Today, the historic property has been renovated to its 19th century splendor and is home to exhibits honoring the late Frederick Douglass, as well as very special Americans of his spirit who have received the National Caring Award. This award is given each year to the most caring adults and young adults in America. We invite you to browse this site for further information, or call (202) 547-7424 to schedule a tour.

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in February, 1818, in Talbot County, Maryland to a slave woman. Young Douglass quickly realized the importance of reading and education when his master strictly forbade the lessons taught to him by a kindly mistress. He later obtained a copy of the Columbian Orator and secretly taught himself to read and write.

In 1836, Douglass was hired out as a ship caulker to a Baltimore shipbuilder. There he met many of Baltimore's free blacks. Among them was Anna Murray, whom he married in 1838. In September of that year Douglass fled Baltimore for his freedom in New York. He settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts and changed his surname to Douglass, taken from Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake.

Between 1841 and 1847 Douglass became prominent in the abolitionist movement. He befriended abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and began speaking throughout New England and New York. In 1845, he published his memoirs, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave". Once his identity was revealed, slave hunters pursued him which prompted Douglass’ move to England. On December 12, 1846, his British friends purchased his freedom and Douglass returned to the United States a free man and well-known public figure. He settled in Rochester, New York and began publication of the North Star, which was later renamed the Frederick Douglass Paper. Nine years later, Douglass published the second of his autobiographical works, My Bondage and My Freedom.

Douglass moved to Washington, DC in 1871 and purchased his home on Capitol Hill. Seven years later he moved to Cedar Hill in the Anacostia region of Washington, DC, breaking the "whites only" covenant.

Douglass became the U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877 and Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia in 1881. The following year Anna Murray died and Douglass published his last autobiographical book, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In 1884 Douglass married his long-time friend Helen Pitts, a European woman.

In a speech in 1889, on the 26th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass denounced the national government for having abandoned black Americans. In this year he was also appointed minister-resident and consul-general to Haiti. He resigned this post in 1891.

Frederick Douglass died in his Cedar Hill home in 1895.