that the Douglass children harbored for Frederick’s second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, boiled forth when Helen attempted to convince Congress to pass an act that would incorporate the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, an organization that she had, soon after her husband’s death, founded.  Helen had wanted the Cedar Hill property preserved.  The children had wanted it sold.  Part of the bill authorized Frederick Douglass’s remains, interred in Rochester, to be reburied at Cedar Hill.  Charles protested.  In an article in the New York Times on October 1, 1898, he made his feeling clear.

“This bill is a direct insult and affront to every member of our family. In order to make the whole conception of a memorial to Frederick Douglass more attractive, it is proposed that the body be brought back here. Section 9 of the bill provides that the body of my father may be removed from Mount Hope Cemetery, where it now rests, taken away from the side of my mother, who was his companion and helpmeet for well-nigh half a century. And, further, the section states that Mrs. Helen Douglass shall be interred next to his grave, and that the body of no other person, except as directed by her, shall be buried at Cedar Hill.

“My mother was colored; she was one of our people; she lived with father throughout the years of his active life.  Three years after her death my father married Helen Pitts, a white woman, merely as a companion for his old days.  Now, think of taking the body of my father from the side of the wife of his youth and his manhood.  Indeed, my father had often expressed the wish that he be buried at beautiful Mount Hope Cemetery, at Rochester, for it is there that much of his great anti-slavery work was accomplished, and it is there that we, his children, were reared.

“In reality, I do not believe that the body can be moved. The plot in which it rests is our property. Yet, with the passage of a Congressional act authorizing this, there might be trouble. As for Mrs. Helen Douglass, I would have no objection to permitting her burial in the same family lot with my father, and I do not believe that there would have been opposition on the part of others of our family, although I do not now care to say as to that.”

Helen Pitts Douglass was able to get the bill passed through Congress to establish the memorial association; Frederick Douglass’ remains were not moved to Cedar Hill (Helen 1).

“Along with his brother Lewis, Charles at times accompanied his father on his speaking engagements.  He also served for many years as president of the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, a cultural and literary institution for blacks in Washington.  Sponsoring weekly lectures during the winter season, the association engaged local black speakers, including Frederick Douglass.  Charles himself also delivered several addresses to the association” (Emerson 4). 

 

Late in life Charles became a member of the District of Columbia’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  He served as the model for the monument statue to his father, which stands in Rochester, N.Y.

 

Charles Douglass died in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1920, (age 76) after a short illness attributed to Bright's disease. He was buried at Columbian Harmony Cemetery in Washington, D.C., on November 26. He was survived by his second wife, Laura, and his two sons, Joseph Douglass and Haley George, who would become the mayor of Highland Beach.

 

 

Works cited:

 

Bruns, Roger A.  Negro Leagues Baseball  Geogle.  Web.  <https://books.google.com/books?id=RqIEUDvjPGMC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Charles+Remond+Douglass&source=bl&ots=6BfYNI8t2r&sig=EsomDwx9UDWv5IxkSbY9Z12jEqs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiksbb4lprbAhVqCDQIHQpUAzw4KBDoAQgwMAI#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Remond%20Douglass&f=false>.

 

Emerson, Mark G. “Douglass, Charles Remond.”  Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass. Oxford University Press. Web. < <https://books.google.com/books?id=cCMbE4KKlX4C&pg=PA407&lpg=PA407&dq=Charles+Remond+Douglass&source=bl&ots=xXjNE-ZjwL&sig=AbZv0PRxeffVefkVVhS2ixAYp30&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihqcW5i5XbAhUM4GMKHZmHBZY4FBDoAQg1MAM#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Remond%20Douglass&f=false>.

 

Greenidge-Copprue, Delano.  “Charles Lenox Remond.”  Underground Railroad: Oxford African American Studies Center.  Oxford University Press.  Web.  <http://aasc.oupexplore.com/undergroundrailroad/#!/people/charles-lenox-remond>.

 

“Helen Pitts Douglass.”  Thought.Co.  Web.  <https://www.thoughtco.com/helen-pitts-douglass-biography-3530214>.

 

Muller, John. “Charles Douglass Calls Wearin-In … Pass In.” May 22, 2012.  < https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/charles-douglass/page/1/>.

