Frederick Douglass to Martha Waldo Greene, December 21, 1877

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARTHA WALDO GREENE^{1The style and content of this unsigned letter indicate that it was likely written by Douglass to his longtime friend Martha W. Greene.}

Washington[,] D.C. 21 Dec[ember] 1877[.]

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Thanks to dear little Alice^{2Douglass most likely refers to Martha W. Greene’s granddaughter Alice Louise Sherman (1874–1965). Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Alice L. Sherman was the eldest of Martha W. Greene’s three grandchildren and the daughter of Martha Gertrude “Gertie” Greene and her husband, William Frederick Sherman. In 1895 she married Albert W. Dimick (1869–1932), an agent for a local cotton mill who ended his career as treasurer of the Grosvenor-Dale cotton manufacturing company. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A; 1920 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 231A; 1930 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 36; Transactions of the New England Cotton Manufacturer’s Association, April 24–25 (Waltham, Mass., 1901), 17; George S. Greene, The Greene Family of Rhode Island: With Historical Records of English Ancestry, 1534–1902 (New York, 1903), 454; “S.N.E.T. Club has Rousing Meeting,” Textile World, 13: 38 (2 December 1922); Find a Grave (online).} for her dear little letter and to her dear Grand Ma for having taught her to love me. I wanted the acknowledgement simply to know that the letter had not been tampered with. If all is well; I shall see Joseph Jefferson^{3Probably the American comedic actor Joseph Jefferson (1829–1905), who was born in Philadelphia to a stage family. He began acting at age four and became a sought-after performer in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. In 1859, Jefferson adapted Washington Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle for the stage and played the title role. The public never tired of him in that part, and he rarely performed any other for over forty years. Jefferson gave a matinee performance of Rip Van Winkle in Washington’s National Theatre on the day following Douglass’s letter to Greene. Washington National Republican, 21 December 1877; Benjamin McArthur, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre (New Haven, Conn., 2007).} tomorrow. He has been playing here, to crowded houses during the present week and to morrow is his last for the season, I have been the more desirious to see and hear him ever since getting

your notice of him. I would wait to see him in your company, but I learn he is getting old and cannot be expected to remain much longer on the stage. Besides even if he should long remain it might never happen that the conjunction of time, place, and circumstances, would favor us—so I shall go alone. I should have gone earlier in the week but for numerous engagements capturing all my Evenings. Generally you are an excellent manager, but the Christmas visit to Providence was badly managed. At the time I declined Miss Hoswells^{4Probably Charlotte Rhodes Hoswell (1837–96), the daughter of William Hoswell, a boot and shoe dealer, and his first wife, Charlotte P. Rhodes. A lifelong resident of Providence, Charlotte Rhodes Hoswell was a music teacher who taught in the city’s private and public schools. She was also active in the woman suffrage movement, serving as one of the secretaries of the Rhode Island association. Hoswell died of typhoid fever in Providence on 17 January 1896. 1860 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 116; 1870 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 130; 1880 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 45A; Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, 4 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1901), 4: 907–08; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Rhode Island, Deaths and Burials, 1802–1950,” FamilySearch.org.} first note of invitation—I supposed its acceptance would clash with your Christmas visit here. Had I known, that your visit must be postponed till February, I might have run up to Providence on the 30th. Once having declined, and the time So limited allowed me to be absent & could not well do otherwise than persist in my destination. Well, we are now hastening toward the close of the year—and February will Soon be here—I look forward to it with with a mixed feeling of hope and fear, I want it to be a pleasant visit and one which may be pleasantly prolonged and repeated; but this in Some measure depends more upon favoring circumstances than upon ourselves. We may be ever so wise and proper and yet fail to hit the mark. I spoke to a very select and elegant audience at Mt Pleasant,^{5In the 1870s, Mount Pleasant was an early suburban neighborhood in the District of Columbia, northwest of the White House, reached by streetcars from downtown. Douglass might have addressed an audience at the Canaan Baptist Church there, one of the oldest African American congregations in the District. Washington Post, 5 April 2013.} last Wednesday night, and read with the Union Town Shaksphere Club^{6This amateur group began in the 1870s and was still performing in the 1890s. Washington Evening Star, 23 April 1894; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 136.} last night. The play was The Merchant of Venice and my part Shylock. This is my second meeting with the Club. I find it very pleasant and entertaining but I have no one at my house to go with me, and I often fancy that I am losing one half of the happiness of such occasions because in all such matters I am alone. You do not tell me how Mrs L.^{7The editors have not been able to ascertain the identity of “Mrs. L.”} came to know that you were much needed at this end of the line, and why she thought you ought to come, if only for a week—You need not answer this till I see you. I am not sure, but that you interpreted a little too broadly what I said of appearances of Concord in the Patton house.^{8Possibly a reference to the relationship between the wealthy New York City financier Ludlow Patton (1825–1906) and his wife, Abigail “Abby” Jemima Hutchinson (1829–92), the best-known member of the Hutchinson Family Singers and an old friend of Douglass. Patton, who sold his business interests (including a seat on the New York Stock Exchange) in 1873, was the younger brother of Howard University president William Weston Patton; Ludlow served on Howard’s board of trustees from 1878 through 1892. The couple married in 1849, and Abby retired from the stage, thereafter performing with her brothers only on special occasions. It is now believed that the Pattons experienced a lengthy period of marital discord, beginning in the late 1860s, as a result of Abby’s romantic relationship with Henry Blackwell, husband of the well-known abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone. Although scholars disagree about whether their relationship was ever consummated, there is a consensus that the relationship lasted for several years and had a lingering impact on both marriages. After his retirement, Patton and his wife largely spent the next decade traveling the world and visiting family and friends in the United States. Following his wife’s death in 1892, Patton married her greatniece Mrs. Marion Loveridge McKeever (1867–1922) in 1894 and appears to have raised her daughter, Helen, as his own. New York Times, 29 November 1886; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Essex County, 165A; Sally Gregory McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York, 2008), 179-80; Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York, 1998), 184–85, 200, 335; Chris Dixon, Perfecting the Family: Antislavery Marriages in Nineteenth Century America (Amherst, Mass., 1997), 231; Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995), 105, 106, 137, 144, 270; Henry Whittemore, The Founders and Builders of the Oranges: Comprising a History of the Outlying District of Newark, Subsequently Known as Orange . . . 1666–1896 (Newark, N.J., 1896), 27–74; Logan, Howard University, 137; Find a Grave (online).} My description of what I saw is entirely confined to the surface. I don’t pretend to look deeper

ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 210–11, FD Papers, DLC.

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