Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Tuckahoe, Maryland, the child of Harriet Bailey, a literate slave. He didn't know who his father was, but, near the beginning of the Narrative, Douglass suggests that his white master may have been his father. He recalls meeting his mother only four or five times. She was assigned to work in a field many miles away and was not allowed to stay with her son, seeing him only furtively during rare visits at night. Frederick was initially raised by his grandparents, Betsey and Isaac Bailey, and later by Captain Anthony, who owned two or three farms and about thirty slaves; he was a clerk and superintendent for Colonel Lloyd's plantation. In one of the most poignant episodes at the beginning of the Narrative, Douglass recalls being treated like an animal and having to live in the same breeding pens as the plantation's dogs and pigs.
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