 

Muller, John. “Charles Douglass in 1870 Washington Mutuals Base Ball Club Box Score.” Frederick … Anacostia. Web. < https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/charles-douglass-in-1870-washington-mutuals-base-ball-club-box-score/>.

 

Muller, John. “Frederick Douglass & His Sons Lived in Greater Anacostia Area in the Early 1870s; before Frederick Douglass Purchased Cedar Hill in the Fall of 1877.”

July 25, 2012. Web. < https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/charles-douglass/page/1/>.

 

Muller, John. “Frederick Douglass; Honorary Member of the Mutual Base Ball Club (September 1870).” Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Web.  <https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/letterhead-of-the-new-national-era-frederick-douglass-editor-douglass-brothers-publishers-lewis-frederick-jr/>.

 

Muller, John. “Joseph Douglass, Grandson of Frederick Douglass, the World’s First Famous Black American Violinist.” August 3, 2012. Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Web. < https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/frederick-douglass/page/3/>.

 

Muller, John. “Kenneth Bailey Morris, Grandson of Dr. Frederick Douglass, Recalls Childhood Memories of Highland Beach.” April 5, 2018. Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Web <https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/charles-douglass/>.

 

“Who Was Charles Remond Douglass?”Build Nation. February 8, 2017. Web. <https://buildnationblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/who-was-charles-remond-douglass/>.

 

Winters, Wendi.  “Home of the Week: Frederick Douglass Designed Dream Summer Residence in Highland Beach.”  Capital Gazette.  February 26, 2016.  Web.  <http://www.capitalgazette.com/lifestyle/home_garden/ph-ac-cc-how-higihland-beach-frederick-douglass-0227-20160227-story.html>.



Frederick Douglass's Children

Frederick Douglass, Jr.

 

Frederick Douglass Jr. was Frederick and Anna Douglass’s third child and second son.  He was born March 3, 1842, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  He and his family moved from Lynn, Massachusetts, to Rochester, New York, in 1847 when he was five.  He was educated in racially mixed public schools that his father had forced to integrate.  During their childhood years, Frederick and his brothers assisted his parents in piloting runaway slaves into Canada via the Underground Railroad through Rochester.  Initially, he and his brothers were taught type-setting at his father’s newspaper, North Star, to keep them off the streets and constructively focused.

 

In 1861, Frederick Douglas Sr. called for the use of Black troops to fight the Confederacy through the establishment of Negro regiments in the Union Army.  After Robert E. Lee’s defeat at Antietam in 1863 President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.  Such service in the army was now possible. 

 

Although many people would erroneously trace the social activism of the Douglass children to their father, such reconstructions fail to consider that not only was the father patriarch away for extended periods of time working against the pernicious system of slavery and therefore limited in his interaction with his offspring, but also Anna Murray Douglass was as much an activist as her much more renowned husband.

 

Frederick Jr. was impacted by the social activism he saw occurring all around him.  As a child Douglass witnessed his mother’s prominent role in the Massachusetts abolitionist movement with figures such as Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison.  It would be this tradition that most propelled the Douglass male children on to serve on the Union army side during the Civil War.  Frederick Douglass, Sr. had served as one of the initial recruiters for the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and Douglass Jr., mirrored his father most when he followed his example and served as a recruiter for the Union Army (Jones 1), initially in Massachusetts and then in Mississippi.

 

Following the war, Frederick attempted to enter the typographical workers’ union.  When that plan failed, he went with his brother Lewis in 1866 to Colorado, where Henry R. Wagoner, a long-time family friend, taught him the trade of typography.  While he was in Colorado, Frederick worked with his brother Lewis in the printing office of the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company (Emerson 1).

 

Frederick returned to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1868 and settled in the Anacostia area of the capitol, east of the Anacostia River in “Potomac City” (today known as the Hillsdale/Barry Farm neighborhood) and opened a small grocery store.  On May 21, 1869, Frederick applied for work as a clerk in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds.  Here is his letter of application.

 

Simon Wolf, esq., Register of Deeds:

 

DEAR SIR: I have the honor to request an appointment as clerk in the office of which you have the distinguished honor to be the head. I belong to that despised class which has not been known in the field of applicants for position under the Government heretofore. I served my country during the war, under the colors of Massachusetts, my own native State, and am the son of a man (Frederick Douglass) who was once held in a bondage protected by the laws of this nation; a nation, the perpetuity of which, with many others of my race, I struggled to maintain. I am by trade a printer, but in consequence of combinations entered into by printers’ unions throughout the country, I am unable to obtain employment at it. I therefore hope that you will give this, my application, the most favorable consideration.

