At the age of
seven or eight years, Frederick was separated from his mother and the rural Maryland setting
where he was born and sent to work as a houseboy in a home in Baltimore. He spent the next five
years of his life working in the home of Hugh and Sophia Auld.
As a houseboy,
his work could have included any number of tasks involved in helping the household and its
residents. He may have been responsible for tasks such as cleaning shoes or boots, fetching
items, delivering messages, and other chores as directed by his owners. The key formative event
that took place during this time in Frederick's life was the beginning instruction in reading
that he received from Sophia Auld, who taught him the alphabet.
It was when
he was older, during the 1830s, that Douglass began the skilled manual labor job of caulking
ships in Baltimore. This was to be the last job he would endure as a slave. From there, Douglass
escaped North in 1838 to find his freedom.
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