Charles Remond Douglass, born on October 21, 1844, in Lynn, Massachusetts, was the fourth child and youngest son of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He worked as a soldier, journalist, and real estate developer. Douglass served as a government clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission and consul to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo. He was the husband of Mary Elizabeth Murphy and the brother of Rosetta Sprague, Frederick Douglass, Jr., Lewis Henry Douglass, and Annie Douglass. He and Mary were married until she died in 1879.
Douglass attended public school in Rochester, New York, after his family moved to the city in late 1847. As a child, he worked delivering copies of his father’s newspaper, The North Star. Upon learning that his children could not attend a nearby public school, Frederick Douglass hired a private tutor. Subsequently, his father initiated a successful campaign to desegregate schools in Rochester.
On April 18, 1863, Charles Douglass became the first Black man to enlist for U.S. military service in New York during the Civil War when he enlisted in Company F, 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry Regiment. Due to illness, however, Douglass was not able to deploy in the field with the regiment and remained in garrison at Camp Meigs in Readville, Massachusetts, until November 1863. He left the regiment on March 19, 1864, to become a First Sergeant in the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. He struggled with poor health during his time in the service. The Army honorably discharged him on September 15, 1864.
From 1867 to 1869, Douglass served as one of the first Black clerks in the Freedmen’s Bureau when he and his family moved to Washington, D.C. After his father purchased the New National Era in 1870, Douglass became a correspondent for the paper. In 1882, Douglass began working as an examiner for the Pension Bureau in Washington, D.C.
On December 7, 1880, Douglass helped to organize the Washington, D.C. City Guard Battalion, which later became the First Separate Battalion of the District of Columbia National Guard. He was promoted to the rank of major and held various command positions in the National Guard.
On December 30, 1880, Douglass married his second wife, Laura Haley, in Canandaigua, New York. Their son, Haley George Douglass, became the mayor of Highland Beach, Maryland. By 1892, Charles Douglass, now 48, became a real estate developer. He developed a 26-acre tract with 1,400 feet of beachfront that he purchased from Daniel Brashears, a Black farmer and waterman of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Over time, it was transformed into a summer resort and became known as Highland Beach.
Charles Remond Douglass died on November 23, 1920, following a short illness attributed to kidney disease. He was 76.
