Funeral and Burial of Frederick Douglass

Escaped slave and abolitionist campaigner Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 1895. It had been arranged that Douglass’s body would be interred in Rochester, where he had lived and worked for some twenty-five years before moving to the nation’s capital.

Following funeral and memorial services in Washington, D.C., Douglass’s remains were conveyed to Rochester. On February 26, 1895, a memorial service was held at what was then the city’s Central Church. After the service, an honor guard escorted the remains and the mourners to Mount Hope Cemetery for interment in a well-marked grave that is most popular with visitors to this picturesque Victorian memorial park. The grave can be found in Section T, Plot 26; a helpful marker guides visitors from the cemetery’s internal thoroughfare, Fifth Avenue.