 

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

 

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JR. (Muller 1)

 

Frederick did not receive the appointment.

 

He was now 27.  Although his health was always tenuous, he did play baseball.  He had played for a mixed race team in Rochester in 1859.  By September 1869, his brother Charles “was serving as President of the city’s Mutual Base Ball Club, negotiating with opposing teams what field to play on, the rules which would govern the still-evolving game, and how to share the gate proceeds” (Muller 1).  When Frederick moved to Washington in 1869, he helped to form the baseball club, the Alerts.  A newspaper account of one of their games appears below.

 

The announcement that the Pythian, of Philadelphia, would play the Alert, of Washington, D. C. (both colored organizations) on the 15th inst., attracted quite a concourse of spectators on the grounds of the Athletic. The game progressed finely until the beginning of the fifth innings, when a heavy shower of rain set in, compelling the umpire, Mr. E. H. Hayhurst, of the Athletic, to call the game. The score stood at the end of the fourth innings: Alert 21, Pythian 16. Mr. Frederick Douglass was present and viewed the game from the reporters’ stand. His son is a member of the Alert (Thorn 1).

 

On August 4, 1869, Frederick married Virginia L Molyneaux Hewlett, sister to the Washington attorney and, later, judge, Emanuel D. Molyneaux Hewlett, and daughter of

Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett, the professor of gymnastics at Harvard University.   

 

Emanuel Molyneaux Hewlett was the first black graduate of the Boston University School of law; he had a thriving legal practice in DC.  … Later in his career Hewlett was a justice of the peace and a judge in Municipal Court in DC and worked on ten cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

… the date was December 5, 1887.  On that day Hewlett and his similarly distinguished African American guest were told they couldn't eat at Harvey's [an oyster restaurant]. They were asked to leave.  …Hewlett filed a complaint, claiming that Harvey’s had violated the Equal Services Acts of 1872 and 1873, which prohibited racial discrimination in D.C. restaurants.  Harvey’s was fined $100.  Harvey’s appealed, on the grounds that Hewlett was not well behaved.  The defense attorney produced a story from the Washington Evening Star newspaper recounting a trip Hewlett had taken two months earlier to French's, a lunch room in the Center Market...Hewlett had ordered three eggs, a cup of coffee and some biscuits, for which he was charged three times what the meal should have cost.  He asked for the price list...and was told there was none."  When he tried to leave, Hewlett found the doors locked. The black attorney had to climb out a window, then walk along a balcony before entering another room that had access to an elevator.  This proved, Mr. Harvey testified, that Hewlett was a known check skipper. Knowing that, what restaurant would serve him?  A jury (from which the lone black member had been stricken) deadlocked and the case was ultimately dropped by the prosecution (Harvey’s 1).

 

Virginia had another brother who became famous.  Paul Molyneaux Hewlett “eventually dropped the Hewlett part of his name and became an actor in Europe. He was probably … the second black actor to portray Othello on the American stage.  Douglass, the senior, loved Shakespeare and quoted Shakespeare about as much as he quoted the Bible. I wonder if he ever saw Paul Molineaux, his son’s brother-in-law, play Othello on stage?” (Fought 1).

 

Frederick and Virginia had seven children.

 

When his father purchased the New National Era in 1870, Frederick became the newspaper’s business manager.  His older brother Lewis was in charge of editorials, and his younger brother Charles worked as a correspondent.

 

In 1873 Frederick Jr. campaigned unsuccessfully to be elected as a delegate to the Legislative Assembly of the District of Columbia.

 

When Frederick Douglass Sr. was appointed United States Marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, Frederick Jr. was made a bailiff.  That same year Frederick Jr. was the first African American to sign a petition that urged the House of Representatives and the Senate to change the Constitution to grant women the right to vote.  The 33 signatures on the petition demonstrated support the District of Columbia African-American community’s support for women’s suffrage.  Notice the first four signatures.

