His father, whom Frederick never knew, was Captain Aaron Anthony, and Frederick suspected him of being his own slave owner. For the first twenty years of his life, Frederick remained at the farm and stayed a slave. When he was twenty years old in 1838, Frederick escaped from slavery to New York. When he was all alone free in New York, Frederick realized that there were many slave catchers out looking for him, so he could never completely relax nor trust anyone. After wandering the city for days, looking for a place to live and also some sort of job, he met an old black sailor, and he took Frederick to meet David Ruggles. Ruggles was an officer for the New York Vigilance Committee, which basically was a link to an organization known as the Underground Railroad to help southern slaves to the northern states for freedom. So now a part of that organization, Frederick sent for his fiancée, Anna Murray, and the two were married in September later that same year, and together they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There in Massachusetts he found a job working as a common laboror, and him and Anna lived with a friend named Nathan Johnson. Frederick realized that he needed to hide his identity and change his name. That is why his last name is not the same as his mother's. Frederick was born the name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, and had to change it to Frederick Douglass, so he would not be as easy to be found by his owner. He changed it to Douglass because his friend Nathan Johnson was reading a book called The Lady of the Lake, and he suggested it to Frederick after the main character's name. One year later Anna gave birth to their first child, Rosetta, and then their son Lewis was born the next year. After only living for a few months in New Bedford, a man came up to Douglass and wanted to know is he would subscribe to a newspaper called the Liberator, which was edited by a popular leader against slavery, William Lloyd Garrison.
