Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Anna Murray Douglass. She lived from 1813 - 1882. Anna was born in Denton, Maryland to Banbarra and Mary Murray. Unlike her seven older brothers and sisters, who were born in slavery, Anna and her younger four siblings were born free - her parents having been freed by their slave owners just a month before her birth. When she was seventeen years old, Anna left home to work as a domestic helper in Baltimore, Maryland.
Baltimore boasted a diverse population that included a community of more than 10,000 enslaved people and 17,000 free people of colour. While slavery remained legal in Maryland until 1864, free black men and women in Baltimore organised churches, established school, and maintained several stops on the Underground Railroad.
It was withing this activist community of free Blacks that Anna met her future husband Frederick Douglass in 1838. He was still enslaved so Anna enabled his escape by, among other things, sewing him a sailor's uniform as a disguise and borrowing a freedman's protection certificate so that he could leave Maryland. In addition, she financed Frederick's travels with savings from her domestic work and from the proceeds from the sale of personal items.
Read Part One Hundred And Twenty-Three HERE
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