An index to the names in this series (PDF), created in 1974 before the original finding aid was published by the Library of Congress in 1976, is available online in PDF form. Anthony, Grover Cleveland, William Lloyd Garrison, Benjamin Harrison, Russell Lant, Gerrit Smith, and Ida B.

Includes letters Douglass received from prominent reformers and politicians, including Susan B.

General Correspondence, 1841-1912 (Reels 1-9): General and family letters received and drafts and copies of letters sent with miscellaneous attachments.

Family Papers, 1859-1903 (Reel 1): Diary, speeches, writings, and miscellaneous papers of Frederick Douglass's second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, but also includes a biographical sketch of Douglass’s wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray Douglass, written by their daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague.

Diary, 1886-1894 (Reel 1): A single diary that Douglass kept during his tour of Europe and Africa, 1886-1887, with notes made in later years.

The collection is organized in the following series: Also see the essay on this site titled Provenance, Publication History, and Scope and Contents. Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.įor a fuller overview of the collection, please consult the Scope and Content Note in the collection finding aid to the Frederick Douglass Papers, which is available online ( PDF and HTML) with links to the digital content on this site. The collection spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1895. The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm.

Life and times of frederick douglass