Quibbling With Details: Helen Pitts Seems Not To Have Worked at Hampton

Helen Pitts had a career long before she took advantage of the patronage system and went to work for her uncle's neighbor in the Recorder of Deeds office. Like many genteel and educated young ladies, both black and white, she became a teacher. The advent of the Civil War allowed her to put both her education and her reform impulse to work by joining the American Missionary Association in educating newly freed African Americans in the south.

All primary sources -- that is, the AMA records and her alumna file at Mt. Holyoke College -- say that she went to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1863 and remained there until 1864. Disease ran rampant, and she fell to typhoid or some similar infection. She convalesced through the following year back at her home in Honeoye, New York, south of Rochester.

If you look in Douglass's biographies, you find very little written about her until the past 20 years. In the more recent books, you find her mentioned, but, outside of a quite good and well-documented 1995 Shippensburg dissertation by Julie R. Nelson, most Douglass biographers have expressed little curiosity about her as a living person and an actor in Douglass's life. (This was one of the factors that led me to conceive of this book in the first place.) Lack of curiosity often leads to the repetition of unverified information, and I came across this in piecing together Pitts's life.

As an aside to the uninitiated: historians will look at secondary sources -- books written by other historians -- in order to see what those other historians say about a subject, to gain some insight into the subject, and to find clues pointing toward primary sources -- contemporary records documenting the events in question. As a rule, it is best to cite the secondary sources in matters of interpretation and only the primary sources for points of fact. Otherwise, you must place trust in someone else's reading of those primary documents and that is not always the wisest thing to do. This is a case in point.

William McFeely, in his well-written but weakly-researched biography Frederick Douglass, wrote, "In the 1860s, following the Civil War, Helen Pitts taught at Hampton Institute, later Booker T. Washington's alma mater. Ill-health, perhaps coupled with discouragement, sent her back to Honeoye, where she remained for several years." [p. 310] Maria Diedrich, in her extremely flawed Love Across Color Lines, wrote, "She was a well-educated woman who had graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1857 and had taught at Hampton Institute." (Actually, Pitts began in 1857 and graduated in 1859 -- but that's not the detail about which I am quibbling right now.) Diedrich cites MeFeely for that information, as does about every website mentioning Pitts, and McFeely has no source. That alone should be cause for consternation.

Hampton Institute was formed by the American Missionary Association, for whom Pitts did work as a teacher; but the Institute did not open until 1868, four years after she left Virginia. I don't have clear documentation for Helen's whereabouts between 1866 and her arrival in Washington, D.C., a decade later, so I wondered if this were true. McFeely's narrative resembles that of her experience in Norfolk, and he fails to mention Norfolk at all, so maybe he got his sources mixed up, or maybe he thought that, because she worked for the AMA and the AMA opened Hampton, then she must have taught at Hampton (hence his avoidance of specific dates). Maybe she worked in Norfolk, but after she recovered and after the war, she went back into the classroom, this time at Hampton. That could be an interesting layer to the story, and certainly Hampton might like that connection, as well.

So, I contacted Hampton University's archives. They responded with great efficiency. Not only did the school not open until after the period in which Pitts taught for the AMA, but the school has no record of her attending or teaching at the school. So, no connection with Hampton.

Still, her story will be fascinating to write because, aside from Nelson, Pitts only appears in conjunction with the death of Anna Douglass, the suicide of Ottilie Assing (the fallacy of the last is for another post), and the controversy that her interracial marriage caused. Like I said, no one but Nelson has attempted to understand her and she held a complicated place in Douglass's life, both while he was living and in commemorating him after he had died.

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Image source: National Parks Service, http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/douglass/exb/homeinWashington/FRDO318_helenDouglass.html

Honeoye, part 2

I ended up going back to Honeoye. Saturday morning, I went to the Rochester Public Library's Local History Room to see what they might have that will help me flesh out the context of Douglass family in Rochester. I'm particularly interested in the African-American community in that area since it works into some of my understanding of Anna and her own sense of community. Sadly, very little scholarly work has been done on African-Americans in Rochester. Happily (especially for her prospects as a historian), a graduate student at University of Rochester,  Monique Patenaude, is working on this subject.

