Abbey Church, Arbroath

A research trip from Glasgow by train, visiting libraries in Arbroath and Montrose to look at newspapers from 1846 for reports of speeches by Frederick Douglass.

My main project for the year is to transcribe all the reports of speeches he gave in Scotland and put them online. He addressed over 70 meetings, though not all of them were reported in the press.

In Arbroath he addressed two meetings at this church in February 1846. The church was rebuilt in the 1870s but parts of the old church were incorporated in the new building. The tower and the frontage here wouldn't have been there when Douglass was, but the bit you can see behind them would have  been, I think.