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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

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Resources for Family Engagement from the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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We invite you and your family to participate in these activities, inspired by the collections, programs, and expertise of the Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her. As a result of a head injury caused by one of these men, she suffered from seizures and "visions" for the rest of her life, which she believed were sent from God.

In 1840, Tubman's father was freed as a result of a stipulation in his master's will, but continued to work for his former owner's family. Although Tubman, her mother, and her siblings were also supposed to be freed, the law was ignored and they remained enslaved. Tubman married a free black in 1844, and changed her first name from Araminta to Harriet.

In 1849, Tubman became seriously ill with complications from her head injury, and her owner decided to sell her, but could not find a buyer. After her owner's sudden death, the family began selling off all of the slaves. Not wanting to have her family separated, Tubman was determined to escape. A first attempt, in which Tubman was accompanied by her brothers, was aborted when they had second thoughts. Tubman decided to try again on her own, and she escaped via the Underground Railroad into Pennsylvania.

Tubman settled in Philadelphia and was able to support herself doing odd jobs. But in 1850, word came that her niece and her two children were to be sold. Tubman was determined to help, and went back to Maryland. With the assistance of her brother-in-law, Tubman was able to bring her niece and the two children back safely to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips that Tubman would make to lead family members and others to freedom. On one expedition, Tubman contacted her husband in the hopes that he would follow her to Pennsylvania, but he had remarried and preferred to remain in Maryland.

Over the course of 11 years, Tubman rescued over 70 slaves from Maryland, and assisted 50 or 60 others in making their way to Canada. During this time, her reputation in the abolitionist community grew, and she became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. She also moved her base of operations to Auburn, New York, closer to the Canadian border. Tubman conducted her last rescue mission in November 1861, as the Civil War enveloped the nation.

Tubman offered her services to the Union Army, and in early 1862, she went to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for black soldiers and newly liberated slaves. Working with General David Hunter, Tubman also began spying and scouting missions behind Confederate lines. In June of 1863, she accompanied Colonel James Montgomery in an assault on several plantations along the Combahee River, rescuing more than 700 slaves. Her deed was celebrated in the press and she became even more famous.

With the end of the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, NY and married a Civil War veteran. Although her service in the Union Army was much publicized, she had great difficulty in getting a pension from the government, but was eventually awarded a nurse's pension in the 1880s. She did not stay idle in her later years, taking on the cause of women's suffrage with the same determination she had shown for abolition.

Tubman established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on a property adjacent to her own. After undergoing brain surgery to try to alleviate the symptoms from the head injury that had plagued her since childhood, and being essentially penniless, Tubman was forced to move into the home herself in 1911. She died there on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her.

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

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Harriet Tubman Biography - Biography

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tubman worked as a nurse during the war, trying to heal the sick. Many people in the hospital died from dysentery, a disease associated with terrible diarrhea. Tubman was sure she could help cure the sickness if she could find some of the same roots and herbs that grew in Maryland.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Planning to escape and a new name

In 1849 Tubman's owner, Edward Brodess, needed to sell slaves in order to cover his debts. Minty heard rumors that she and her brothers were going to be sold. According to Sarah Hopkins Bradford's biography of Harriet Tubman, Minty began praying that his owner change his mind "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March". When her prayers did not work she changed it to: "Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change than man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way".

A week later, Edward Brodess died. Tubman felt guilty and full of remorse. The death of her master brought more uncertainty over her and her brothers' futures. They had already seen three of their sisters being sold and she was not going to let that happen to them.

She resolved that trying to escape, even if they were caught, was a better option than being sold to the south. Tubman was ready. She had saved enough money hiring her labor and knew people who conducted the Underground Railroad. She strongly believed that God would guide her. In preparation to her escape she changed her name to Harriet, after her mother, and adopted her husband's last name, Tubman. Changing their given and last names was a common occurrence among fugitive slaves. They did not want to leave traces, all they wanted was a total break from their lives in bondage.

Fugitive slaves had to cross the Mason-Dixon Line to be free. Harriet Tubman's exact route to freedom is unknown.

The escape

Minty gathered her brothers, Harry and Ben, and convinced them to escape with her. On Monday, September 17, 1849 they escaped the Poplar Neck Plantation but Harry and Ben changed their minds and decided to return. Harriet had already resolved to free herself and after making sure her brothers were safe, she parted north. Later she would come for the rest of her family and bring them to freedom.

At the time of her escape she had been hired out to Anthony Thompson and her owner, Eliza Brodess, did not know of her escape until about two weeks later. A notice of their escape was published in the Cambridge Democrat on October 3, 1849, offering a $300 reward for their return.

A reward of $300 for the return of Harry, Ben and Minty was published on October 3rd, 1849 in the Cambridge Democrat.
Harriet Tubman traveled at night so that she would not be seen by slave catchers. Just as other fugitives, such as Frederick Douglass, she followed the North Star that guided her north. The first person to help her was a white woman who was a Quaker, she sheltered her for the first night and gave her instruction on what to do next. The Quaker lady whose name is unknown was a member of the Underground Railroad network that provided safe houses and transportation for fugitive slaves.

Her exact escape route is unknown as is the source of help she received on her way to Pennsylvania. It is believed that she traveled north east along the Choptank River and through Delaware to Pennsylvania. Her journey was nearly 90 miles and it is unclear how long it took her. Years later she recalled, as quoted by Bradford in Tubman's biography:

"When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven"
Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

The "line' to which she referred was the Mason Dixon Line, a demarcation line for the legality of slavery. North of that line were the free states.

She made her way to Philadelphia where she found work in hotels, club houses and then in Cape May and was able to save money. She had planned to come back and rescue her family.

"I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home after all, was down in Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.
Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

Tags: escape from slavery, Mason Dixon Line

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In 1849 Tubman's owner, Edward Brodess, needed to sell slaves in order to cover his debts. Minty heard rumors that she and her brothers were going to be sold. According to Sarah Hopkins Bradford's biography of Harriet Tubman, Minty began praying that his owner change his mind "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March".

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Related Entries: * Incident in Troy, New York * Portrait of Harriet Tubman

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her. As a result of a head injury caused by one of these men, she suffered from seizures and "visions" for the rest of her life, which she believed were sent from God.

In 1840, Tubman's father was freed as a result of a stipulation in his master's will, but continued to work for his former owner's family. Although Tubman, her mother, and her siblings were also supposed to be freed, the law was ignored and they remained enslaved. Tubman married a free black in 1844, and changed her first name from Araminta to Harriet.

In 1849, Tubman became seriously ill with complications from her head injury, and her owner decided to sell her, but could not find a buyer. After her owner's sudden death, the family began selling off all of the slaves. Not wanting to have her family separated, Tubman was determined to escape. A first attempt, in which Tubman was accompanied by her brothers, was aborted when they had second thoughts. Tubman decided to try again on her own, and she escaped via the Underground Railroad into Pennsylvania.

Tubman settled in Philadelphia and was able to support herself doing odd jobs. But in 1850, word came that her niece and her two children were to be sold. Tubman was determined to help, and went back to Maryland. With the assistance of her brother-in-law, Tubman was able to bring her niece and the two children back safely to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips that Tubman would make to lead family members and others to freedom. On one expedition, Tubman contacted her husband in the hopes that he would follow her to Pennsylvania, but he had remarried and preferred to remain in Maryland.

Over the course of 11 years, Tubman rescued over 70 slaves from Maryland, and assisted 50 or 60 others in making their way to Canada. During this time, her reputation in the abolitionist community grew, and she became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. She also moved her base of operations to Auburn, New York, closer to the Canadian border. Tubman conducted her last rescue mission in November 1861, as the Civil War enveloped the nation.

Tubman offered her services to the Union Army, and in early 1862, she went to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for black soldiers and newly liberated slaves. Working with General David Hunter, Tubman also began spying and scouting missions behind Confederate lines. In June of 1863, she accompanied Colonel James Montgomery in an assault on several plantations along the Combahee River, rescuing more than 700 slaves. Her deed was celebrated in the press and she became even more famous.

With the end of the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, NY and married a Civil War veteran. Although her service in the Union Army was much publicized, she had great difficulty in getting a pension from the government, but was eventually awarded a nurse's pension in the 1880s. She did not stay idle in her later years, taking on the cause of women's suffrage with the same determination she had shown for abolition.

Tubman established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on a property adjacent to her own. After undergoing brain surgery to try to alleviate the symptoms from the head injury that had plagued her since childhood, and being essentially penniless, Tubman was forced to move into the home herself in 1911. She died there on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her.

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Harriet Tubman's life was a monument to courage and determination that continues to stand out in American history. Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman freed herself, and played a major role in freeing the remaining millions. After the Civil War, she joined her family in Auburn, NY, where she founded the Harriet Tubman Home.

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Life after the Civil War : Harriet Tubman

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In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn.