 

 PETITION FOR

WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

 

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

In Congress Assembled:

The undersigned, Citizens of the United States, Residents of the State of Dist. of Col., County of _________, Town of Uniontown, earnestly pray your Honorable Body to adopt measures for so amending the Constitution as to prohibit the several States from Disfranchising United States Citizens on account of Sex.

Colored MEN:	Colored WOMEN:
Fred'k. Douglass Jr.	Mrs. FredK. Douglass Jr.
Nathan Sprague	Mrs. Nathan Sprague        (Petition 1)

 

“Mrs. Nathan Sprague” was Frederick’s sister, Rosetta.

 

After the wife of his brother Charles died in 1879, Frederick and his wife Virginia helped raise two of Charles’s sons, ten-year-old Charles Frederick and eight-year-old Joseph Henry. 

 

Frederick Jr. secured a clerkship in the office of the recorder of deeds in 1881 when his father was appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia.  

 

On January 19, 1889 Frederick Sr. lauded the National Leader – an African American Washington, D.C., weekly newspaper begun in January 1888 -- as “the most staunch supporter of the Republican Party now published in this country” (Muller 1).  Frederick Jr., the Associate Editor of the newspaper, made this observation in the March 30, 1889, issue.

 

In parts of the District of Columbia inhabited by colored citizens, improvements are rarely made.  We have a striking illustration of this in visiting Anacostia; one can readily see where colored people’s property begins by observing where the improvements leave off (Muller 1).

 

Frederick’s wife Virginia died December 14, 1889, during an influenza epidemic.  Frederick lost the ability to cope.  His sister Rosetta became concerned about him.  Frederick wrote his father’s second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, that “Virginia was my all.”  Frederick’s son Charley Paul, age 11, was placed under the guardianship of Virginia’s brother, Emanuel Molyneaux Hewlett.  Charley kept running away.  Hewlett released Charley from his guardianship and Frederick’s brother Charles and his wife Libbie thereafter raised him.

 

Frederick Douglass Jr. died July 26, 1892, at the age of 50.  He had never had strong health.  He had not enlisted in the army during the Civil War and he had had difficulty getting settled in life afterward.  In September 1891 he had been admitted to Freedmen's Hospital for treatment, had been operated upon, and had returned home. The direct cause of his death was consumption.

 

The funeral of Frederick Douglass, Jr., took place at 3 o'clock today from his late home at Hillsdale. In conformity with the wishes of his father the ceremonies were brief and simple. The handsome casket was placed in the parlor, and a throng of friends gathered around. Rev. Dr. Francis Jesse Peck, Jr., conducted the services. "The Rock of Ages" was sung by four specially chosen members of Campbell A.M.E. choir. Rev. Dr. Peck delivered an address reviewing in appropriate terms the life of the deceased. Remarks were also made by several visiting dignitaries of the church. The remains were interred at Graceland cemetery beside the grave of his wife (Find 1).

 

The few letters he had sent to his father had been written in beautiful penmanship and had expressed perceptive ideas.  His colleagues and printers at the National Leader remembered him fondly.  He was more effective “in writing editorials that described the struggles of southern blacks following the Civil War.  He also kept scrapbooks of his father’s activities in later years, providing researchers with valuable information” (Emerson 2).      

 

   

 

Sources cited:

 

Emerson, Mark G.  “Frederick Douglass, Jr.”   Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass.  Web. < https://books.google.com/books?id=cCMbE4KKlX4C&pg=PA407&lpg=PA407&dq=Charles+Remond+Douglass&source=bl&ots=xXjND2-jsG&sig=47UOjQi5XKL8Rx0Xwp0S2mwsVm0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIwv76jZPbAhUD5mMKHUFFAO84FBDoAQg1MAM#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Remond%20Douglass&f=false>.

 

Fought, Leigh.  “Day Four: May 25, 2011: The Coolest Thing I Found Today...” Frederick Douglass: In Progress.  May 25, 2011.  Web. < http://leighfought.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-four-may-25-2011-coolest-thing-i.html>.

 

“Frederick Douglass, Jr.”  Find a Grave.  Web. <https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142171560/frederick-douglass>.

 

“Harvey’s.”  You Need a Schoolhouse.  February 14, 2018.  Web.  < https://www.youneedaschoolhouse.com/blog/2018/2/14/harveys>.

