24

652 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

small hook made from or resembling a pin and a line spun from flax, cotton, or some
other available fiber.
25.35 "Old Master."] Aaron Anthony (1767-1826), Frederick Douglass's first
owner and possibly his father, was born at Tuckahoe Neck in what later became
Maryland's Caroline County. Anthony's father was a poor and illiterate farmer who
died when Aaron was only two years old. Despite his impoverished origins, Anthony
acquired a rudimentary education and a small amount of property. He became the
captain in 1795 of the Sally Lloyd, the family schooner of Edward Lloyd IV, the
wealthiest planter in Talbot County. In 1797 he increased his wealth through his marriage
to Ann Catherine Skinner, the daughter of an old and prominent Eastern Shore
family, who brought with her the slave family into which Douglass was later born.
Soon thereafter, Anthony became chief overseer and general manager of the Lloyd
family's thirteen farms, one of the largest estates in the United States. He remained in
this position for the rest of his life, all the while accumulating land and slaves of his
own. By the time of his death in 1826, Anthony had become a moderately wealthy
planter in his own right, accumulating three farms totaling 597 1-2 acres, thirty slaves
worth $3,065, and personal property. His entire estate was valued at $8,042. Anthony
Family Bible, Oxford Museum, Oxford, Md.; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of
Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 58, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Inventory of Estate
of Aaron Anthony, 13 January 1827, Talbot County Inventories, box 13,
5-9,
MdTCH; Charles B. Clark, ed., The Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, 3 vols.
(New York, 1950), 1:491-92; Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 285, 299-304;
Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 22-30; idem., "Aaron Anthony" (unpublished
paper, Easton, Maryland, 1977), MdTCH.
26.9 Col. Lloyd] Edward Lloyd V.
26.12 Col. Lloyd's plantation] Wye House.
26.30-31 "toting"] American colloquialism meaning to transport a load.
26.33 newly and smoothly ironed bandana turban] Historians dispute the origins
of the turban or bandana worn by female slaves in the American South. The historical
record provides mixed evidence as to whether the tradition was a product of African
heritage or the slave trade. Helen Bradley Foster, New Raiments of Self: African
American Clothing in the Antebellum South (New York, 1997), 275-81.
27 .16 brother Perry] Perry Bailey (1813-80), Frederick Douglass's brother and
the oldest of seven children born to Harriet Bailey, was the slave of Aaron Anthony.
When Anthony died in 1826, Perry was inherited by Anthony's son, Andrew J.
Anthony. Andrew died in 1832, leaving Perry, now married to a slave named Maria,
to John P. Anthony, who sold Maria to a slave owner in Brazos County, Texas. Perry
followed his wife to Texas, where a postemancipation labor shortage allowed him to
earn "fifteen dollars gold wages a month." In 1867 Perry, Maria, and their four children
traveled to Rochester to reunite with Frederick. Elated by this reunion, Douglass
built a cottage for them on his Rochester estate, where the family stayed for two years.
In 1869 Perry and Maria returned to Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Perry died