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At age six, Araminta was old enough to be considered able to work. She did not work in the fields though. Edward Brodas, her master, lent her to a couple who first put her to work weaving she was beaten frequently. When she slacked off at this job the couple gave her the duty of checking muskrat traps. Araminta caught the measles while doing this work. The couple thought she was incompetent and took her back to Brodas. When she got well, she was taken in by a woman as a housekeeper and baby-sitter. Araminta was whipped during the work here and was sent back to Brodas after eating one of the woman's sugar cubes.

As was the custom on all plantations, when she turned eleven, she started wearing a bright cotton bandana around her head indicating she was no longer a child. She was also no longer known by her "basket name", Araminta. Now she would be called Harriet, after her mother. At the age of 12 Harriet Ross was seriously injured by a blow to the head, inflicted by a white overseer for refusing to assist in tying up a man who had attempted escape.

It is said that Henry "Box" Brown, a slave, had himself nailed in a wooden box and mailed by real train from Richmond to William Still in Philadelphia.] He was a freeborn black Pennsylvanian who could read and write. He used these talents to interview runaway slaves and record their names and stories in a book. He hoped that in the future, family's could trace their relations using this book. Still published the book in 1872 under the title The Underground Railroad where describes many of Tubman's efforts. It is still published today.

With the assistance of Still, and other members of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, she learned about the workings of the Underground Railroad ( click for details). In 1850, Harriet helped her first slaves escape to the North. She sent a message to her sister's oldest son that said for her sister and family to board a fishing boat in Cambridge. This boat would sail up the Chesapeake Bay where they would meet Harriet in Bodkin's Point. When they got to Bodkin's Point, Harriet guided them from safehouse to safehouse in Pennsylvania (which was a free state) until they reached Philadelphia.

Harriet Tubman as "Conductor" with escaped slaves at an Underground Rail Road station

Around this time the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It stipulated that it was illegal for any citizen to assist an escaped slave and demanded that if an escaped slave was sighted, he or she should be apprehended and turned in to the authorities for deportation back to the "rightful" owner down south. Any United States Marshall who refused to return a runaway slave would pay a hefty penalty of $1,000. Thus the Underground Railroad tighten security. It created a code to make things more secret. It also sent the escaping slaves into Canada instead of the "North" of the U.S.

In the winter of 1852, Tubman was ready to return to the U.S. to help free more slaves. In the spring, she worked in Cape May and saved enough money to go to Maryland. By now, Tubman had led so many people from the South - the slave's called this the "land of Egypt" - to freedom, she became known as "Moses." She was also known by the plantation owners for her efforts and a bounty of $40,000 was posted. The state of Maryland itself posted a $12,000 reward for her capture.

Tubman made eleven trips from Maryland to Canada from 1852-1857. Her most famous trip concerned a passenger who panicked and wanted to turn back. Tubman was afraid if he left he would be tortured and would tell all he knew about the Railroad. The unwilling passenger changed his mind when Tubman pointed a gun at his head and said "dead folks tell no tales."

The spring of 1857 was the time when Harriet set out on her most daring rescue to free her elderly father, Ben Ross. Tubman bought a train ticket for herself and traveled in broad daylight which was dangerous considering the bounty for her head. When she reached Caroline County, she bought a horse and some miscellaneous parts to make a buggy. She took this and her father and mother to Thomas Garrett who arranged for their passage to Canada.

In Canada, she met famed abolitionist John Brown, a radical abolitionist, who had heard much about Harriet. When he came to St. Catherine, he asked J.W. Loguen to introduce them. When Brown met Tubman, he was overwhelmed by her intelligence and bearing and said "General Tubman, General Tubman, General Tubman." From then on he would refer to her by this name. Brown called Harriet, "one of the best and bravest persons on this continent." She worked closely with Brown, and reportedly missed the raid on Harper's Ferry only because of illness.

In 1860 in Troy, New York, in which she set her mind to setting free a fugitive who had been captured and was being held at the office of the United States Commisioner. The slave, a man named Charles Nalle, did escape thanks to Tubman's efforts. He later bought his freedom from his master, a man who also happend to be his younger, half-brother.

Harriet Tubman's career in the Railroad was ending by December 1860. She made her last rescue trip to Maryland, bringing seven people to Canada. In the ten years she worked as a "conductor" on the Railroad, Harriet managed to rescue over 300 people. She had made 19 trips and never lost a passenger on the way. For Tubman's safety, her friends took her to Canada.

1861 Civil War . Tubman returned to the U.S. from living in Canada in 1861. The Civil War had begun and was enlisting all men as soldiers and any women who wanted to join as cooks and nurses. Tubman enlisted into the Union army as a "contraband" nurse in a hospital in Hilton Head, South Carolina and for a time serving at Fortress Monroe, where Jefferson Davis would later be imprisoned.. Contrabands were blacks who the Union army helped to escape from the Southern compounds. Often they were half starved and sick from exposure. Harriet nursed the sick and wounded back to health but her work did not stop there. She also tried to find them work. When the army sent her to another hospital in Florida, she found white soldiers and contrabands "dying off like sheep". She treated her patients with medicine from roots and miraculously never caught any of the deadly diseases the wounded soldiers would carry.

During the summer of 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel James Montgomery as a scout. She put together a group of spies who kept Montgomery informed about slaves who might want to join the Union army. After she and her scouts had done the groundwork, she helped Montgomery organize the Combahee River Raid. The purpose of the raid was to harass whites and rescue freed slaves. They were successful in shelling the rebel outposts and gathering almost 500 slaves. Just about all the freed slaves joined the army.

While guiding a group of black soldiers in South Carolina, she met Nelson Davis, who was ten years her junior. Denied payment for her wartime service, Tubman was forced, after a bruising fight, to ride in a baggage car on her return to Auburn.

The quote below, echoing Patrick Henry, is the Sarah Bradford biography, "The Moses of Her People," of Harriet Tubman:

Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one or two things she had a right to, liberty or death.

Tubman returned to Auburn, New York.

after the war and purchased Seward's seven-acre plot in 1873 with $1,200 donated by author Sarah Bradford from sale proceeds of her book. The Tubman-Davis brick home remains today on that property.

In 189? the government gave her a military pension of $20 per month.

Only twelve miles from Seneca Falls and Susan B. Anthony, Tubman helped Auburn to remain a center of activity in support of women's rights.

a 1903 note about Hariet Tubman in a letter written by feminist Susan B. Anthony

With her home literally down the road, Tubman remained in contact with her friends, William and Frances Seward. In 1908, she purchased property adjoining her home and built the wooden structure that served as her home for the aged and indigent. Here she worked, and herself was cared for in the period before her death in 1913.

1913. Death . Before she died on March 10, 1913, she gave her home for the elderly to the Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Tubman was buried with military rites in Fort Hill Cemetery, a short drive from the home. A year after her death, Auburn declared a one-day memorial to its anti-slavery hero. Residents of the city that day unveiled the Harriet Tubman Plaque, which remains on display at the entrance of the Cayuga County Court House. She has since received man honors, including the naming of the Liberty Ship Harriet Tubman, christened in 1944 by Eleanor Roosevelt. On June 14, 1914 a large bronze plaque was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, and a civic holiday declared in her honor. Freedom Park, a tribute to the memory of Harriet Tubman, opened in the summer of 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn. In 1995, Harriet Tubman was honored by the federal government with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her name and likeness.

The Harriet Tubman Home

Visit the Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, New York
(off I-90 60 miles east of Rochester and 30 miles west of Syracuse)
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/home.htm
Years later after Harriet Tubman's death, when the last remains of the Tubman Home for the Aged faced demolition, the community rallied to help pay for part of its reconstruction. And when the Tubman home opened to the public in 1953, hundreds attended a dedication ceremony.

Blacks were among two of Auburn's first four residents, but the city has not always proven a hospitable fit for those that followed, especially in recent years. Though the black population of Cayuga County numbered 2,995 in 1990, few hold political office or are employed by the county or city.

1993 . In 1993 a local white sign painter donated his labor to place two portraitlike signs of Tubman on the home's front entrance. Previously, for 40 years, says Rev. Carter, there was no indication to let visitors or passers-by know of the home's location. In September 1993, a small band of Neo-Nazis attempted to march on City Hall from Freedom Park, which had been dedicated to Tubman's memory in June. However, a large group of counter-demonstrators, many from Ithaca and outside Auburn, turned the group away. In October 1993, a multi-racial group of marchers walked from Syracuse to the home in Tubman's memory.

Though Rev. Carter says the Auburn community accepts the Harriet Tubman Home, he believes the site doesn't receive its fair share of promotion.

"A number of tours come through this area for things that are around, such as the Seward House and Case Museum. But a lot of those tours never get to the Tubman Home."

Gary Chabot, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Auburn and Cayuga County, says tours of the area's historic sites "absolutely" include the Tubman Home. "It's very much a part of our tourist activity," says Chabot, who added that the home is becoming more recognizable in the community. A survey conducted by the chambershowed the Tubman Home was the area's third most requested tourist site for information.