 

Jones, James.  “Douglass, Frederick, Jr. (1842-1892)).  The Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia.  Web. <https://books.google.com/books?id=sTV8OsmDQPcC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Frederick+Douglass,+Jr.&source=bl&ots=ZVGcuVe9Q0&sig=FZ5kwZQFsCJLUuOs2ZLAsctVyaE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0-aKfjovbAhVK9mMKHaSlCN44FBDoAQgsMAE#v=onepage&q=Frederick%20Douglass%2C%20Jr.&f=false>.

 

Muller, John.  “Frederick Douglass Endorses the ‘National Leader.’  Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. November 2, 2014.  Web.  < https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/frederick-douglass/>.

 

Muller, John.  “Frederick Douglass; Honorary Member of the Mutual Base Ball Club (September 1870).”  Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Web.   https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/frederick-douglass-honorary-member-of-the-mutual-base-ball-club-september-1870/.

 

Muller, John.  “Frederick Douglass, Jr. letter to Simon Wolf & Simon Wolf letter to Frederick Douglass, Jr. (National Republican, 22 May, 1869).”  Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia.  Web. < <https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/frederick-douglass-jr-letter-to-simon-wolf-simon-wolf-letter-to-frederick-douglass-jr-national-republican-22-may-1869/>.

 

Muller, John.  “In Anacostia “improvements are rarely made” [National Leader, 30 March, 1889, p. 4].”  Death and Life in Historic Anacostia.  Web. < https://deathandlifeofhistoricanacostia.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/in-anacostia-improvements-are-rarely-made-national-leader-30-march-1889-p-4/>.

 

“Petition for Woman Suffrage, 1877.”  Documented Rights.  Web. <https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/documented-rights/exhibit/section3/detail/suffrage-petition-transcript.html>.

 

Thorn, John.  “The Drawing of the Color Line, 1867.”  Our Game.  Web. <https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-drawing-of-the-color-line-1867-3ebec9782bb0>.



Frederick Douglass's Children

Lewis Henry Douglass

 

Lewis Henry Douglass was born October 9, 1840, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  He and his family moved from Lynn, Massachusetts, to Rochester, New York, in 1847 when he was seven.  He was privately tutored, presumably, until he was admitted to a white Rochester public school in 1850.

 

Lewis would become a printer by trade.  In her biography about her mother, Lewis’s sister Rosetta wrote:

 

During one of the summer vacations the question arose in father's mind as to how his sons should be employed, for them to run wild through the streets was out of the question. There was much hostile feeling against the colored boys and as he would be from home most of the time, he felt anxious about them. Mother came to the rescue with the suggestion that they be taken into the office and taught the case. They were little fellows and the thought had not occurred to father. He acted upon the suggestion and at the ages of eleven and nine they were perched upon blocks and given their first lesson in printer's ink, besides being employed to carry papers and mailing them (Sprague 2).

 

Lewis worked as a typesetter for his father’s The North Star and Douglass’ Weekly.  “At the time of the capture [1859] of old John Brown, his father having suddenly to flee to England, Lewis took full charge of his father's extensive business though only nineteen years of age” (Civil 1).

 

We get a glimpse of the Douglass family in Rochester during March 1861 from a diary entry written by Julia Wilbur, an ardent abolitionist neighbor.

 

This P.M. Mrs. Coleman went with me to Frederick Douglass’ & we took tea with all his family & spent the evening. It was a very pleasant & interesting visit. Mrs. Watkyes & Mrs. Blackhall & Gerty C. were there.  There was sensible and lively conversation & music. Mrs. D. although an uneducated black woman appeared as well, & did the part of hostess as efficiently as the generality of white women.

 

The daughter Rosa is as pleasant & well informed & well behaved as girls in

general who have only ordinary advantages of education. The sons Lewis, Freddy, & Charles, aged 21, 19 & 17 respectively, are uncommonly dignified & gentlemanly young men.

 

They are sober & industrious & are engaged in the grocery business. F. Douglass is away from home much of the time engaged in lecturing. He continues a Monthly Paper & of course it takes a part of his time. It will be one year tomorrow since his little daughter Annie died under such painful circumstances, & they all feel her loss very much.

Apprehensions for her father’s safety, & grief for his absence caused her death. She was a promising child. She was 11 years of age (Muller 1).

 

Lewis Douglass has been lauded by many historical commentators as having been the most responsible of Frederick Douglass’s children.  His brief service as a soldier in the Civil War is excellent evidence.

