MUNSON TALES: Love, Abolition, Suffrage, and Frederick Douglass (Clan Ephraim) Part 1

On 14 Feb 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, who would later become known as Frederick Douglass, was born in what was most likely his grandmother’s cabin on the property of his owner. The scenic property was on the shore of Cheseapeake Bay in Maryland. Frederick would later become the most influential African-American and abolitionist in the United States in the days before the Civil War.

His mother was an enslaved woman and his father was reportedly white, though the definitive identity
of his father was never ascertained.  As often happened, he was separated from his mother in his infancy and raised by his grandmother, a slave, and grandfather, a free black man.  His mother worked on a property twelve miles away. It might as well been 100 miles. He saw her only a handful of times before she died when he was seven.

He was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Way House Plantation and then moved again, in a series of exchanges, to the Baltmore home of Hugh & Sophia Auld in 1828. Douglass reported Sophia had a tender heart. She ensured he had a bed to sleep in with sheets and blankets and that he was properly clothed. According to Douglass, city slaves were almost free men and treated far better than plantation slaves. When he was about 12, Sophia also began to teach him to read and write, but was quickly influenced by her husband, Hugh, to shut it down.  Douglass caught on that literacy must be the pathway to freedom and success. He began to teach himself. 

First wife Anna Murray

Douglass ended up in a couple different new situations in the coming few years, one of which was a brutal time on a plantation where the oveseer believed all slaves needed to be broken. By age 16, he was beaten frequently by the overseer until he fought back and was returned to Hugh Auld. Auld then sent him to William Gardiner to do ship caulking. Also while here, he met Anna Murray, a free woman. She encouraged him to consider escape and he saw freedom on the horizon. In 1838, he escaped disguising himself as a sailor and with papers of a free black sailor and money for traveling from Anna. He jumped a train and then a steamboat to Philadelphia to “Quaker City,” an abolition stronghold, and then to a abolition safehouse in New York City. Eleven days later, Anna arrived with all they needed to start life together. They were married on 15 Sep 1838. His career as an abolition speaker and writer began almost as soon as he arrived. Anna and Frederick started their family with the arrival of their first daughter, Rosetta. Three boys and another daughter would eventually join her—all born into freedom.

He was not only a dedicated abolitionist, but also supported equality for women and the suffrage movement. By now, his work took him all over the free places he could go.

Gideon Pitts, Jr. was an faithful 19th-century abolitionist. He was an “Underground Railroad” conductor who hid slaves in his basement along the route to their next stop. He lived in Honeoye, New York, and was a close friend and supporter of Douglass. Pitts provided financial aid to him and even hosted him in his home starting in the 1840s when Douglass spoke in his area, which he did often. Gideon’s wife, Jane, was the great granddaughter of Ephraim Munson, namesake of Clan Ephraim.  The couple also fought for suffrage.

Jane and Gideon had five children, the oldest of whom was Hellen “Mary” Pitts. Mary attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, one of the “Seven Sisters,”  and graduated in 1859. Mary returned home and continued to work with her father against slavery and for the woman’s vote.

Douglass' daughter Rosetta

In the meantime, Frederick Douglass spent a few years  living in England in the mid 1840s, where he convinced abolitionist Thomas Clarkson to abolish slavery throughout the English Commonwealth. One of his fans led the charge to raise the money to have him freed from owner Thomas Auld in 1846. When returned to the U.S. in 1847 he took the 500 pounds his British friends had given him to start his first abolitionist newspaper, the North Star in New York.In 1848, he was the only person of color who attended the first suffrage convention where he started his long friendship with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He began using his paper to push for women’s rights.

Part 2 tomorrow

[There is so much more to Frederick Douglass' life and I encourage you to read more about him to learn just how much he impacted the world in which he moved.]