______________

Like the former Tubman Home for the Aged, the complex's memorial library is sparsely furnished with artifacts and other memorabilia. A fan presented to Tubman by Seward's daughter, Fanny, is in one of several glass display cases, as well as two drinking glasses given by Tubman as a wedding gift. There is a photo album and stacks of old magazines on book shelves.

A duplicate of the Tubman Plaque at the County Court House rests unattached against a wall, while folding chairs fill much of one side of the library facing a television and VCR that plays a video of Tubman's life. A computer workstation, used mostly by Rev. Carter is in another corner of the library building. He would like to upgrade the facility into a full-scale library that would be accessible through the Internet.

A cultural research center on Black History and the Underground Railroad and a retreat with rooms to stay overnight are also plans Rev. Carter would to bring to fruition at the Tubman complex. However, there are some major roadblocks. The A.M.E. Zion Church operates the site with a $25,000 annual budget used for maintaining the grounds and to pay Rev. Carter, the only paid staff member, a regular stipend. Copes-Johnson is paid for her services through Green Thumb Inc., a national, nonprofit organization that provides employment for people older than 55 with limited incomes.

Much of Carter's time is also consumed by his duties as pastor of Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Auburn. The church is itself a landmark. It's where Tubman worshipped and was a member.

Though the home encourages financial donations from the public, its fund-raising efforts are also hampered because the church board that oversees the home has yet to secure federal tax-exempt status, so donations are not tax deductible. It's a situation Rev. Carter hopes to change soon. The board is currently working on filing papers with the Internal Revenue Service for tax exemption.

Some money is generated at the pilgrimage and at the home during the year through the sale of Tubman memorabilia. The multi-purpose center, which seats 500, is also rented for receptions, dances and meetings.

Those who would like to support the home with financial donations, can send checks payable to: The Harriet Tubman Home, 180 South Street, Auburn, New York 13021.

Rev. Carter also encourages skilled professionals or business owners, especially those with architectural engineering, grant writing and landscaping skills, to help.

"Visiting the property is always a good idea," he says. "That way, you get to see it first hand and see the potential it has."

Visit the Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, New York
(off I-90, 60 miles east of Rochester and 30 miles west of Syracuse)
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/home.htm
FURTHER

Bradford, Sarah. Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, New York: W.J. Moses, printer, ©1869. 132 pp.

Bradford, Sarah. Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman / Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her people. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, ©1993 (reprint). 149 pp, illus.

Conrad, Earl. Harriet Tubman. Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, ©1943. 248 pp.

Sterling, Dorothy. Freedom train; the story of Harriet Tubman. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, ©1954. 191 pp., illus.

Parrish, Anne. A clouded star. New York: Harper ©1948. 242 pp.

Swift, Hildegarde Hoyt. The railroad to freedom; a story of the civil war. New York: Harcourt, Brace and company, ©1932. 364 pp., illus.

Wheat, Ellen Harkins. Jacob Lawrence: the Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman series of 1938-40. Hampton, Virginia: Hampton University Museum, ©1991. Portraits, art criticism.

Bains, Rae. Harriet Tubman and the road to freedom. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1982. 48 pp.

Benjamin, Anne. Young Harriet Tubman: freedom fighter. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1992. 32 pp., illus.

Bentley, Judith. Harriet Tubman. New York: F. Watts, ©1990. 144 pp., illus.

Burns, Bree. Harriet Tubman. New York: Chelsea Juniors, ©1992. 80 pp., illus.

Carlson, Judy. Harriet Tubman: call to freedom. New York: Fawcett Columbine, ©1989. 116 pp., illus.

Carter, Polly. Harriet Tubman and Black history month. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Press, ©1990. 32 pp., illus.

Elish, Dan. Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press, ©1993. 32 pp., illus.

Epstein, Sam and Beryl. Harriet Tubman: guide to freedom. Champaign, Illinois: Garrard Pub. Co., ©1968. 96 pp., illus.

Ferris, Jeri. Go free or die: a story about Harriet Tubman. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Carolrhoda Books, ©1988. 63 pp., illus.

Grant, Matthew G. Harriet Tubman; black liberator. Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education; distributed by Childrens Press, Chicago, ©1974. 29 pp., illus.

Johnson, Ann Donegan. The value of helping: the story of Harriet Tubman. La Jolla, California: Value Communications, ©1979. 63 pp., illus.

Johnson, LaVerne C. Kumi &Chanti tell the story of Harriet Tubman. Chicago, Illinois: Empak Enterprises, ©1992. 32 pp., illus. Two African children following their mission of exploring African-American history record the story of Harriet Tubman.

Kelton, Nancy. Rebel slave. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Raintree Editions; Chicago, Illinois: distributed by Childrens Press, ©1977. 31 pp., illus.

Klingel, Cindy. Harriet Tubman: Black literator (1820-1913). Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education, ©1987 30 pp., illus.

McClard, Megan. Harriet Tubman: slavery and the underground railroad. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, ©1991. 133 pp., illus.

McLoone, Margo. Harriet Tubman: a photo-illustrated biography. Mankato, Minnesota: Bridgestone Press, ©1997. 24 pp., illus.

McMullan, Kate. The story of Harriet Tubman: conductor of the underground railroad. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: G. Stevens Pub., ©1997. 108 pp., illus.

Meyer, Linda D. Harriet Tubman: they called me Moses. Seattle, Washington: Parenting Press, ©1988. 24 pp.

Mosher, Kiki. Learning about bravery from the life of Harriet Tubman / Harriet Tubman. New York: PowerKids Press, ©1996. 24 pp., illus.

Petry, Ann Lane. Harriet Tubman, conductor on the Underground Railroad. New York: Crowell, ©1955. 247 p.

Plummer, William K. Harriet Tubman, freedom girl. Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, ©1969. 200 pp., illus.

Powers, R.M. Runaway slave; the story of Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Four Winds Press, ©1965. illus.

Rowley, John. Harriet Tubman. Des Plaines, Illinois: Heinemann Interactive Library, ©1998. 24 pp., illus.

Sabin, Francene. Harriet Tubman. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1985. 30 pp., illus.

Schroeder, Alan. Minty: a story of young Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, ©1996. illus.

Smith, Kathie Billingslea. Harriet Tubman. New York: J. Messner, ©1988. 24 pp., illus.

Sterling, Philip and Logan, Rayford. Four took freedom; the lives of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, and Blanche K. Bruce. Garden City, New York, Doubleday, ©1967. 116 pp., illus.

Taylor, M.W. Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, ©1991. 111 pp., illus.

Hoober, Dorothy and Thomas and Carey-Greenberg Associates. Next stop, freedom : the story of a slave girl. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, ©1991. 54 pp., illus.

Humphreville, Frances T. Harriet Tubman: flame of freedom. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, ©1967. 189 pp., illus.

Jackson, Dave and Neta. Listen for the whippoorwill. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, ©1993. 144 pp., illus.

Ringgold, Faith. Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the sky. New York, New York: Crown, ©1992. illus.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp. Harriet Tubman (Filmstrip). ©1969. Biography, 62 frames, color.

Lawrence, Jacob. Harriet and the Promised Land. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, ©1993. Juvenile poetry, illus.

Troll Associates. Harriet Tubman (Filmstrip). Troll Associates, ©1969. Biography, 43 frames, color.

CONTACT US

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back to The African American History of Western New York Since 4/96, visitors to the African American History of Western New York. At age six, Araminta was old enough to be considered able to work. She did not work in the fields though.

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Soldier life during the Civil War was not easy. At the beginning of the war, men across the country were eager to volunteer in both the Union and Confederate armies. Army Lifestyle When a citizen wanted to volunteer they would receive a medical examination to make sure they were fit for duty.

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http://www.harriet-tubman.org/tag/escape-from-slavery/

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Harriet Tubman |America’s Library - Library of Congress

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Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland who at great personal risk, led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

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back to The African American History of Western New York

Since 4/96, visitors to the African American History of Western New York.

At age six, Araminta was old enough to be considered able to work. She did not work in the fields though. Edward Brodas, her master, lent her to a couple who first put her to work weaving she was beaten frequently. When she slacked off at this job the couple gave her the duty of checking muskrat traps. Araminta caught the measles while doing this work. The couple thought she was incompetent and took her back to Brodas. When she got well, she was taken in by a woman as a housekeeper and baby-sitter. Araminta was whipped during the work here and was sent back to Brodas after eating one of the woman's sugar cubes.

As was the custom on all plantations, when she turned eleven, she started wearing a bright cotton bandana around her head indicating she was no longer a child. She was also no longer known by her "basket name", Araminta. Now she would be called Harriet, after her mother. At the age of 12 Harriet Ross was seriously injured by a blow to the head, inflicted by a white overseer for refusing to assist in tying up a man who had attempted escape.

It is said that Henry "Box" Brown, a slave, had himself nailed in a wooden box and mailed by real train from Richmond to William Still in Philadelphia.] He was a freeborn black Pennsylvanian who could read and write. He used these talents to interview runaway slaves and record their names and stories in a book. He hoped that in the future, family's could trace their relations using this book. Still published the book in 1872 under the title The Underground Railroad where describes many of Tubman's efforts. It is still published today.

