~THE WIVES OF BROTHER ‘FREDERICK DOUGLAS’~ (5675 hits)

 

 

~THE WIVES OF BROTHER ‘FREDERICK DOUGLAS’~

 By

 Gregory V. Boulware

 Courtesy of US National Park Service

 And

 Michael S. Harper, “The love letters of Helen Pitts.”

 As Researched By Virginia M. Boulware, RN

 The National Association of Colored Women Kept The ‘Douglas Estate’ the Estate as a Memorial!

 “People who had remained silent over the unlawful relations of white slave masters’ with their colored slave women loudly condemned me for marrying a wife a few shades lighter than myself. They would have had no objection to my marrying a person much darker in complexion than myself, but to marry one much lighter, and of the complexion of my father rather than of that of my mother, was, in the popular eye, a shocking offense, and one for which I was to be ostracized by White and Black alike.”

  Helen Pitts Douglass.  Courtesy US National Park Service

 

Helen Pitts Douglass Facts

 Known for: 

 

• second wife of Frederick Douglass, in a controversial interracial marriage
• founder of the Frederick Douglass Historical and Memorial Association and saw that his Cedar Hill home was preserved as a historical site

 

Occupation: teacher, clerk, reformer (women’s rights, anti-slavery, civil rights)
Dates: 1838  - December 1, 1903
Also known as: Helen Pitts

 Background, Family:

 

• Mother: Jane Wells Pitts (1811 – 1892)
• Father: Gideon Pitts (? – 1888)
• Siblings: Jane Pitts, Lorinda Pitts, Eveline Pitts, Gideon Pitts (listed in the 1860 census as being ages 21, 18, 10, and 8 respectively, with Helen listed as 22; in 1870 Helen is still listed at home, along with her younger sisters Jane/Jennie and Eveline/Eva)

 http://womenshistory.about.com/od/racialjustice/fl/Helen-Pitts-Douglass.htm

 Education:

• Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Lima, New York

• Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, graduated 1859

Marriage, Children:

• Husband: Frederick Douglass (married January 24, 1884, his second marriage)

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Helen Pitts Douglass Biography

 Helen Pitts was born and raised in the small town of Honeoye, New York.  Her parents had abolitionist sentiments. She was the oldest of five children, and her ancestors included Priscilla Alden and John Alden, who had come to New England on the Mayflower. She was also a distant cousin of President John Adams and of President John Quincy Adams.

Helen Pitts attended a female seminary Methodist seminary in nearby Lima, New York.  She then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, founded by Mary Lyon in 1837, and graduated in 1859.

A teacher, she taught at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school founded after the Civil War for the education of freedmen.  In poor health, and after a conflict in which she accused some local residents of harassing students, she moved back to the family home at Honeoye.

In 1880, Helen Pitts moved to Washington, DC, to live with her uncle.  She worked with Caroline Winslow on The Alpha, a women’s rights publication.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, the well-known abolitionist and civil rights leader and ex-slave, had attended and spoke at the 1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention. He was an acquaintance of Helen Pitts’ father, whose home had been part of the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad.  In 1872 Douglass had been nominated – without his knowledge or consent – as the vice presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party, with Victoria Woodhull nominated for president. Less than a month later, his home in Rochester burned down, possibly the result of arson.  Douglass moved his family, including his wife, Anna Murray Washington, from Rochester, NY, to Washington, DC.

In 1877, when Douglass was appointed US Marshall by President Rutherford B. Hayes for the District, he had bought a home overlooking the Anacostia River called Cedar Hill for the cedar trees on the property, and he added more land in 1878 to bring it to 15 acres.

In 1881, President James A. Garfield appointed Douglass as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. Helen Pitts, living next door to Douglass, was hired by Douglass as a clerk in that office. He was often traveling and was also working on his autobiography; Helen Pitts helped him in that work.

In August, 1882, Anne Murray Douglass died.  She had been ill for some time.  Douglass fell into a deep depression.  He began to work with Ida B. Wells on anti-lynching activism.

Marriage to Frederick Douglass

On January 24, 1884, Frederick Douglass and Helen Pitts were married in a small ceremony officiated by the Rev. Francis J. Grimké, at his home. (Grimké, a leading black minister of Washington, had also been born into slavery, also with a white father and a Black slave mother. His father’s sisters, the famous women’s rights and abolitionist reformers Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké, had taken in Francis and his brother Archibald when they discovered the existence of these 'Mixed-race Nephews,' and had seen to their education.)  The marriage seems to have taken their friends and families by surprise.

