Sarah Mapps Douglass
Sarah Mapps Douglass (September 9, 1806 – September 8, 1882) was an American educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer. Her painted images on her written letters may be the first or earliest surviving examples of signed paintings by an African-American woman. These paintings are contained within the Cassey Dickerson Album, a rare collection of 19th-century friendship letters between a group of women. Early life and family Sarah Douglass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a prominent abolitionist family, the only daughter of abolitionists Robert Douglass, a baker, and Grace Bustill Douglass, a milliner and teacher. Douglass' grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, a Quaker who owned a bakery and operated a school run from his home, was one of the early members of the Free African Society, an early African-American charity organization. Douglass grew up among Philadelphia's elite, and according to C. Peter Ripley "[s]he received extensive [private] tutoring as a child." She is part of the Bustill family in Philadelphia. Her brother was artist Robert Douglass Jr. with whom she shared advertising space at his shop on Arch Street, where their family lived. Her cousin was artist David Bustill Bowser. Education and career In the early 1820s, she attended college, and then