National Portrait Gallery says: Anna Murray Douglass died from “paralysis” in August 1882 at Cedar Hill, the family home in Washington, D.C. (now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site). Eighteen months later, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a radical activist and intellectual from western New York. Douglass hired Pitts when he was working as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. She was white and twenty years his junior, which led to scandalmongering in the press and tension within his family.
In 1884, the couple honeymooned in Niagara Falls, where this studio photograph was likely made.
Unidentified photographer
Reproduction of albumen silver print from 1884
Courtesy of Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
