Ruth Cox Adams

Ruth Cox Adams was enslaved the day she was born which was December 18th, 1818, on the Eastern Shore in Talbot County, Maryland. Ebby Cox, Ruth’s mother, was enslaved by a man she later recalled as being named Fitzhugh Lee, and her father was a free man.

Ruth Cox Adams’ earliest recollections were of the joy she found when her father came to visit her. When her father came to visit, he brought good things to eat and even money for Adams to buy cakes. Ruth’s father was a free man and could go anywhere that he wanted. Adams also remembers very faintly that she had a brother who was sold away when she was very young. Adams never saw her mother, as Ebby Cox was sold away to a different family when Adams was still quite small. The only time she ever communicated with her mother was later in her life through letters. Ebby Cox died on December 20th, 1883, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

As an enslaved child, Ruth Cox Adams was responsible for household chores, which included watching over the slave owner’s children. Ruth’s owner was away for long periods of time and trusted Adams with large sums of money during his absence. As an enslaved house servant, she rarely interacted with the others enslaved on the plantations and felt isolated. However, when Lee was gone, Adams would sneak off to see the other enslaved people on the plantation and it was on these visits she was taught how to read and write.

Adams escaped from slavery sometime in the early 1840s. She had made the escape when she was twenty four years old and she had the help of a free African-American. During her escape, the Quakers of Pennsylvania also helped her cross over to freedom in the North. There is not an abundance of information about her escape, but she told a few stories of how she barely reached a house to stay at for the day before federal agents were on the property looking for slaves. She also recalled a time when she was riding in a wagon under a big bale of hay when the driver was stopped by agents looking for slaves. The driver gave such a good lie to the agents that they never stopped and looked under the hay. This was just one of the very close calls that Adams had to endure on her escape to freedom. She was secreted from Maryland to Pennsylvania and finally to New York. At some point, while in New York, Ruth was invited to live with Frederick Douglass and his family.

It is likely Ruth met Douglass when she attended a Sabbath
School meeting in the 1830s that Douglass is known to have spoken at. At these meetings Douglass encouraged fellow slaves to learn how to write and find their freedom in the North. After meeting Adams in the North, Frederick Douglass claimed her to be his long lost sister, which seemed very possible because he was also born on the East Shore Talbot Country, Maryland and had been sold away from his family at just eight years old. He invited her to his house in Eastern Massachusetts because of all these similarities. Ruth lived with the Douglass family from approximately 1842 to 1847.

After she arrived at Frederick Douglass’ house in Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass gave her the name of Harriett Bailey, after his mother, to protect her from slave catchers. As she lived in his house, she tutored his children by teaching them to read and write because Frederick Douglass’ wife, Anna, could not read or write. Frederick Douglass was frequently absent because of lecturing or selling his books in the United States and also a few other countries, such as Great Britain and Haiti. While he was gone, Adams and Douglass kept in very close touch through letters. One of the letters Frederick Douglass sent to her while away was about how deeply grateful he was to her and how she was dearer than ever to him. Through the remainder of his life he would never forget Ruth Cox Adams for all of the amazing things she did for his children and wife as he was away trying to get equality for everyone.

Ruth Cox Adam’s caught the eye of many young men in Massachusetts, and in 1847, she wrote to Frederick Douglass telling him about her wish to marry a young man that she had met. Her request was that he would attend the wedding, and she also asked him to get her a silk dress to wear. His response back was very long, and Frederick Douglass was not very pleased. Douglass hinted that he was a little upset that he did not even know the name of Ruth’s new found lover, and that she selfishly asked him for a dress while he didn’t even have any details about the man she was about to marry. He told her to consider it very carefully before she married him, because marriage was something that couldn’t be undone, and that it would hurt him very much for her to marry someone who couldn’t support her. In the same letter back he finally agreed to be at the wedding if she decided to go through with it. He also later paid for her wedding dress, and now a piece of the ribbon is found in Ruth Cox Adams sewing box, which is a box that Frederick Douglass had given her as a gift, and has been handed down from Ruth Cox Adams family for almost 130 years.

Upon Frederick Douglas’ arrival to the United States from Haiti, Ruth Cox Adams’ was married. On November 11th, 1847, she married Perry Francis Adams. Ruth and Perry were married in the Douglass household. Frederick Douglass had found a beautiful silk dress that he purchased for Ruth while he was on an abolition trip. Perry Francis Adams was a skilled mechanic, and he took good care of Ruth, and succeeded Frederick Douglass’ only wish for her. After Ruth married Perry, they moved to Springfield, Massachusetts and resided there. Ruth and Perry Adams had three children together while they were in Springfield. The oldest was Matilda Ann, who was born in 1849.