The notice in the New York Times (January 25, 1884) highlighted what were likely to be seen as the scandalous details of the marriage:

“Washington, January 24. Frederick Douglass, the colored leader, was married in this city this evening to Miss Helen M. Pitts, a white woman, formerly of Avon, N.Y.  The wedding, which took place at the house of Dr. Grimké, of the Presbyterian Church, was private, only two witnesses being present. The first wife of Mr. Douglass, who was a colored woman, died about a year ago. The woman he married to-day is about 35 years of age, and was employed as a copyist in his office. Mr. Douglass himself is about 73 years of age and has daughters as old as his present wife.”

Helen’s parents opposed the marriage, and stopped speaking to her.  Frederick’s children were also opposed, believing it dishonored his marriage to their mother. (Douglass had five children with his first wife; one, Annie, died at age 10, in 1860). Others, both white and black, expressed opposition and even outrage at the marriage.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, longtime friend of Douglass though at a key point a political opponent over the priority of Women’s Rights and Black men’s Rights, was among the defenders of the marriage.  Douglass responded with some humor, and was quoted as saying “This proves I am impartial. My first wife was the color of my mother and the second, the color of my father.”  He also wrote:

 “People who had remained silent over the unlawful relations of white slave masters’ with their colored slave women loudly condemned me for marrying a wife a few shades lighter than myself. They would have had no objection to my marrying a person much darker in complexion than myself, but to marry one much lighter, and of the complexion of my father rather than of that of my mother, was, in the popular eye, a shocking offense, and one for which I was to be ostracized by White and Black alike.”

Ottilie Assing

Beginning in 1857, Douglass had carried out an intimate relationship with Ottilie Assing, a writer who was a German Jewish immigrant. He had had at least one romantic relationship with a woman not his wife before Assing. Assing apparently thought he would marry her, especially after the Civil War, and that his marriage to Anna was no longer meaningful to him. She did not count on how important marriage might be to a man who had been a slave, torn from his mother at a very young age and never even acknowledged by his white father.  She left for Europe in 1876, and was disappointed that he never joined her there.  The August after he married Helen Pitts, she, apparently suffering from breast cancer, committed suicide in Paris, leaving money in her will to be delivered to him twice a year as long as he lived.

Frederick Douglass’ Later Work and Travels

From 1886 to 1887, Helen Pitts Douglass and Frederick Douglass traveled together to Europe and Egypt.  They returned to Washington, then from 1889 to 1891, Frederick Douglass served as the US minister to Haiti, and Helen Douglass lived with him there.  He resigned in 1891, and in 1892 to 1894, he traveled extensively, speaking against lynching.  IN 1892, he began to work on establishing housing in Baltimore for Black renters.  In 1893, Frederick Douglass was the only African American Official (as a commissioner for Haiti) at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  Radical to the end, he was asked in 1895 by a young man of color for advice, and he offered this: “Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!”

In February, 1895, Douglass returned to Washington from a lecture tour. He attended a meeting of the National Council of Women on February 20, and spoke to a standing ovation. On returning home, he had a stroke and heart attack, and died that day. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the eulogy which Susan B. Anthony delivered. He was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Working to Memorialize Frederick Douglass

After Douglass died, his will leaving Cedar Hill to Helen was ruled invalid, because it lacked enough witness signatures.  Douglass’ children wished to sell the estate, but Helen wanted it as a memorial to Frederick Douglass.  She worked to raise funds to establish it as a memorial, lecturing on his history to bring in funds and raise public interest.  She was able to buy the house and adjoining acres, though it was heavily mortgaged.

She also worked to have a bill passed that would incorporate the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. The bill, as originally written, would have had Douglass’ remains from Mount Hope Cemetery to Cedar Hill, Douglass’ youngest son, Charles R. Douglass, protested.  In an article in the New York Times on October 1, 1898, his attitude towards his stepmother was 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 Douglass completed her memorial volume about Frederick Douglass in 1901.

Near the end of her life, Helen Douglass became weakened, and was unable to continue her travels and lectures. She enlisted the Rev. Francis Grimké in the cause.  He convinced Helen Douglass to agree that if the mortgage had not been paid at her death, the money raised from the property being sold would go to college scholarships in Frederick Douglass’ name.

The National Association of Colored Women was able, after Helen Douglass’ death, to purchase the property, and to keep the estate as a memorial, as Helen Douglass had envisioned.  Since 1962, the Frederick Douglass Memorial Home has been under the administration of the National Park Service.  In 1988, it became the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

By and About Helen Pitts Douglass:

• Helen Pitts Douglass. In Memoriam: Frederick Douglass. 1901.

• Michael S. Harper. “The love letters of Helen Pitts.” TriQuarterly. 1997.

• Researched By Virginia M. Boulware, RN    

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Posted By: Gregory V. Boulware, Esq.
Sunday, January 25th 2015 at 3:25PM
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