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| Harriet Tubman as "Conductor" with escaped slaves at an Underground Rail Road station |
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Harriet Ross Tubman, leader in the Underground Railroad, abolitionist, Civil War scout and nurse, was born sometime during 1820 to Ben Ross and Harriet Green on a plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She was the sixth of eleven children born to the enslaved couple. Though her parents named her Araminta, she later chose the name of her mother. Though Harriet performed various duties while she was a slave, she did not make an ideal servant. While a teenager, she was struck in the head by an overseer. The blow fractured Harriet’s skill and she was subject to somnolence for the rest of her life. Around 1844 she married a free man named John Tubman. The couple had no children.
In 1849 Harriet feared that she would be shipped away after her masters’ death and decided to make her escape. She successfully reached Philadelphia and found work in a hotel. In 1850 and 1851 she also guided members of her family and others out of slavery. She attempted to assist her husband, however, he had remarried and decline her assistance. Tubman was successful, however, in rescuing her parents and several of her siblings. Overall, it is believed that Harriett Tubman made nineteen trips into Maryland between 1851 and 1861 and delivered between sixty and three hundred persons from slavery by leading them into Canada. A reward of $40,000 was offered for her capture. On occasion she worked with other antislavery advocates active with the Underground Railroad, and was given the name “Moses” in appreciation of her work to guide others to freedom.(1)
In 1858/9, Harriet Tubman moved to a farm in Auburn, New York where she offered counsel and shelter to African Americans in need. This site remained her home for the rest of her life. Tubman’s work brought her praise from many of the prominent abolitionists of her day, including Frederick Douglass and Oliver Johnson. In addition, she worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for the cause of woman’s rights, though she always supported African-American women in founding their own organizations. Having foreseen the Civil War in a vision, Harriet Ross Tubman quickly joined the Union Army, where she served in a variety of roles including scout, spy, cook, nurse to both Union and Confederate soldiers. She was the first American woman to lead troops into military action when she led 300 black troops on a raid that subsequently free over 750 slaves.(2)
Harriet Ross Tubman was a deeply religious woman who was guided by her faith in all that she undertook. She took a leading role in the African Methodist Zion Church and is commemorated in the calendar of the Episcopal Church on July 20 along with Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. Her life and work came to the attention of the general public in 1869 after the publication of Sarah Bradford’s Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People, the proceeds of which went to Tubman to pay for her farm.
Notes:
1. Lesser Feasts and Fasts (2000) (New York, Church Publishing, 2001), 296.
2. Ibid.
Excerpt from Freedom is a Dream. Sheryl A. Kojawa-Holbrook, ed. (New York: Church Publishing, 2002): 74-75. Reprinted with permission.
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