The middle child was Ebby, named after Ruth’s mother, and she was born in 1852. The youngest child was Perry Francis, Jr., who was born in 1854.

Even though Ruth had moved on with her life and went on to have a family of her own, she still frequently heard from the Douglass household. Rosetta Douglass had learned to read and write and wrote for Anna Douglass when Frederick Douglass was away. After the end of each letter that Rosetta wrote for Anna to Ruth Cox Adams, Rosetta would usually add her own little note, usually calling Ruth her aunt.

Soon after Perry Francis, Jr. was born, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Chief Justice Taney in 1850 and no escaped slave in the North was safe. Perry Adams was safe because he was free, but Ruth was not safe, since she had run away many years before. The Fugitive Slave Law gave “slave catchers” the chance to hunt down escaped slaves in the North and put them back into slavery. John Brown had bought a lot of land in the Adirondacks, located in New York, and he used the land to build houses for enslaved runaways. He also had thousands of dirk knives, ready to lead a huge revolt with the runaway slaves. He personally gave a dirk to Ruth Cox Adams and he told her to use if they ever tried to capture her, and if she failed to use it on them and then she should use it on herself. She luckily never had to use the dirk knife and it can now be seen on display at the Museum in Topeka, Kansas.

To avoid being captured, Ruth Cox Adams and her family moved to Port au-Prince, Haiti. In Haiti, Ruth made clothes for the islanders. While in Haiti, Perry Francis Adams was stricken with typhoid fever and, shortly after returning to the United States in 1868, he passed away from the illness.

Matilda, their oldest daughter, had been an apprentice in the same shop that her father worked in and later received a job in a gold chain shop in Rhode Island. Matilda later married on June 26th, 1878 to William Van derzee. Ebby Adams had died when she was young, and Ruth had to stay with Matilda after the death of her beloved husband. Perry, her youngest son, was also married. Matilda and William later moved to Omaha, Nebraska in 1884 and Ruth Cox Adams went with them. The move from Rhode Island to Nebraska was sparked by a doctor telling William Vanderzee that he would lose his eyesight, and that he needed to change his profession. By 1888, he did indeed lose his eyesight. By the time Ruth and the Vanderzee’s arrived in Omaha, Matilda had four children.

After they moved to Omaha, they traded their acreage for a spot in Holt County. When they reached their new acreage in Holt County, they were extremely disappointed as they saw the very poor condition of the farm. On the farm sat mud chinked log houses, very poorly made. Ruth Cox Adams did not cry or get depressed over the horrible conditions on the farm, but instead got ready to make her new life on the Elkhorn River. Since William did not have his eyesight, it made it very difficult for him to care for his wife and four children. Ruth Cox Adams was very optimistic about the entire thing and said that God would make a way for them. She did the little things that had to be done for the farm to function as it should. She mostly helped cook and also washed clothes and made clothes for the children to survive through the very harsh Nebraska winters.

After learning of the horrible conditions in Holt County, Ruth had decided to move to Lincoln to live the remainder of her life. Frederick Douglass had been searching many years and had finally ran across Ruth when he read a newspaper article that was about Ruth, entitled “Mrs. Ruth Adams’ Escape, Short Sketch of a Norfolk Woman’s Life.” in The Norfolk Weekly News.

In a letter that was sent to Ruth Adams, Frederick Douglass
claimed that he was very happy to hear that she was still living and that she was safe. He goes into detail about how he had been searching for her when he ran across her in a newspaper. He had gone to Omaha in a hope to find her, but he never found her and was afraid that she had died. Frederick was 77 years old when he wrote the letter, and he was starting to feel old, possibly on the verge of death. This is the second to last letter that was ever written to Ruth Cox Adams by Frederick Douglass. Shortly after he wrote this letter, he died. Frederick Douglass died in 1894 in Washington, D.C. Ruth Cox Adams died in 1900 in Lincoln, Nebraska. She was buried in Wyuka Cemetery in section-1A – space 294. Her legacy will continue for generations to pass, from her brave escape to freedom, all the way to meeting the amazing and famous Frederick Douglass. It is remarkable to think how these two people met and established a long lasting relationship. Adams and Douglas changed each others life for the better, and hopefully both of their stories will change the lives of others as well.

Sources: Nebraska State Historical Society, Nebraska Humanities Council; National Park Service; Wyuka Historical Society; Nebraska Sites; Forever Free: Students Preserving History of the Underground Railroad and Creating Awareness for Modern Day Slavery;

Arlo Freedom Project sites.google.com/a/apseagles.org/arlofreedomproject/home