Of the visits Frederick Douglass made to Western Maryland his participation in an Emancipation Day event at the fairgrounds in Cumberland in September 1879 was the most widely attended; it is the only address in Appalachian Maryland Douglass is known to have delivered outdoors.
Several reports of the sojourn of United States Marshal Frederick Douglass to Maryland’s Queen City specifically mention increased activity on area railroads from four states in anticipation of the arrival of Marshal Douglass.
Cumberland, serviced directly by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad with a mixed-use station at the Queen City Hotel, was a city Douglass had likely passed through several times to and fro prior and after his confirmed address in travels to areas west, including Wheeling, Cincinnati and Chicago.
The Queen City Hotel station provided a space where political associates, bands, church leaders, school groups, fraternal organizations and community members could greet Marshal Douglass upon arrival.
Increased activity on the rails prompted a travel correspondent of the Frostburg Mining Journal to take note of the community chatter around the visit of the Hon. Frederick Douglass in Cumberland.
Off the desk of “Roundabout” …
Leaving Frostburg Monday morning, Sept 22d, [1879] for a trip to this beautiful valley of the Shenandoah, about the first thing of note that attracted our attention was the arrival of the Hon. Frederick Douglass in Cumberland, but our train being due we saw no more of this ‘stinguished gemman’ but were soon flying eastward down the modern Potomac, or historic Cohongoruton, with all its beautiful and varied scenery.
Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia 