In late 1846, abolitionist and Quaker Mary Richardson of England wrote to slave owner Hugh Auld in Baltimore asking if Frederick Bailey’s freedom had a price.  Auld replied that he would manumit Frederick for £150, or $711.66.

Richardson and other abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic raised the money, and on Dec. 5, 1846, Auld filed Douglass’s deed of manumission – literally, “releasing the hand of authority”–  in Baltimore Co. You can read a further description of the history at the of this monumental event at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website in an article entitled “Buying Frederick Douglass’s Freedom, 1846; A spotlight on a Primary Source by Hugh Auld, J. Meridith, and Walter Lowrie.”