As has been happening all week, I was digging a dry well. There are patterns to the dryness that I will write about later, so dry wells are not a loss. They are, in fact, quite valuable in guiding the way to a more accurate understanding of the subject; but, as I just said,more on that later. In the process of digging this well, I came across one of those WPA Writers' Project guides, this one concerning Rochester and its vicinity. These guides are fantastic in showing historic preservation and routes of travel in the 1930s; and this one included a "tour" that brought the traveller through Honeoye. The "tour" through Honeoye mentioned landmarks: a statue to Major General John Sullivan of Sullivan's Expedition (in)fame, a historical marker for the home of Gideon Pitts, and a historical marker for the home of Captain Peter Pitts. Peter Pitts was one of the earliest settlers of Honeoye and the father of Gideon Pitts; and Gideon Pitts was the father of Helen Pitts, the second Mrs. Douglass. (I may be missing a generation in there. My copy of the biography of Helen Pitts is, unfortunately, not on  hand.)
"Maybe they are still there," I thought. I also wondered, "How could I have missed a whole statue?" Of course, missing a statue may have had something to do with the fact that I had probably not seen the entire town since hunger,  exhaustion, and traffic from road construction made me  conclude that I had seen everything when, as it turned out, I was only about half to three-quarters of the way through the village. So,  after leaving the public library,  and after making a pass through Mount Hope Cemetery to see the Porter mausoleum (I thought it only respectful after having trawled through their family letters all week -- plus,  I'm a bit of a ghoul), I turned my green machine toward Honeoye.

Now alert and also more familiar with the route than I had been two days earlier, I did not miss this sign as I entered the village:

The marker to Peter Pitts's home.

I followed the same path through the village as I had before,  but did not let traffic deter me. Beyond the road work, the street went uphill and past this house:

What should be standing in front of this house? This marker!:

"Pitts Mansion. Built 1821 by Gideon Pitts, son of Capt. Peter Pitts, pioneer settler in 1789." Also, this was the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Pitts. Whether or not the house is the actual house,  I do not know and someone more versed in architectural history, especially the architectural history of western New York, or the local history of Honeoye could probably tell me more.

I did not find the statue of John Sullivan. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. On the one hand,  Sullivan's Expedition was a nasty, genocidal bit of American history, and a statue celebrating him is not the best idea. On the other hand, with the proper signage, perhaps that nasty, genocidal bit of American history and the reasons certain people  wanted to celebrate it might be addressed. Then, my sarcasm kicks in as I think about how well such attempts have gone in places like Mystic, Connecticut, and Deerfield, Massachusetts, when the older, celebratory statues and signs met with effort to update those sites to include more complicated and current knowledge of the violent historical events that occurred there. Perhaps that is what separates heritage from history: heritage is a celebration of a particular person's or group's past, while history is an attempt to understand the intricate interactions and points of view of the past, without too much identification with any one person or group.

In any case, I find something poetic, or ironic, in the fact that Peter Pitts participated in the oppression of one group of non-white people while his granddaughter challenged the oppression of another group of non-white people. He made war, and she quite literally made love.



Honeoye, New York

It is late, and I have been in the archive all day, drilling a dry research well. Fortunately, there is a pattern to what I am not finding.

After a disappointing day, I decided to go out to see where Helen Pitts, the second Mrs. Frederick Douglass, grew up. The drive took me off of the interstate (imagine!) and down winding highways to Honeoye.

 This is essentially the whole town, which is a hamlet, actually, complete with a sheriff ensuring that you observe the speed limit. He's the white car on the right in the distance.

 I do know that the Pitts lived along this street somewhere, but little evidence is left of that period of time in this area. So many layers of time can erode small places sometimes.

If you keep going straight down the street, you eventually go up a hill where you can find a scenic overlook. This is the view from there:

I imagine there were fewer trees then, as well.

