On September 18, 1850, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive
Slave Act, serving as a compromise between Southern slave
holders (and their Northern financial supporters) and
Northern Free-Soilers. To proponents of abolition it almost
immediately became known as the "Bloodhound Law",
permitting slaveholders and their agents to surge north and
legally recapture escaped slaves, usually happening without
the bother of a trial.
One resident of Rochester, New York, objected strenuously,
declaring that the only true remedy against the law was a
good revolver, a steady hand and a determination to shoot
down anyone attempting a kidnapping. Nine years later the
very same Rochestarian would condemn friend John Brown's
militant raid on slave-holding forces at Harpers Ferry, West
Virginia. A controversial dichotomy held by Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey. Or, as he's better known,
Frederick Douglass.
In her book "Frederick & Anna Douglass in Rochester New
York: Their Home Was Open to All" a current resident of
Monroe County's central city, author/historian Rose O'Keefe
places the lives of Frederick and Anna Douglass in historical
perspective. In her introduction she explains how a man saw
her reading a biography of Douglass in the Downtown
Rochester Public Library. "He told me that some of the
Douglass children had attended 13 School on Gregory Street
in Rochester (which happens to be my neighborhood)". The
hunt had begun.
Readers familiar with Douglass' general history - well-
covered by online resources from his birth as a slave on a
Maryland farm, through his escape to the North at about the
age of twenty and his subsequent rise to fame as an
abolitionist speaker, publisher and advocate for emancipation
and equality for all, may be less familiar with the details of
his life in Rochester. And during most of that period his
steady companion was wife Anna Murray Douglass, an early
agent of the Underground Railroad, who had been born free
(by one month). Frederick had known her back in Maryland
where she was a house servant to his owners' neighbors the
Auld family where he'd been sent to live. He'd kept in touch
with her and around early September of 1838, from New
Bedford, Massachusetts, where he'd found work as a ship
caulker after escaping north, he wrote to Anna, asking her to
join him. She followed him and on September 15th thy were
married in New York City by the Reverend James W. C.
Pennington.
Over the next decade, a period O'Keefe covers in great detail,
Douglass became interested in the antislavery movement and
began lecturing and writing - and finally publishing in - the
growing debate over the subject, eventually becoming a major
spokesman for the issues involved, even traveling to Great
Britain. And spending periods in-between endeavors visiting
Anna back in Massachusetts, where over the next eight or
nine years giving birth to four children, Rosetta, Lewis,
Frederick, Jr., and Charles.
While all this had been going on Rochester, New York, was
becoming a central locale for the anti-slavery movement,
geographically as a main station on the underground, leading
to Canadian entrance sites across the Niagara River and Lake
Ontario. Susan B. Anthony and her family, active in the anti-
slavery movement had moved there n 1845. For these reasons
it had been attracting the attention of Douglass. More and
more he was becoming convinced it would become an almost
ideal geographical platform for his efforts. In February 1848
the Douglass family made the move, settling in a two-story,
nine-room brick home on the eastern section of Alexander
Street, just off East Avenue; the later soon to become home to
some of the city's finest mansions - including, one day,
George Eastman's - as it departed the downtown area
heading south. But, at this point Anna and Frederick had
chosen the location due to its low prices. Wealth doesn't
always accompany fame. Back in December Douglass had
begun publishing The North Star abolitionist newspaper, a
project he would continue on into mid-1851, with a reach into
Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Great Britain.
". . . subscriptions didn't cover production costs. Shortly after
he and Anna bought their new house, Frederick took to the
lecture circuit again in order to make ends meet."
Fifty-five dollars a week was not a small sum back then and
often costs rose another twenty-five weekly.
There was still a lot of pro-slavery activity in Rochester, so
most of the time Anna and the four children stuck pretty
close to home, especially with Frederick on the road. When he
was home he operated out of the Tallman Building on
Buffalo Street. He'd often arrive in the morning, to find
fugitives sitting on the from step. By evening they'd be off on
the Underground Railroad to Canada, via Lewiston or
Oswego.
But, as the book's subtitle state, "Their Home Was Open to
All". Often friends and supporters would arrive to visit and
remain in the home for extended periods of time. When
Douglass was at home these semi-residents and others who
just stopped by or an hour or two, listening as he played
"Nelly was a Lady" and "My Old Kentucky Home" on the
violin or sang ""Carry Me Back to Old Virginny".
Time passed. Eventually the family moved toward the
western section of Alexander Street nearer to the Genesee
River, and later to a nearby farm. In 1872 they moved again,
leaving Rochester for Washington, D. C.
Anna would die there in 1882; Frederick would follow suit 13
years later. Both would be returned to the central region of
their lives, burial in the family plot in Mount Hope Cemetery.
Rochester, New York.
The History Press
Charleston/London
paperback - $19.99