 

Lewis’s father had strongly advocated that African Americans should be permitted to fight for their freedom. 

 

The nation was slow to accept the reasoning of Douglass and his co-advocates, however, and many battles were fought and many soldiers’ lives were lost before African American men were seen to be needed for the war effort. 

 

The first African American unit to see significant action was the famous 54th Massachusetts ­Volunteer Infantry Regiment and Douglass served as a recruiter.  His son Frederick Douglass Jr. also was a recruiter, and his other son Lewis Douglass fought with the 54th at its most famous engagement – the Battle of Fort Wagner,[July 18, 1863] near Charleston, South Carolina.  Its commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was a member of a prominent Boston abolitionist family, was killed, as were 29 of his men, all African Americans.  Twenty-four later died of wounds, 15 were captured, and 52 were missing in action and never accounted for.  An additional 149 were wounded (Frederick 1).

 

Two days later, July 20, Lewis wrote this letter to his parents.

 

My Dear Father and Mother:

 

Wednesday July 8th, our regiment left St. Helens Island for Folly Island, arriving there the next day, and were then ordered to land on James Island, which we did. On the upper end of James Island is a large rebel battery, with 18 guns. After landing we threw our pickets to within two miles of the rebel fortifications. We were permitted to do this in peace until last Thursday, 16th inst., when at 4 o’clock in the morning the rebels made an attack on our pickets, who were about 200 strong. We were attack[ed] by a force of about 900. Our men fought like tigers; one sergeant killed five men by shoot and bayoneting. The rebels were held in check by our few men long enough to allow the 16th Conn. to escape being surrounded and captured, for which we received the highest praise from all parties who knew of it. This performance on our part, earned for us the reputation of a fighting regiment.

 

Our loss in killed wounded and missing was forty-five. That night we took, according to our officers, one of the hardest marches on record, through woods and marsh. The rebels we defeated and drove back in the morning. They however have reinforced by 14,000 men, we having only a half a dozen regiments. So it was necessary for us to escape.

 

I cannot write in full, expecting every moment to be called into another fight. Suffice to say we are now on Morris Island. Saturday night we made the most desperate charge of the war on Fort Wagner, losing in killed, wounded and missing in the assault, three hundred of our men. The splendid 54th is cut to pieces. All our officers, with the exception of eight, were either killed or wounded. Major Hallowell is wounded in three places. Adjt. James in two places Serg’t is killed. Nat. Hurley [from Rochester] is missing, and a host of others.

 

I had my sword sheath blown away while on a parapet of the Fort. The grape and canister, shell and minnies swept us down like chaff, still our men went on and on, and if we had been properly supported we would have held the Fort, but the white troops could not be made to come up. The consequence was we had to fall back, dodging shells and other missiles.

 

If I have another opportunity, I will write more fully. Good bye to all. If I die tonight I will not die a coward. Good bye.

 

Lewis (Natural 1)

 

Lewis had been courting Helen Amelia Loguen, the daughter of Syracuse’s Underground Railroad stationmaster and prominent preacher, the Rev. Jermain Loguen, for more than a year. Here is the letter he wrote to her, also on July 20:

 

MY DEAR AMELIA:

 

 I have been in two fights, and am unhurt. I am about to go in another I believe to-night. Our men fought well on both occasions, the last was desperate we charged that terrible battery on Morris Island known as Fort Wagoner, and were repulsed with a loss of 3 killed and wounded. I escaped unhurt from amidst that perfect hail of shot and shell, it was terrible. I need not particularize the papers will give a better than I have time to give. My thoughts are with you often, you are as dear as ever, be good enough to remember it as I no doubt you will, as I said before we are on the eve of another fight and I am very busy and have just snatched a moment to write you. I must necessarily be brief. Should I fall in the next fight killed or wounded I hope to fall with my face to the foe.

 

If I survive I shall write you a long letter. DeForrest of your city is wounded George Washington is missing, Jacob Carter is missing, Chas Reason wounded Chas Whiting, Chas Creamer all wounded, the above are in hospital.

 

This regiment has established its reputation as a fighting regiment not a man flinched, though it was a trying time. Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it was no use we had to retreat, which was a very hazardous undertaking. How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I am here. My Dear girl I hope again to see you. I must bid you farewell should I be killed. Remember if I die I die in a good cause. I wish we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to this war. Good Bye to all Write soon

 

Your own loving Lewis (Lewis 2)

 

In 1863 Lewis was teaching black students in a school in Maryland.  Hearing that his brother Charles had enlisted, Lewis resigned his teaching position and enlisted in Charles’s regiment, the 54^th Massachusetts. Almost immediately he was promoted to the rank of sergeant-major, the highest rank that a black man could attain. He was wounded after the Battle of Fort Wagner, became ill, and was discharged a year later. 

 

In 1866 Lewis and his younger brother Frederick, unsuccessful in business ventures at home, settled in Denver, Colorado Territory.  Lewis “was employed as a compositor on the Denver News, a Democratic paper. He was forced out of that job by the ‘Union’” (Civil 2).

 

Skilled African American craftsmen … found Denver trade unions extremely hostile to their aspirations.  … Partly because of his experience with the Denver labor movement in the 1860s, Lewis H. Douglass … roundly condemned “the folly, tyranny and wickedness of labor unions” in the mid-1870s. Lewis Douglass had come to Denver seeking work as a typographer but was unable to find regular employment because of his exclusion by No. 49.  “There is no disguising the fact—his crime was his color,” said Frederick Douglass in a speech denouncing the Denver Typographical Union and locals in Rochester and Washington, which had also denied admission to his son (Brundage 2).

 

Lewis and Frederick, in Denver, strived to be successful, responsible citizens in other ways.  They owned a laundry business.  They “created Denver's first black school, ran a mortuary, a restaurant on California Street and petitioned for Colorado to remain a territory until all men could vote” (Douglass 1).

 

On October 7, 1869, Lewis married Helen Amelia Loguen at the Loguen family home in Syracuse, New York.  Her father was Jermain Wesley Loguen, a prominent African-American abolitionist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the author of a slave narrative, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life.  “Amelia (Helen Amelia) and Lewis followed in their parents' footsteps, passionate for justice and education for the enslaved and newly freed. Amelia was excellent in math and French, her mother being her first educator. Mrs. Loguen, the former Caroline Storum of Busti, NY (near Jamestown), was a biracial woman from a free and educated abolitionist family. After the Civil War and Lewis's safe return home, Amelia and Lewis rejoined the Loguen family in Syracuse, dedicated to teaching, reuniting and rebuilding broken, destitute families after slavery. During the early 1860s, Amelia assisted her father while he preached (and ushered slaves to safety) in and around Binghamton, NY, an hour from Syracuse. She taught children (often from her own pocketbook) on Hawley Street at "School no. 8 for Colored children". As black churches in that time often had to double as school rooms, Miss Amelia held adult night classes at the AME Zion church in Binghamton as well” (Jermain 2).

 

Eventually, Lewis moved to Washington, and was appointed a compositor in the Government Printing Office [the first of his race], and was later promoted to proof reader, but during all this time the typographical Union No. 101, of this city, was making a spirited war upon the Public Printer, Hon. A. M. Clapp, for his (Douglass') removal. This was under the administration of President Grant, who visited the office during Douglass' employment there and urged him to "stick," and he did stick; the "Union" for its own safety being obliged to open its doors to colored membership, though Douglass was made the target for the bitterest and most cowardly kind of intimidation. Threats of death, cross bones and skulls, and every other means to force him out were employed, but he would not surrender. Thus he opened the way for many others of his race who have since found employment there (Civil 4).

 

In 1870 Lewis, frustrated with the discriminatory treatment he had experienced working at the Government Printing Office, joined his father and brother Charles to help edit a newspaper that the senior Douglass had just purchased half ownership.

 

Businessman George Downing and pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, John Sella Martin, encouraged the elder Douglass and his children to launch a newspaper in Washington that would serve as the black community’s voice in chronicling both local affairs and Reconstruction efforts throughout the former Confederate States.  On Thursday, January 13, 1870 the New Era was published as a weekly, making it the only paper of its day published and edited by “colored men.” In September Frederick Douglass purchased all ownership rights and re-christened the paper the New National Era (Muller 4).

 

On September 8, 1870, Frederick Douglass ran a small note explaining the name change.