This is a lovely, small, quiet place; but I imagine for a young woman in the nineteenth century, one with a burning to end slavery, to do good in the world, to do something at all in the world, it was much too small and much too quiet. She went to college at Mt. Holyoke, also a lovely, small quiet place.

Then, in the Civil War, she went south, into the Confederacy, to teach freedpeople in Norfolk, Virginia. After the war, she ended up in Washington, D.C. working on the women's journal The Alpha and in the Recorder of Deeds office where her boss was Frederick Douglass.  She now rests in Mt. Hope Cemetery, next to him and Anna Murray, the first Mrs. Frederick Douglass,  and not too very far from where I am researching.
 

Second Funniest Thing Found In the Garrison Family Papers

In the Garrison Family Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, I found a special issue of the British journal Anti-Caste.  This issue had been published in the spring of 1895 in memorial to Frederick Douglass, who had died in February. In this issue,  the editor, Catherine Impey, reprinted "Extracts from the Editor's Diary of a Visit to 'Cedar Hill,'" the visit in question having taken place in September 1892.

At one point in her week long visit, Impey described an excursion to the Art Gallery with Douglass; his wife, Helen Douglass; Helen's sister, Eva Pitts; Helen's friend, Miss Foy; and Douglass's granddaughters, Annie and Estella Sprague. "F.Douglass and six ladies," Impey parenthetically reported. Parenthetically, I am  surprised that she did not include an exclamation mark. Furthermore, on the way to the Art Gallery, they met with two other women, "a Mrs. Lee and her daughter, from Chicago (coloured)." Now, the party consisted of F. Douglass and eight ladies.

Understand that, in 1892, Douglass was 74 years old. Yet, he still had the physique to command this description from Impey as she, from her guest room window,  saw him strolling in the yard below. "What a grand majestic figure it is," she wrote. "Fine features, with a crown of white hair like the Egyptian monarchs of old." The magnetism of his youth was still present as he aged.

Yet, what struck me in this description, as in other indications of his life from the earliest accounts, including his own, was that he was surrounded by women and seemed most at ease among them. The only men who appear in this description of Impey's week at Cedar Hill were the carriage driver and Douglass's grandson, Joseph Douglass,who only appear to escort ladies off-stage. He is most jovial,  most relaxed, and most compliant around the ladies, and I am wondering why. Could this be his conservative or patriarchal streak? They are not a threat to him and generally in service (or thrall) to him; but is there something else there, something that carries me into the realm of "psychohistory"?

2nd Marriage

On this day, January 24, in 1884, Frederick Douglass married his second wife, Helen Pitts. The two went to work at the Recorder of Deeds office, where he was Recorder and she was a secretary working, at one point, under the supervision of Rosetta Douglass, Frederick's daughter. At the end of the day, they proceeded to the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where they were married by the Rev. Francis Grimke' (the black nephew, incidentally, of the white sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke'). Outrage issued from both black and white corners, including both of their families; and he seems not to have been entirely forgiven for this to this day. As for her, in the lawsuit-ridden aftermath of his death, I've notice a struggle for the position of the real Mrs. Douglass in the efforts to commemorate Douglass. More on that as I research it.

Interesting tidbits from the newspapers in the wake of their wedding:

• The New York Globe reported that Helen wore a "garnet velvet and silk" dress -- yes, red! -- while "the groom wore a full suit of black." 
• The Washington D.C. Grit headlined the wedding announcement as "The Mistake of His Life," saying "It is not only a surprise, but a national calamity," adding, "But he suited himself; so we leave him in his glory (?)."
• Columnist Africanus in the Cleveland Gazette accused Douglass of attempting to "bleach out the race" through miscegenation.
• The Louisiana Standard exaggerated their age difference, saying "We must say that marriages between septuagenarians and young ladies in their thirties are not according to our idea of the fitness of things." Still, the editors, "wish the venerable old man a happy evening of his eventful life." Douglass was on the eve of his 66th birthday. Helen Pitts was forty-six.
• Not in a newspaper, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton turned a congratulatory letter into a plea for woman's suffrage.