With the assistance of Still, and other members of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, she learned about the workings of the Underground Railroad ( click for details). In 1850, Harriet helped her first slaves escape to the North. She sent a message to her sister's oldest son that said for her sister and family to board a fishing boat in Cambridge. This boat would sail up the Chesapeake Bay where they would meet Harriet in Bodkin's Point. When they got to Bodkin's Point, Harriet guided them from safehouse to safehouse in Pennsylvania (which was a free state) until they reached Philadelphia.

Harriet Tubman as "Conductor" with escaped slaves at an Underground Rail Road station

Around this time the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It stipulated that it was illegal for any citizen to assist an escaped slave and demanded that if an escaped slave was sighted, he or she should be apprehended and turned in to the authorities for deportation back to the "rightful" owner down south. Any United States Marshall who refused to return a runaway slave would pay a hefty penalty of $1,000. Thus the Underground Railroad tighten security. It created a code to make things more secret. It also sent the escaping slaves into Canada instead of the "North" of the U.S.

In the winter of 1852, Tubman was ready to return to the U.S. to help free more slaves. In the spring, she worked in Cape May and saved enough money to go to Maryland. By now, Tubman had led so many people from the South - the slave's called this the "land of Egypt" - to freedom, she became known as "Moses." She was also known by the plantation owners for her efforts and a bounty of $40,000 was posted. The state of Maryland itself posted a $12,000 reward for her capture.

Tubman made eleven trips from Maryland to Canada from 1852-1857. Her most famous trip concerned a passenger who panicked and wanted to turn back. Tubman was afraid if he left he would be tortured and would tell all he knew about the Railroad. The unwilling passenger changed his mind when Tubman pointed a gun at his head and said "dead folks tell no tales."

The spring of 1857 was the time when Harriet set out on her most daring rescue to free her elderly father, Ben Ross. Tubman bought a train ticket for herself and traveled in broad daylight which was dangerous considering the bounty for her head. When she reached Caroline County, she bought a horse and some miscellaneous parts to make a buggy. She took this and her father and mother to Thomas Garrett who arranged for their passage to Canada.

In Canada, she met famed abolitionist John Brown, a radical abolitionist, who had heard much about Harriet. When he came to St. Catherine, he asked J.W. Loguen to introduce them. When Brown met Tubman, he was overwhelmed by her intelligence and bearing and said "General Tubman, General Tubman, General Tubman." From then on he would refer to her by this name. Brown called Harriet, "one of the best and bravest persons on this continent." She worked closely with Brown, and reportedly missed the raid on Harper's Ferry only because of illness.

In 1860 in Troy, New York, in which she set her mind to setting free a fugitive who had been captured and was being held at the office of the United States Commisioner. The slave, a man named Charles Nalle, did escape thanks to Tubman's efforts. He later bought his freedom from his master, a man who also happend to be his younger, half-brother.

Harriet Tubman's career in the Railroad was ending by December 1860. She made her last rescue trip to Maryland, bringing seven people to Canada. In the ten years she worked as a "conductor" on the Railroad, Harriet managed to rescue over 300 people. She had made 19 trips and never lost a passenger on the way. For Tubman's safety, her friends took her to Canada.

1861 Civil War . Tubman returned to the U.S. from living in Canada in 1861. The Civil War had begun and was enlisting all men as soldiers and any women who wanted to join as cooks and nurses. Tubman enlisted into the Union army as a "contraband" nurse in a hospital in Hilton Head, South Carolina and for a time serving at Fortress Monroe, where Jefferson Davis would later be imprisoned.. Contrabands were blacks who the Union army helped to escape from the Southern compounds. Often they were half starved and sick from exposure. Harriet nursed the sick and wounded back to health but her work did not stop there. She also tried to find them work. When the army sent her to another hospital in Florida, she found white soldiers and contrabands "dying off like sheep". She treated her patients with medicine from roots and miraculously never caught any of the deadly diseases the wounded soldiers would carry.

During the summer of 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel James Montgomery as a scout. She put together a group of spies who kept Montgomery informed about slaves who might want to join the Union army. After she and her scouts had done the groundwork, she helped Montgomery organize the Combahee River Raid. The purpose of the raid was to harass whites and rescue freed slaves. They were successful in shelling the rebel outposts and gathering almost 500 slaves. Just about all the freed slaves joined the army.

While guiding a group of black soldiers in South Carolina, she met Nelson Davis, who was ten years her junior. Denied payment for her wartime service, Tubman was forced, after a bruising fight, to ride in a baggage car on her return to Auburn.

The quote below, echoing Patrick Henry, is the Sarah Bradford biography, "The Moses of Her People," of Harriet Tubman:

Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one or two things she had a right to, liberty or death.

Tubman returned to Auburn, New York.

after the war and purchased Seward's seven-acre plot in 1873 with $1,200 donated by author Sarah Bradford from sale proceeds of her book. The Tubman-Davis brick home remains today on that property.

In 189? the government gave her a military pension of $20 per month.

Only twelve miles from Seneca Falls and Susan B. Anthony, Tubman helped Auburn to remain a center of activity in support of women's rights.

a 1903 note about Hariet Tubman in a letter written by feminist Susan B. Anthony

With her home literally down the road, Tubman remained in contact with her friends, William and Frances Seward. In 1908, she purchased property adjoining her home and built the wooden structure that served as her home for the aged and indigent. Here she worked, and herself was cared for in the period before her death in 1913.

1913. Death . Before she died on March 10, 1913, she gave her home for the elderly to the Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Tubman was buried with military rites in Fort Hill Cemetery, a short drive from the home. A year after her death, Auburn declared a one-day memorial to its anti-slavery hero. Residents of the city that day unveiled the Harriet Tubman Plaque, which remains on display at the entrance of the Cayuga County Court House. She has since received man honors, including the naming of the Liberty Ship Harriet Tubman, christened in 1944 by Eleanor Roosevelt. On June 14, 1914 a large bronze plaque was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, and a civic holiday declared in her honor. Freedom Park, a tribute to the memory of Harriet Tubman, opened in the summer of 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn. In 1995, Harriet Tubman was honored by the federal government with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her name and likeness.

The Harriet Tubman Home

Visit the Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, New York
(off I-90 60 miles east of Rochester and 30 miles west of Syracuse)
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/home.htm
Years later after Harriet Tubman's death, when the last remains of the Tubman Home for the Aged faced demolition, the community rallied to help pay for part of its reconstruction. And when the Tubman home opened to the public in 1953, hundreds attended a dedication ceremony.

Blacks were among two of Auburn's first four residents, but the city has not always proven a hospitable fit for those that followed, especially in recent years. Though the black population of Cayuga County numbered 2,995 in 1990, few hold political office or are employed by the county or city.

1993 . In 1993 a local white sign painter donated his labor to place two portraitlike signs of Tubman on the home's front entrance. Previously, for 40 years, says Rev. Carter, there was no indication to let visitors or passers-by know of the home's location. In September 1993, a small band of Neo-Nazis attempted to march on City Hall from Freedom Park, which had been dedicated to Tubman's memory in June. However, a large group of counter-demonstrators, many from Ithaca and outside Auburn, turned the group away. In October 1993, a multi-racial group of marchers walked from Syracuse to the home in Tubman's memory.

Though Rev. Carter says the Auburn community accepts the Harriet Tubman Home, he believes the site doesn't receive its fair share of promotion.

"A number of tours come through this area for things that are around, such as the Seward House and Case Museum. But a lot of those tours never get to the Tubman Home."

Gary Chabot, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Auburn and Cayuga County, says tours of the area's historic sites "absolutely" include the Tubman Home. "It's very much a part of our tourist activity," says Chabot, who added that the home is becoming more recognizable in the community. A survey conducted by the chambershowed the Tubman Home was the area's third most requested tourist site for information.

______________

Like the former Tubman Home for the Aged, the complex's memorial library is sparsely furnished with artifacts and other memorabilia. A fan presented to Tubman by Seward's daughter, Fanny, is in one of several glass display cases, as well as two drinking glasses given by Tubman as a wedding gift. There is a photo album and stacks of old magazines on book shelves.

A duplicate of the Tubman Plaque at the County Court House rests unattached against a wall, while folding chairs fill much of one side of the library facing a television and VCR that plays a video of Tubman's life. A computer workstation, used mostly by Rev. Carter is in another corner of the library building. He would like to upgrade the facility into a full-scale library that would be accessible through the Internet.

A cultural research center on Black History and the Underground Railroad and a retreat with rooms to stay overnight are also plans Rev. Carter would to bring to fruition at the Tubman complex. However, there are some major roadblocks. The A.M.E. Zion Church operates the site with a $25,000 annual budget used for maintaining the grounds and to pay Rev. Carter, the only paid staff member, a regular stipend. Copes-Johnson is paid for her services through Green Thumb Inc., a national, nonprofit organization that provides employment for people older than 55 with limited incomes.

