He was born at a horseshoe bend along the Tuckahoe River, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His father was white, he knew that. The two principle candidates are his two owners, Aaron Anthony and Thomas Auld. His mother was a woman named Harriet Bailey, who was owned by Aaron Anthony. She had five children between roughly the age of eighteen and thirty-one, when she died. Douglass saw her last when he was six years old.
