Tuckahoe Roots

Tuckahoe Roots. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.

"It is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born, if, indeed, it will be important to know anything about him." , Frederick Douglass

, The world-renowned abolitionist, writer, publisher, and orator Frederick Douglass was born upstream here on the Aaron Anthony farm in February 1818. He was part of the Bailey family, enslaved by Anthony. Slave status was inherited from mothers under the cruel American system of chattel slavery. Even though his grandfather Isaac Bailey was free, Isaac's wife Betsey and all of her descendants were born as slaves-for-life. Instead of birth certificates, Anthony recorded children's names as "property" in his farm ledger., From his agricultural landscape and fresh tidal creek Douglass rose to change the world. Here he learned to detest the traumas of slavery. In his earliest years he explored land, water and mill. He fished on the millstream's muddy shore. His quest for freedom and natural rights began on this quiet creek., As an adult, Douglass was hardly quiet. "Agitate, agitate, agitate," he thundered from the abolitionist lectern; drawing thousands from across the northern states, Ireland, and Britain. A leading intellectual with his own newspaper, he met with Lincoln to press for emancipation and enlistment of Black soldiers. Succeeding, Douglass then tirelessly recruited soldiers to fight for the Union Army. After the Civil War, he demanded full rights of citizenship for Black people. He was the first African American to hold positions as U.S. Marshal, Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia, and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti., Slavery split families and kinships. Frederick Douglass only saw his mother a few brief times. She named him Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. When he self-emancipated in 1838 and eventually arrived in New Bedford, Mass., he changed his name for safety.