Much of Carter's time is also consumed by his duties as pastor of Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Auburn. The church is itself a landmark. It's where Tubman worshipped and was a member.

Though the home encourages financial donations from the public, its fund-raising efforts are also hampered because the church board that oversees the home has yet to secure federal tax-exempt status, so donations are not tax deductible. It's a situation Rev. Carter hopes to change soon. The board is currently working on filing papers with the Internal Revenue Service for tax exemption.

Some money is generated at the pilgrimage and at the home during the year through the sale of Tubman memorabilia. The multi-purpose center, which seats 500, is also rented for receptions, dances and meetings.

Those who would like to support the home with financial donations, can send checks payable to: The Harriet Tubman Home, 180 South Street, Auburn, New York 13021.

Rev. Carter also encourages skilled professionals or business owners, especially those with architectural engineering, grant writing and landscaping skills, to help.

"Visiting the property is always a good idea," he says. "That way, you get to see it first hand and see the potential it has."

Visit the Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, New York
(off I-90, 60 miles east of Rochester and 30 miles west of Syracuse)
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/home.htm
FURTHER

Bradford, Sarah. Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, New York: W.J. Moses, printer, ©1869. 132 pp.

Bradford, Sarah. Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman / Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her people. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, ©1993 (reprint). 149 pp, illus.

Conrad, Earl. Harriet Tubman. Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, ©1943. 248 pp.

Sterling, Dorothy. Freedom train; the story of Harriet Tubman. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, ©1954. 191 pp., illus.

Parrish, Anne. A clouded star. New York: Harper ©1948. 242 pp.

Swift, Hildegarde Hoyt. The railroad to freedom; a story of the civil war. New York: Harcourt, Brace and company, ©1932. 364 pp., illus.

Wheat, Ellen Harkins. Jacob Lawrence: the Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman series of 1938-40. Hampton, Virginia: Hampton University Museum, ©1991. Portraits, art criticism.

Bains, Rae. Harriet Tubman and the road to freedom. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1982. 48 pp.

Benjamin, Anne. Young Harriet Tubman: freedom fighter. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1992. 32 pp., illus.

Bentley, Judith. Harriet Tubman. New York: F. Watts, ©1990. 144 pp., illus.

Burns, Bree. Harriet Tubman. New York: Chelsea Juniors, ©1992. 80 pp., illus.

Carlson, Judy. Harriet Tubman: call to freedom. New York: Fawcett Columbine, ©1989. 116 pp., illus.

Carter, Polly. Harriet Tubman and Black history month. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Press, ©1990. 32 pp., illus.

Elish, Dan. Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press, ©1993. 32 pp., illus.

Epstein, Sam and Beryl. Harriet Tubman: guide to freedom. Champaign, Illinois: Garrard Pub. Co., ©1968. 96 pp., illus.

Ferris, Jeri. Go free or die: a story about Harriet Tubman. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Carolrhoda Books, ©1988. 63 pp., illus.

Grant, Matthew G. Harriet Tubman; black liberator. Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education; distributed by Childrens Press, Chicago, ©1974. 29 pp., illus.

Johnson, Ann Donegan. The value of helping: the story of Harriet Tubman. La Jolla, California: Value Communications, ©1979. 63 pp., illus.

Johnson, LaVerne C. Kumi &Chanti tell the story of Harriet Tubman. Chicago, Illinois: Empak Enterprises, ©1992. 32 pp., illus. Two African children following their mission of exploring African-American history record the story of Harriet Tubman.

Kelton, Nancy. Rebel slave. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Raintree Editions; Chicago, Illinois: distributed by Childrens Press, ©1977. 31 pp., illus.

Klingel, Cindy. Harriet Tubman: Black literator (1820-1913). Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education, ©1987 30 pp., illus.

McClard, Megan. Harriet Tubman: slavery and the underground railroad. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, ©1991. 133 pp., illus.

McLoone, Margo. Harriet Tubman: a photo-illustrated biography. Mankato, Minnesota: Bridgestone Press, ©1997. 24 pp., illus.

McMullan, Kate. The story of Harriet Tubman: conductor of the underground railroad. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: G. Stevens Pub., ©1997. 108 pp., illus.

Meyer, Linda D. Harriet Tubman: they called me Moses. Seattle, Washington: Parenting Press, ©1988. 24 pp.

Mosher, Kiki. Learning about bravery from the life of Harriet Tubman / Harriet Tubman. New York: PowerKids Press, ©1996. 24 pp., illus.

Petry, Ann Lane. Harriet Tubman, conductor on the Underground Railroad. New York: Crowell, ©1955. 247 p.

Plummer, William K. Harriet Tubman, freedom girl. Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, ©1969. 200 pp., illus.

Powers, R.M. Runaway slave; the story of Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Four Winds Press, ©1965. illus.

Rowley, John. Harriet Tubman. Des Plaines, Illinois: Heinemann Interactive Library, ©1998. 24 pp., illus.

Sabin, Francene. Harriet Tubman. Mahwah, New Jersey: Troll Associates, ©1985. 30 pp., illus.

Schroeder, Alan. Minty: a story of young Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, ©1996. illus.

Smith, Kathie Billingslea. Harriet Tubman. New York: J. Messner, ©1988. 24 pp., illus.

Sterling, Philip and Logan, Rayford. Four took freedom; the lives of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, and Blanche K. Bruce. Garden City, New York, Doubleday, ©1967. 116 pp., illus.

Taylor, M.W. Harriet Tubman. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, ©1991. 111 pp., illus.

Hoober, Dorothy and Thomas and Carey-Greenberg Associates. Next stop, freedom : the story of a slave girl. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, ©1991. 54 pp., illus.

Humphreville, Frances T. Harriet Tubman: flame of freedom. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, ©1967. 189 pp., illus.

Jackson, Dave and Neta. Listen for the whippoorwill. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, ©1993. 144 pp., illus.

Ringgold, Faith. Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the sky. New York, New York: Crown, ©1992. illus.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp. Harriet Tubman (Filmstrip). ©1969. Biography, 62 frames, color.

Lawrence, Jacob. Harriet and the Promised Land. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, ©1993. Juvenile poetry, illus.

Troll Associates. Harriet Tubman (Filmstrip). Troll Associates, ©1969. Biography, 43 frames, color.

CONTACT US

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back to The African American History of Western New York Since 4/96, visitors to the African American History of Western New York. At age six, Araminta was old enough to be considered able to work. She did not work in the fields though.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Freedman Schools

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman worked to establish schools for freedmen in South Carolina. She herself never learned to read and write, but she appreciated the value of education for the future of freedom and so supported efforts to educate the former slaves.

New York

Tubman soon returned to her home in Auburn, New York, which served as her base for the rest of her life.

She financially supported her parents, who died in 1871 and 1880. Her brothers and their families moved to Auburn.

Her husband, John Tubman, who had remarried soon after she left slavery, died in 1867 in a fight with a white man. In 1869 she married again. Her second husband, Nelson Davis, had been enslaved in North Carolina and then served as a Union Army soldier. He was more than twenty years younger than Tubman. Davis was often ill, probably with tuberculosis, and was not often able to work.

Tubman welcomed several young children into her home and raised them as if they were her own. she and her husband adopted a girl, Gertie. She also provided shelter and support for a number of aged, impoverished, former slaves. She financed her support of others through donations and taking on loans.

Publishing and Speaking

To finance her own living and her support of others, she worked with Sarah Hopkins Bradford to publish Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

The publication was initially financed by abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith, the latter a supporter of John Brown and first cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Tubman toured to speak about her experiences as "Moses." Queen Victoria invited her to England for the Queen's birthday, and sent Tubman a silver medal.

In 1886, Mrs. Bradford wrote, with Tubman's help, a second book, Harriet the Moses of Her People, a full-scale biography of Tubman, to further provide for Tubman's support. In the 1890s, having lost her battle to get a military pension on her own, Tubman was able to collect a pension as the widow of US veteran Nelson Davis.

Tubman also worked with her friend Susan B. Anthony on woman suffrage. She went to several women's rights conventions and spoke for the women's movement, advocating for the rights of women of color.

In 1896, in a touching link to the next generation of African American women activists, Tubman spoke at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women.

Compensation for Her Civil War Services

Although Harriet Tubman was well known, and her work in the Civil War also known, she had no official documents to prove that she had served in the war. She worked for 30 years with the help of many friends and contacts to appeal the rejection of her application for compensation. Newspapers ran stories about the effort. When Nelson Davis, her second husband, died in 1888, Tubman received a Civil War pension of $8 per month, as the widow of a veteran. She did not receive compensation for her own service.

Scammed

In 1873, her brother was offered a trunk of gold worth $5000, supposedly buried by slaveholders during the war, in exchange for $2000 in paper currency. Harriet Tubman found the story convincing, and borrowed the $2000 from a friend, promising to pay back $2000 from the gold. When the money was to be exchanged for the trunk of gold, the men were able to get Harriet Tubman alone, apart from her brother and her husband, and physically assault her, taking the money, and of course not providing any gold in return. The men who conned her were never apprehended.

Home for Indigent African Americans

Thinking of the future and continuing her support for aged and poor African Americans, Tubman established a home on 25 acres of land next to where she was living. She raised money, with the AME Church providing much of the funds, and a local bank assisting.

She incorporated the home in 1903 and opened in 1908, initially called the John Brown Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People, and later named for her instead of Brown.

She donated the home to the AME Zion Church with the proviso that it would be kept as a home for the elderly. The home, to which she moved in 1911 after she was hospitalized, continued for several years after her death on March 10, 1913 of pneumonia. She was buried with full military honors.

Legacy

To honor her memory, a World War II Liberty ship was named for Harriet Tubman. In 1978 she was featured on a commemorative stamp in the U.S. Her home has been named a national historic landmark. And in 2000, New York Congressman Edolphus Towns introduced a bill to grant Tubman the veteran status she was denied in her lifetime.

The four phases of Harriet Tubman's life -- her life as a slave, as an abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad, as a Civil War soldier, nurse, spy and scout, and as a social reformer and charitable citizen -- are all important aspects of this woman's long life of dedication to service. All these phases deserve attention and further study.

Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

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Harriet Tubman's Later Life of Activism and Reform

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In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman worked to establish schools for freedmen in South Carolina. She herself never learned to read and write, but she appreciated the value of education for the future of freedom and so supported efforts to educate the former slaves.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

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Blacks after the Civil War enjoyed many privileges that their predecessors could only dream of. They could vote, hold office and attend school. New Orleans, Louisiana, was one of the more integrated cities in the South.

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

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No story about the Underground Railroad in Central New York is complete without its main "conductor," Harriet Tubman, dubbed by many as "The Moses of Her People."

Born into slavery in late February or early March 1822, Araminta "Minty" Ross escaped from a Dorchester County, Maryland, plantation in 1849. She was the fifth of nine children born to Ben and Harriet Ross.

Kate C. Larson's 2004 book, "Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero," researches Tubman's amazing life.

Working as a field hand as a young teen, she was nearly killed by a blow to her head from an iron weight thrown by an angry overseer at another slave. Headaches, seizures and sleeping spells plagued her the rest of her life.

Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. She changed her name to Harriet after her mother.

In the late fall of 1849, she used the existing Underground Railroad on Maryland's Eastern Shore to escape, traveling at night, using the North Star. With help from blacks and whites along the way, she made her way to freedom in Philadelphia.

Over the next 11 years, at incredible personal risk of death, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland some 13 times to liberate relatives and friends from slavery.

Larson's research indicates she probably brought up about 70 former slaves, including her parents, brothers and others. Other historians earlier have put the number as high as 300. Tubman also gave secret instructions to 50 more slaves who found their own way to freedom on the Underground Railroad, Larson wrote.

Larson wrote that it was not until eight or nine years after Tubman ran away and made several trips back to rescue others in late 1857 and early 1858 that slaveholders on the Eastern Shore became aware that someone was likely helping slaves run away. But they didn't know his or her identity.Tubman spent time in Auburn before the Civil War, bringing slaves to freedom and making friends with William H. Seward, an Auburn lawyer, congressman and abolitionist. She often stayed with the Sewards.

During the Civil War, she became a valuable Union Army nurse, scout and cook. Larson said she became the first woman to lead an armed raid into the Confederate territory of South Carolina. After the war, she settled near Auburn.

Sometime in the late winter or early spring of 1859, Seward sold Tubman a seven-acre parcel of farm property south of Auburn, land he inherited from his father-in-law.Tubman's parents moved in with her, as did her brother. She solicited money, telling stories to gatherings all over the East, speaking with power, drama, charm and wit, and raising money for her home for the destitute, orphans and aged.The Tubman property on South Street, Auburn, has been owned and managed by the AME Zion Church since 1903. Tubman was a devoted member of that church's congregation in Auburn for many years.

It is now being considered for inclusion into the National Park Service.

Beth Crawford, of Crawford & Stearns, is doing a historic structures report on the Tubman property for the AME Zion Church.

"The wood frame farmhouse she lived in with her parents and brother burned in 1882 or 1883. A new brick house appears to have been built on the same foundation," Crawford said. "She lived there from 1883 to 1892, when she moved to her brother's home at the north end of the property for four years," Crawford said.

In 1896, she moved back to the brick house, which is vacant but still standing, and lived there until 1911. Because of her health, she moved into the John Brown Home for the Aged on the property. She died in 1913 and is buried in Auburn's Fort Hill Cemetery.

End quote:
"Twant me, 'twas the Lord. I always told him, 'I trust to you. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,' and he always did."
- Harriet Tubman, to her biographer, Sarah H. Bradford. Tubman, circa 1822-1913, the most famous leader of the Underground Railroad, led as many as 300 slaves to freedom. In 1857, she led her parents to freedom in Auburn, Cayuga County. During the Civil War, Tubman served as a nurse, scout and spy for the Union Army. After the war, she returned to Auburn, where she helped raise money for black schools and eventually established a home for elderly and needy blacks.
This story is part of The Post-Standard's 2005 observance of Black History Month. The series, "Stops on the Road to Freedom," tells a story a day about sites and people in Central New York that played a significant role in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

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Harriet Tubman: She kept caring after slavery ended

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No story about the Underground Railroad in Central New York is complete without its main "conductor," Harriet Tubman, dubbed by many as "The Moses of Her People." Born into slavery in late February or early March 1822, Araminta "Minty" Ross escaped from a Dorchester County, Maryland, plantation in 1849.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

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Harriet Tubman was a US abolitionist and humanitarian, but she was born with the name Araminta Ross in 1822. She also acted as an armed scout and spy to the US Army during the American Civil War. Tubman was born into slavery but escaped and made approximately thirteen missions, during which she rescued around 70 families and friends from their enslavement. She used the antislavery activist network known as the Underground Railroad to sneak people out of their situations and into freedom. Later in her life, she helped John Brown recruit men for the raid he ran on Harper's Ferry, and she was an active participant in the women's suffrage struggle as well.

Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland, where she was beaten and whipped by vicious masters during her childhood spend in slavery. She suffered a serious head wound early in her life when a slave owner threw a metal weight at another slave and she received the blow instead. The injury caused her to experience pain, spells of sleeping and dizziness, which occurred throughout her life. Tubman persevered and her devout Christian faith helped her move forward and see her visions and vivid dreams as premonitions for the future from God.

In 1840, Tubman's father was manumitted from slavery as part of a stipulation his former owner mandated in his will, but he continued to work as the timer estimator and foreman for those who held him as a slave. In 1844, Harriet married a free black man by the name of John Tubman. There is not much documentation of their time together, but history shows it was complicated since she was a slave and he was not. The mother's status dictates the status of any children, so the couple knew any children they had would have been enslaved. Mixing free people of color and enslaved people was not common in the Maryland area, but most of the people in that region were free. The couple may have planned to buy Harriet's freedom at some point. She changed her name from Araminta to Harriet just after she married and took her husband's last name as well.

She became ill in 1849, which diminished her capacity and value as a slave. Her owner, Edward Brodess, tried to sell her but couldn't find a buyer. She was angry with her owner for trying to sell her and for keeping her relatives enslaved, so she prayed to God to have the man change his ways. After nothing happened, she changed her prayer and asked the Lord to take his life instead. A few weeks later, Brodess died and Tubman regretted her sentiments. As his estate settled, it seemed as if Tubman would be sold and her family split, just as she had feared before. She decided not to wait and see what would happen to her and her family, and despite her husband's wishes, she and her brothers made plans to flee. Tubman escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 and then returned to Maryland to help free her family. She took one group at a time out of the state to freedom and then began to guide dozens of other slaves along the same path. They traveled under extreme secrecy using the dark of night. Tubman was sometimes called Moses because of her guidance, and she supposedly never lost a passenger. When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 passed, she then began guiding fugitive slaves farther north to safety and she also helped newly freed slaves find jobs to support their families. These journeys into and out of the land of slavery were huge risks, and she had to use a variety of methods to avoid detection and arrest. She would sometimes disguise herself in order to get past people who might recognize her as a former slave.

Once the Civil War began, she saw the Union movement as a step towards abolition. She wanted to help further that cause. Harriet Tubman worked for the Union Army, supporting the effort any way she could. She first worked as a cook, then a nurse, and eventually as an armed scout and spy. She was the very first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war when she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry. That raid liberated over 700 slaves from their chains of slavery. When the war ended, she retired to her family's home, which she purchased in 1859. She cared for her aging parents in Auburn, New York and became active in the women's suffrage movement. She also became heavily involved with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and in 1903, she donated a parcel of her real estate to the church. This parcel became a home for the aged people of color. When illness took over her days, she was admitted to the home for elderly African Americans, the very home she had helped to establish years before with the donation of her land. Tubman passed away in 1913 and quickly became an icon of American freedom because of her highly courageous acts and perseverance through it all. In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department even announced that they planned to replace Andrew Jackson with a portrait of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.

