Lesson 200:
Anna Murray Douglass
An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 09/01/2025
Wow, we really are at Trading Card #200 in this series. That is sincerely not a milestone I ever expected to reach, back in the summer of 2020 when this project was first taking shape. It therefore seems only fitting that for Lesson #200 I pivot back to one of this project's earliest starting points and talk about the life and legacy of Anna Murray Douglass. While history mostly remembers her as Frederick Douglass's first wife, there is just so much more to her than "spouse."
Born to newly-manumitted parents Bambarra and Mary Murray in Caroline County, Maryland; Anna's particular timing and circumstance of birth in March of 1813, marked her as their first free-born child, setting her apart from the formerly-enslaved status of her seven older brothers and sisters. She stayed with her parents until the age of seventeen, and then set out to make her own way in the world; first as a housekeeper in Baltimore, and then as a laundress and as a shoemaker. Her work brought her to the city docks where she would meet her future husband Frederick Bailey --who was himself enslaved at the time, working as a ship caulker. Impressed with Anna's independent status and agency, it is popularly assumed that Frederick was sufficiently inspired by her to himself escape slavery; in fact this was likely even encouraged by Anna, who provided him with travel money and sailor's clothing as a disguise. Douglass found his way to New York and Anna eventually was able to follow. The couple were married in 1838, took the surname Douglass and then moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and raised ten children. For a time the family lived in Rochester, New York, establishing their own home as a waypoint along the Underground Railroad.
The previous paragraph is of course the barest-bones outline of Anna's history. But what she stood for, and what she enabled, encompasses a far greater scope.
What is often quietly --and disappointingly-- left out of the various narratives of the life of Frederick Douglass (including his own three autobiographies!), is the vital behind-the-scenes role Anna played in elevating her husband to his near-mythical status. One of the first realities of Frederick Douglass's fame was the fact that even the most legendary or well-received speech pays very little; leaving Anna's income to cushion most of the family's expenses. Similarly, while Frederick is named as founder of the groundbreaking antislavery newspaper The North Star, it was Anna who tackled all of the behind-the-scenes work in getting it published each week --to which is added an extra layer of irony when one considers that Anna was herself not literate. In truth Anna was rarely mentioned by her husband during his many social travels, meetings, political jockeying, and speaking engagements; even as his activism raised his status to literally the most well-known Black man in all of the United States. To call the relationship "estranged" is probably a kindness.
And yet... there was a quiet mythological aura that swirled around Anna; after the death of their youngest child at the age of ten, Anna had cause to travel frequently to Maryland to visit friends or family, in anticipation of an eventual move to Washington, D.C. On one such occasion a bystander noted in a newspaper account noted that, while Anna was waiting to board a train at Elkton Station, there was a distinct "flutter" amongst the gathered crowd, and "a great curiosity to see her was manifested." This suggests that despite the estrangement, that the general public knew full well who Anna was and what she was quietly accomplishing, and very obviously admired her for it.
Anna suffered a stroke and died in 1882 at Cedar Hill; her remains were later moved to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. In 1895 Frederick Douglass (who had remarried to Helen Pitts) was laid to rest alongside her.
Anyway: don't stop here. Learn more from the actual words of eldest daughter Rosetta Douglass Sprague's 1900 biography, My Mother As I Recall Her, in which she reminds readers who admired her father that his "was a story made possible by the unswerving loyalty of Anna Murray." (PDF file - https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/051200/051245/images/2713462.pdf)
Smithsonian article from 2018 (although given recent events you really might want to bookmark this one and save a local copy for yourself, given the Smithsonian's appalling decision to capitulate on censorship): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hidden-history-anna-murray-douglass-180968324/
Next lesson - Lesson 201: Dred and Harriet Scott
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