Ruth Cox Adams

Ruth Cox Adams (c. 1818 – April 22, 1900) was an American abolitionist and former slave.

Early life and escape from slavery Ruth Cox was born in 1818 to an enslaved woman named Ebby Cox, who was held on the plantation of John Leeds Kerr in Easton, Maryland, and a free black man. Ruth worked as a nurse and a caretaker of children while she was enslaved. Accounts differ on whether Cox escaped slavery in 1842 or in 1844, following Kerr's death and the knowledge she would be sold. In either case, she was 24 at the time, according to her granddaughter,

Adult life She lived with Frederick and Anna Douglass in Lynn, Massachusetts, from 1842 or 1844 until 1847. Some accounts say that Douglass and Cox first met at an antislavery meeting in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in August 1844, as Cox was fleeing north. Additionally, because Anna Douglass could not read well, Cox served as an intermediary, reading her the letters Douglass had written to her, and writing Anna's dictated replies. After becoming engaged, she wrote to Douglass to ask him to buy a wedding dress for her.

In 2005, members of the Wyuka Historical Foundation and McWilliams Hall, began raising funds for a headstone at Adams' gravesite. In 2008, a bronze grave marker was erected at the site.