 

This change is made, mainly because there are so many newspapers in the country bearing the same name.  The addition to our title is, however, highly appropriate, and the new name clearly describes the new character of our journal.  The field of our labors is as wide as the limits of the nation; it is our aim to speak to and for the people of the whole land rather than of any particular locality, and to make the NEW NATIONAL ERA a national journal in its truest and broadest sense (Muller 5)

  

This paper was the largest enterprise in the printing business ever undertaken by colored men, and the paper itself was the largest colored weekly ever published by colored men. They had their own steam presses, and all the matter printed was original matter.  The paper was ably edited [mostly by Lewis Douglass] and conducted, but the race at that time did not measure up to the importance of such a Journal, and for lack of support it had to be suspended  [in 1874]. Over ten thousand dollars was sunk in this enterprise (Civil 4)

 

In early 1871 Washington was given its own limited form of territorial self-government with a bicameral legislature of a popularly elected lower house and an appointed upper house.  … [Frederick] Douglass was appointed in April of that year to the city’s eleven-member Legislative Council by President Grant. With the demands of running his newspaper and other commitments Douglass’s career as a city legislator, however, was short-lived. On June 20, 1871, Douglass resigned. His eldest son Lewis would fill his seat (Muller 2). 

 

Pushing for racial equality during his one term Lewis wrote a bill that would have required restaurants to post their prices so they could not overcharge African Americans.  He took an active interest in the city’s public school system while a member of the Upper Chamber and afterward.  He attempted to serve his race and the general public as best he could given the racial limitations placed on him.  He became an Assistant U. S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and, later, an inspector for the Post Office Department.

 

He is said by contemporaries to have “had hosts of friends in every walk of life, and especially among the younger set.  He was passionately fond of children, and children took a great liking to him, though he had none of his own” (Civil 5).  He is described as being “of medium size, a little darker in complexion than his father, has a manly walk, gentlemanly in his manners, intellectual countenance, and reliable in his business dealings” (Muller 1).  Lewis’s health was damaged by a stroke in 1904.  He died four years later, at the age of 67.

     

 

Works cited:

 

Brundage, David Thomas.  The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver’s Organized Workers, 1878-1905. Web.  < https://books.google.com/books?id=km17gPiR2VwC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Lewis+Douglass,+Denver&source=bl&ots=pVUKmVwgU2&sig=cU5vkWw791KI0FjMO4EQ3Hd5lOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi517yXq_zaAhUB-GMKHRmyC044ChDoAQgzMAI#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

 

Civilwarbuff. “Lewis Henry Douglass.” Find a Grave. February 5, 2015. Web. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142221918/lewis-henry-douglass.

 

“The Douglass Brothers (1840-1908).” Colorado Black History Month.  DSST Public Schools. Web. https://www.dsstpublicschools.org/colorado-black-history-month-0.

 

“Frederick Douglass,” Frederick Douglass Honor Society.  Web.  https://www.frederickdouglasshonorsociety.org/douglass-history.html

 

“Jermain Wesley Loguen.”  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Web.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jermain_Wesley_Loguen.

 

“Lewis Henry Douglass.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. WikiVisually. https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Lewis_Henry_Douglass

 

Muller, John. “Diary Tells of Evening of Tea & Music …”  Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia.  Web.   <https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/lewis-douglass/>.

 

Muller, John. “Frederick Douglass, Editor of the New National Era, Explains Newspaper’s Name Change.” Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Web. https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/new-era/.

 

Muller, John.  “Frederick Douglass in Washington.”  MidCity: wwwmidcityDCNews.com.  Web.  < http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/content/frederick-douglass-washington-0>.

 

Muller, John.  “Lewis H. Douglass.”  Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia.  Web.  https://thelionofanacostia.wordpress.com/tag/new-national-era/.

 

Muller, John.  “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in Anacostia (Washington, D.C.) as told in the Washington Evening Star.”  Readex Report.  Volume 9, Issue 1.  Web.  < https://www.readex.com/readex-report/life-and-times-frederick-douglass-anacostia-washington-dc-told-washington-evening-star>.

 

National Historical Publications and Records Commission. July 18, 2013. School of History, Philosophy & Religion.  Web.  https://www.facebook.com/osu.shpr/posts/463312860431882.

 

Sprague, Rosetta Douglass. “My Mother as I Recall Her.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1923). Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. Web. http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/051200/051245/images/2713462.pdf.