Harriet Tubman was widely respected and well known when she was alive and she has become an American icon since her death. According to a recent survey, she is one of the most famous people in American history during the Civil War, only behind Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She inspired an entire generation of African Americans to struggle for their rights and equality, and leaders have praised her across the board. She was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. The city has a commemorative plaque in her name outside the courthouse. Her former home was abandoned in 1920, but the AME Zion Church later renovated it and now welcomes visitors onto the premises as a museum and education center.

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Harriet Tubman was a US abolitionist and humanitarian, but she was born with the name Araminta Ross in 1822. She also acted as an armed scout and spy to the US Army during the American Civil War. Tubman was born into slavery but escaped and made approximately thirteen missions, during which she rescued around 70 families and friends from their enslavement.

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During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Harriett Tubman Biography (Black History Month for Kids/Children)

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During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

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After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

In 1862, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts arranged for Tubman to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a nurse and teacher to the Gullah people of the Sea Islands who had been left behind by their owners when they fled the advance of the Union Army, which remained in control of the islands.

The next year, the Union Army asked Tubman to organize a network of scouts -- and spies -- among the black men of the area. She not only organized a sophisticated information-gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information. Not so incidentally, another purpose of these forays was to persuade slaves to leave their masters, many to join the regiments of black soldiers. Her years as "Moses" and her ability to move about secretly were excellent background for this new assignment.

In July of 1863, Harriet Tubman led troops under the command of Colonel James Montgomery in the Combahee River expedition, disrupting Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads. The mission also freed more than 750 slaves. Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand.

Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said "This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted." Tubman reported later that most of the freed slaves joined "the colored regiment."

Tubman was also present for the defeat of the 54th Massachusetts, the black unit led by Robert Gould Shaw.

Catherine Clinton, in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, suggests that Harriet Tubman may have been allowed to go beyond women's traditional boundaries more than most women, because of her race. (Clinton, p. 94)

Tubman believed that she was in the employ of the U.S. Army. When she received her first paycheck, she spent it to build a place where freed black women could earn a living doing laundry for the soldiers. But then she wasn't paid regularly again, and wasn't given the military rations she believed she was entitled to. She was paid only a total of $200 in three years of service. She supported herself and her work by selling baked goods and root beer which she made after she completed her regular work duties.

After the war was over, Tubman was never paid her back military pay. In addition, when she applied for a pension -- with the support of Secretary of State William Seward, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and General Rufus -- her application was denied. Harriet Tubman did eventually receive a pension -- but as the widow of a soldier, her second husband.
Next: 4: Later Years of Activism and Reform
Harriet Tubman Biography: From Slavery to Freedom

1. Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery

2. Harriet Tubman as Underground Railroad Conductor, Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

3. Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service: Nurse, Scout, Spy

4. Harriet Tubman's Later Years of Activism and Reform

More About Harriet Tubman:

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Harriet Tubman: Nurse, Scout and Spy in the Civil War

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After war broke out, Harriet Tubman went South to assist and work with "contrabands" -- escaped slaves who were attached to the Union Army. She also briefly went to Florida on a similar mission.

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HI everyone

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Larry Buchanan and Tim Wallace/The New York Times

Del.

At some point in the swelling rhapsody around Harriet Tubman's remarkable life, it is easy to wonder, with perhaps a bit of guilt, where Tubman's heroism ends and tall tales begin.

Somewhere between mythic and make-believe slave narratives, you want to hit pause and go searching for the truth of how, for instance, a fugitive slave slipped into Poplar Neck, Md., on Christmas Day in 1854 and stole off with her three brothers and several loved ones.

I traveled Maryland's Eastern Shore, hoping to gain a deeper, more accurate understanding of Harriet Tubman, a complex American hero.

Trailhead

Cambridge, Md.

I set off on a three-day trek across the Eastern Shore, Tubman's birthplace and the landscape she traversed, fugitive slaves in tow, from Dorchester County through Delaware into Philadelphia.

My trip coincided with the state's renewed fervor around Tubman: On March 11, the Maryland State Park Service and the National Park Service will open the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, a $21 million project in Church Creek that commemorates Tubman's journey, from slave to Underground Railroad "conductor" and, later in life, Civil War scout, spy and nurse. Sitting on 17 acres, the center will be part of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a 125-mile self-guided driving tour that wends through 36 significant sites along the Eastern Shore.

From the early 1600s until the mid-1800s, thousands of African-Americans would encounter the marshy wooded landscape of the Chesapeake Bay region, first as a gateway through which slave traders forcibly brought them from Africa into the colonies and later as essential paths and waterways that formed the Underground Railroad.

In 1850, Maryland had 279 runaway slaves, leading the nation's slave states in successfully executed escapes, the author Kate Clifford Larson says in the Harriet Tubman biography "Bound for the Promised Land." "But few returned to the land of their enslavers, risking capture and re-enslavement, even lynching, to help others seek their own emancipation," Ms. Larson writes.

Among those few was Tubman.

1. Harriet Tubman Museum

I listened as a group of museum volunteers traded in vivid, harrowing detail stories about Tubman. In these volunteers' eyes, Tubman's roots in Dorchester County not only gave them bragging rights but also carried an obligation to illuminate her story in a way that a zillion children's books - or her face on the $20 bill - could never achieve.

In the Mire

Bucktown, Md.

The exact date of Harriet Tubman's birth is unknown, but historians generally agree that she was born Araminta Ross in 1822 to Benjamin and Harriet (Rit) Greene Ross, taking on her mother's first name when she married in 1844. She was born in nearby Peters Neck, on a farm owned by Anthony Thompson, a medical doctor and timber magnate, and was later moved to Bucktown.

The morning after my arrival in Cambridge, I took the 20-minute drive to the Bucktown farm of Edward Brodess, Dr. Thompson's stepson and Tubman's owner. It is a serene drive, as the landscape shifts quickly from urban to wide-open rural spaces, with acres of barren, tan-colored land stretching miles into the distance, punctuated by the occasional farmhouse.

Along the way I encountered some fascinating sites:

2. Joseph Stewart's Canal

From 1810 to 1832, enslaved and free blacks dug a seven-mile canal through the marsh for commercial transportation. The canal was owned by the wealthy slaveholding Stewart family; and Tubman's father, who worked at a nearby timbering operation, transported materials on the canal.

3. Stanley Institute

I also stopped briefly at the Stanley Institute, a one-room 19th-century schoolhouse that doubled as a church, and I sat at one of its wooden desks. It is one of the state's oldest schools operated by the black community.

Tubman herself never learned to read or write. Starting at around 5 years old, she was lent out to nearby families to work; she checked muskrat traps in streams and rivers, and worked as a nursemaid to a planter's child and later as a field hand on timber farms.

4. Bucktown Village Store

From Tubman's era, the Bucktown Village Store, though renovated, still stands. It was there that Tubman, as a teenager, showed early signs of rebellion - and she paid dearly for it.

First Flight

One day, Tubman had arrived at Bucktown Village Store with a slave owner's cook, crossing paths with an overseer arguing with his slave. The slave apparently had left the farm without permission. When the overseer ordered Tubman to help him restrain the man, she refused and the slave broke away. The overseer then grabbed a two-pound weight off the counter, threw it at the fleeing slave and instead struck Tubman. The blow fractured Tubman's skull and caused her to suffer severe headaches and seizures throughout her life.

Nearly a decade later, she married John Tubman, a free black man, even as she continued in servitude to the Brodess family. When her master died in 1849, Tubman and two of her brothers, Harry and Ben, fearing they would be sold, ran away - later returning for fear of punishment.

5. Brodess Farm

A note apparently written by Edward Brodess, who owned Harriet Tubman, which states the purchase of a woman that could be a relative of Harriet. Tubman was a slave at the Brodess Farm here along with members of her family. When he died, she and her brothers fled.

The Return

Shortly after returning to the farm, Tubman set out on her own, guided through the night by the North Star and well-worn paths of the Underground Railroad up into Pennsylvania, where slavery was illegal.

Tubman's freedom proved to be bittersweet, as she would recount in her biography. In Philadelphia, she was free, working odd jobs, but lonely. Tubman began plotting her return home to bring her kin back with her: "I was free and dey should be free also. I would make a home for dem in de North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring dem all dere."

In 1850, Tubman made her first trip back to Maryland, where, on the steps of the Dorchester County Courthouse (which was rebuilt in 1854 after a fire), Tubman's niece, Kessiah, was scheduled to be auctioned off. But Tubman had plotted with Kessiah's husband, who had been manumitted, to free his family. He secured the highest bid for Kessiah and their two children, smuggled them to a local safe house, then sailed up the Chesapeake to Baltimore, where Tubman greeted them and guided them to Philadelphia.

The rescue must have inspired Tubman. Over the next decade, she would return to Maryland's Eastern Shore a dozen times, rescuing some 70 family members and friends.

