Brother Perry in Texas

Fred Douglass Rochester N.York

Perry Downs knowing that he is a brother of yours endeavoring to inform you where I am at. I am also a son of Harriet Baileys, Grandson of Elisabeth & Isaac Bailey, Talbert Co. Maryland, Lees Mill Hill near Hillsborough & to show you farther we all used to belong to R. & A. Emteney who was a clerk for Col Lloyd. I want to see a letter which you wrote to sister Alice since that John P. Emteney has sold my wife and for that reason I am in that State. I have found my wife and am still living with her. I am doing pretty well here and get treated pretty well also & I am getting $15.00 gold wages a month.

I have a great desire to see you if it is possible to make arrangements to bring me to you. I am 55 years of age now. Do you recollect the time I brought uncle harry Dons which was the last time I seen you.

I remain truly Brother
Perry Downs.


Address
Clarke & Dowzen
Millecan Tex
----------------------

Perry Downs was Frederick Douglass's older brother by four years. Douglass did remember Downs, and mentioned him twice in his autobiographies, first as one of the stranger siblings he encountered when his grandmother dropped him at Wye House, and, second, just before the division of the Anthony estate when Andrew Anthony kicked the living daylights out of Downs.

Downs dictated this letter to someone, as you can see by the phonetic spellings and the way that the syntax runs in a stream with little punctuation. The writer, for instance, rendered "Anthony" as "Emteny," suggesting Downs' pronunciation.

Downs verified his identity by recounting specific information that demonstrated a shared history. Anyone who read Douglass's autobiographies knew some of these details, but an unlettered, rural, former slave like Downs probably did not know that his brother had two autobiographies published.

I actually have not done enough research on the specifics of this letter. I'm not sure of Downs's fate after his valuation in 1826. He mentions John P. Anthony, who was the son of Andrew Anthony, suggesting that Andrew must have inherited Perry, who then became the property of John when Andrew died. Yet, he doesn't say that John was his own master, just his wife's. I don't know the identity of Downs's wife. "Sister Alice" could mean "sister Eliza" or a fictive "sister." ("Fictive" not meaning "imaginary" but one of their peers in their community.) Either way, she was someone they both had known. "Uncle Harry" we have seen in the inventory, the possible brother of their grandmother Betsey, who became the property of Richard Anthony. If they last saw one another in connection with Harry, then their last meeting took place in late 1826 or early 1827, forty years earlier.

By the way, I originally thought that "Millecan" was also a phonetic spelling. So I used the trusty Google maps to see if anything similar appeared in the county. Take a look:

Millican lies between Prairie View and College Station -- real, "separate but equal," aggie territory.

The answers to some of the questions might lie in the court records of Brazos County, Texas. I would suggest that as a research paper to a student if I still taught in east Texas.

By the way, Texas has a town called "Paris," up toward Dallas. You may have seen the movie. Maybe not (I haven't). Anyway, that bit of information is apropos of nothing except that, at the time you read this post, this Douglass scholar will be in the other Paris. You know. The one in France. Rest assured, I will be looking for Ottilie Assing's grave, the Bois de Boulogne where she committed suicide, and the location of the Paris morgue, which was located conveniently next to Notre Dame. Postings to follow, if there is anything to see -- and evenif there is not.

-------------
Source: Perry Downs to Frederick Douglass ("copied from original letter"), Millican, Brazos County, Texas, 21 Feb 1867, Frederick Douglass Collection, Manuscripts Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

Frederick Douglass Hall

In my research yesterday, I came across this letter, dated 4 May 1934:

My dear Friends:
It was pleasant to receive your telegram expressing appreciation of the University’s action in naming its new classroom building after your distinguished grandfather. We are sorry that the notice reached you too late for your attendance. I am happy to report to you that the dedication was well attended, that many eminent persons were present, including six members of the Douglass family. For your full information, I am sending you, herewith, a copy of the University’s news release of the occasion.
With cordial regards and best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Mordecai W. Johnson

What building had been named after Frederick Douglass, might you ask? This one:

The Frederick Douglass Memorial building on Howard University campus, right across the quadrangle from the library in which I was sitting while reading that letter and in front of which I ate lunch (because the Moorland-Spingarn closes for lunch) all week.

