Frederick Douglass Home Site

Rochester’s closeness to Lake Ontario made it an important route on the Underground Railroad, where runaway slaves moved secretly by road, canal, river, and boat toward freedom in Canada, aided by people including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Anna Douglass, Isaac and Amy Post, Jacob P. Morris, and Edward C. Williams. Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Bailey about February 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, escaped slavery, became a leading abolitionist, published the North Star in Rochester beginning in 1847, denounced slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act, urged that the Civil War become a struggle to end slavery, helped recruit for the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in 1863, and worked for equal treatment of black troops. His South Avenue home, where he lived with Anna Murray Douglass and their children from 1852 until 1872, served as a refuge for family, friends, fellow abolitionists, and escaping slaves, while also witnessing family life, the death of daughter Annie in 1860, the wartime service of sons Lewis and Charles, and a reunion in 1867 with his half brother Perry Downs. Douglass also pressed for education for African Americans and for his own children, including challenging school segregation in Rochester, while Anna, though herself illiterate, sheltered fugitives and sustained the household during his travels. In 1872 the South Avenue house was destroyed by fire while Douglass was in Washington, D.C., after which the family moved there. Douglass died on February 10, 1895, at Cedar Hill in Washington, D.C.; his body was returned to Rochester for services and burial at Mount Hope Cemetery, among a wider landscape of Rochester sites linked to his life, his family, abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and his long association and later disagreement with Susan B. Anthony over voting rights.

Rochester, New York · United States