Now, I find that I absolutely must locate (wherein "absolutely must" means "it would be cool, but not really necessary except for fun") "L'ouverture Terrace" in Takoma Park. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, Frederick Douglass's daughter, had a home there in the 1890s. Since I have worked in Takoma Park for the past 4 years, finding her home might be rather interesting. If the same house is standing, then I might be able to ascertain the style of living enjoyed by her family at that point in time. Her husband, after all, was supposed to have been a former slave and had to struggle for survival (and respect) in the aftermath of Emancipation and the rise of Jim Crow. That's a story that I'm still trying to tease out.

The "dear Friends" to whom this letter was addressed, Hattie B. Sprague, Fredericka Douglass Perry, and Rosabelle Sprague Jones, were three of Rosetta and Nathan's five children.

Douglass and "Johnny Come Down to Hilo"

In one of the three versions of Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry's reminiscences about her grandfather, Frederick Douglass, she wrote about one of the games that Douglass played with the grandchildren when they were young. He would lead them into the dining room at Cedar Hill to the music of his violin, then teach them "songs of the rollicking slave urchins he had learned as a slave boy." She transcribed two of them, and one of them seemed surprisingly familiar to me, hearkening back to my days at Mystic Seaport:

Oh John Low! Johnny went down the hi-lo!
Oh John Low! Johnny went down the hi-lo!
Went down the hi-lo to get some gin,
Johnny went down the hi lo!
Drank so much he tumbled in,
Johnnie went down the hi-lo!

This actually sounds very much like an old sea shanty, work song, that has been transcribed this way:

Never seen the like since I been born
An Arkansas farmer with his sea boots on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

I got gal across the sea
She's a Badian beauty and she says to me…
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

Sally's in the garden picking peas
The hair on her head hanging down to her knees
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

My wife she died in Tennessee
And they sent her jawbone back to me
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man 

I put that jawbone on the fence
And I ain't heard nothing but the jawbone since
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

So hand me down my riding cane
I'm off to see Ms. Sarah Jane
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

Of course, you have to rearrange Perry's lyrics, remembered approximately fifty years later, to:

Went down the hi-lo to get some gin,
Drank so much he tumbled in,
Johnny went down the hi-lo!Oh John Low!
Johnny went down the hi-lo!Oh John Low!

This was a work song that that could go on and on as long as the leader, who set the pace, could make up verses or as long as the task took. It has an upbeat rhythm and was good for fast moving jobs. So, the song wasn't so much a "slave urchin" song as it was a maritime working class song. The musicologist at Mystic Seaport said that it can be traced to the south, most specifically the Mississippi River, but such things did not stay in one place very long on the water, and white Marylanders did much nefarious slave trading down that way.

I imagine that Douglass learned this song on the docks and in the shipyards in Baltimore. His de facto master there owned and worked in shipyards; and before Douglass himself learned the caulking trade, he himself lived on and roamed the streets down by the wharves in Fells Point.

Douglass's daughter, Rosetta, mother of Fredericka, however, did not appreciate this song and looked on in "great disgust." For Douglass, this was one of the few things that he brought from slavery, and he actually seemed to have loved all music, regardless of its origins. For Rosetta, however, this song (even if the "shake her" part were omitted) was undignified, with shameful and low-class connections from which she seemed to have wanted to distance herself. For the grandchildren, it was a rollicking song taught to them by their grandfather and they, two generations removed from slavery, saw no degradation in it.

For your enjoyment, and to illustrate the song, here is a video of shantymen Fisherman's Friends singing:



I'd be curious to know if the other song that Perry transcribed sounds familiar to anyone:

Oh Suckey Susan lend me a string
Oh lend me a string to tie my shoe,
A cotton string – it will not do,
A cotton string is like miss Lou (an aunt of ours)
A cotton string will break in two
A cotton string – a cotton string –
Oh do, oh do, oh do Mr. Babcock do!

Source: Box 28-4, Folder 88: Sprague, Rosetta Douglass, Notebook 1886, Frederick Douglass Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Founders' Library, Howard Univeristy, Washington, D.C.