Tubman was no-nonsense on these journeys, unwilling to suffer weakness among those joining her perilous flight. "For the faint of heart she carried a pistol, telling her charges to go on or die, for a dead fugitive slave could tell no tales," Ms. Larson writes in her Tubman biography. "She used disguises; she walked, rode horses and wagons; sailed on boats; and rode on real trains...She bribed people. She followed rivers that snaked northward. She used the stars and other natural phenomenon to lead her north."

Due North

Poplar Neck, Md.

Heading north from Dorchester County, with the sun setting, I entered Caroline County and into Poplar Neck. Along with gorgeous views of the Choptank River, the area is rich with history. Not only is it home to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, but it's also where Tubman herself escaped slavery in 1849 and would return later, in 1857, to rescue her parents from their then-owner, Dr. Thompson, who owned 2,200 acres of this area.

6. Mount Pleasant Cemetery

This is where free blacks and slaves met with Tubman in secrecy to plot escapes along the Underground Railroad.

'Witness Tree'

I stopped at a small log cabin built in the 1850s by James Webb, a free black farmer who lived there with his enslaved wife and four children.

These days, Paulette Greene and Donna Dear, an African-American couple, own some 130 acres of that property. Beneath a giant poplar called the "Witness Tree," where folks travel from miles away to pray and hold spiritual retreats, we talked about the sacred history of this land. Then they invited me inside their home and treated me to a delicious soup of kidney and navy beans grown on their farm.

Safe Houses of Worship

Along Maryland's Eastern Seaboard, fugitive slaves pushing to reach Pennsylvania moved through Caroline County and into Kent County in Delaware. They often stopped in Dover, where they would frequently be aided by free black and Quaker abolitionists. There the black community would later build Star Hill A.M.E. Church, which today houses a small museum.

7. Star Hill A.M.E. Church

The museum inside the church also tells the story of white Quakers, who, opposing slavery because of religious beliefs, had freed their slaves several decades before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. As Robin Kravitz, a historian at Delaware State University, put it: "The Quakers started their manumission processes by the American Revolution. So these abolitionist connections run deep through families in this area."

The Stationmaster

The Quakers' commitment to the Underground Railroad inspired me on my final day on the Eastern Shore to stop at the Friends Meeting House in Wilmington, Del., the burial ground of Thomas Garrett, a Quaker abolitionist, a close friend of Harriet Tubman and one of the most important "stationmasters" on the Underground Railroad.

For more than four decades, Garrett assisted some 2,700 enslaved people on their journey to freedom, providing them with food, shelter, money and connections to other abolitionists. Garrett, it turns out, was the inspiration for the character Simeon Halliday, the benevolent Quaker in Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In a 1868 letter, Garrett gave Tubman his highest praise: "For in truth, I never met with any person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God."

A decade earlier, Tubman had described her faith in a letter to Ednah Dow Cheney, the philanthropist and suffragist.

"God's time is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens. He gave me the strength in my limbs. He meant I should be free."

Produced by:

Umi Syam, Angelica McKinley, Tim Wallace, Alicia DeSantis, Monica Drake, Steve Reddicliffe

Video:

Editing and Color: Daphne Rustow; Footage: Larry Buchanan, Tim Wallace

Photography:

Darren S. Higgins for The New York Times

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Larry Buchanan and Tim Wallace/The New York Times Del. At some point in the swelling rhapsody around Harriet Tubman's remarkable life, it is easy to wonder, with perhaps a bit of guilt, where Tubman's heroism ends and tall tales begin.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her. As a result of a head injury caused by one of these men, she suffered from seizures and "visions" for the rest of her life, which she believed were sent from God.

In 1840, Tubman's father was freed as a result of a stipulation in his master's will, but continued to work for his former owner's family. Although Tubman, her mother, and her siblings were also supposed to be freed, the law was ignored and they remained enslaved. Tubman married a free black in 1844, and changed her first name from Araminta to Harriet.

In 1849, Tubman became seriously ill with complications from her head injury, and her owner decided to sell her, but could not find a buyer. After her owner's sudden death, the family began selling off all of the slaves. Not wanting to have her family separated, Tubman was determined to escape. A first attempt, in which Tubman was accompanied by her brothers, was aborted when they had second thoughts. Tubman decided to try again on her own, and she escaped via the Underground Railroad into Pennsylvania.

Tubman settled in Philadelphia and was able to support herself doing odd jobs. But in 1850, word came that her niece and her two children were to be sold. Tubman was determined to help, and went back to Maryland. With the assistance of her brother-in-law, Tubman was able to bring her niece and the two children back safely to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips that Tubman would make to lead family members and others to freedom. On one expedition, Tubman contacted her husband in the hopes that he would follow her to Pennsylvania, but he had remarried and preferred to remain in Maryland.

Over the course of 11 years, Tubman rescued over 70 slaves from Maryland, and assisted 50 or 60 others in making their way to Canada. During this time, her reputation in the abolitionist community grew, and she became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. She also moved her base of operations to Auburn, New York, closer to the Canadian border. Tubman conducted her last rescue mission in November 1861, as the Civil War enveloped the nation.

Tubman offered her services to the Union Army, and in early 1862, she went to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for black soldiers and newly liberated slaves. Working with General David Hunter, Tubman also began spying and scouting missions behind Confederate lines. In June of 1863, she accompanied Colonel James Montgomery in an assault on several plantations along the Combahee River, rescuing more than 700 slaves. Her deed was celebrated in the press and she became even more famous.

With the end of the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, NY and married a Civil War veteran. Although her service in the Union Army was much publicized, she had great difficulty in getting a pension from the government, but was eventually awarded a nurse's pension in the 1880s. She did not stay idle in her later years, taking on the cause of women's suffrage with the same determination she had shown for abolition.

Tubman established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on a property adjacent to her own. After undergoing brain surgery to try to alleviate the symptoms from the head injury that had plagued her since childhood, and being essentially penniless, Tubman was forced to move into the home herself in 1911. She died there on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her.

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Harriet Tubman: Fearless Freedom Fighter who Liberated Hundreds of Slaves | Biography

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During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age. Her father died in 1871 and her mother in 1880.

Tubman was a philanthropist who provided to those who sought her help. She left the door of her residence, at South Street , open for those who needed shelter and food. For years freed slaves came and left when they were ready to move on. She took care of all their needs even though she was penniless. She supported herself and those she sheltered by selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food and asking friends for loans. She also raised pigs in her backyard.

Marriage

In 1867 Tubman received the news of the death of her former husband, John Tubman. He had been killed in an altercation with a white man named Robert Vincent. He was never convicted. Harriet was never formally married to John, theirs was an informal marriage just like all others who lived in slavery.

In 1869 Tubman met Nelson Davis, a man who had looked for shelter in her home. He had been a slave in North Carolina and served as a soldier in the Civil War. Davis was a brick maker. Tubman and Davis married on March 18, 1869 at the Presbyterian Church in Auburn. In 1874 they adopted a girl who they named Gertie. Davis suffered from Tuberculosis and could not hold a steady job, leaving Harriet responsible for the household. Their marriage lasted 20 years. Davis died in 1888 probably from Tuberculosis.

Compensation for Civil War Services

When Harriet returned to Auburn she applied for government compensation for her services during the Civil War but her application lacked the official documents. With the help of some friends she was able to appeal but took more than 30 years to succeed. Her friends found out about her financial needs and community leaders wrote letters to newspapers advocating her case, Tubman deserved a government pension.

When her second husband, Nelson Davis, died in 1888 Tubman was able to collect a veteran's widow pension of $8 a month. It was the first time she enjoyed a reliable and steady income.

Women's Rights Movement

Tubman supported the Women's Rights Movement by attending meetings and giving speeches. Friends who had supported her during her Underground Railroad years were leaders of the movement. She toured New York, Boston and Philadelphia speaking in favor of women's suffrage rights. She was specially interested in African American women's rights. In 1896 she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women. Read more about Harriet Tubman's involvement in the Women's Rights Movement.

First biography by Sarah Bradford

Friends sponsored the publication of her first authorized biography written by author Sarah Bradford. The objective was to furnish financial help since her Government pension was not authorized. All the proceeds of the sale of the book went directly to Tubman to help with payments of her mortgage and the support of her older parents. In addition to interviews with Tubman, the biography included stories and letters from prominent government officials and former abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William Seaward and Wendell Phillips. Printing and advertising costs were covered by donors. The book, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman was published in 1869 and raised $1,200 in revenues which went directly to Tubman.

A second biography was published in 1886 called Harriet, the Moses of her People. As with the first biography, this one was also published to help Harriet's financial situation.

The gold scam

In 1873 her financial needs were pressing and she became a victim of a scam. Two men approached her and her brother, John Stewart, and proposed to give them a trunk full of gold worth $5000 in exchange for $2000 in greenbacks, the paper currency used during the Civil War. According to the con men they had found the gold buried away. Harriet knew that white slaveholders in the south had hidden away valuables and it was the slaves who would dig holes in the ground to hide away their possessions. The story did not sound so farfetched so she approached Anthony Shimmer who provided her with $2000. In exchange she would return the $2000 in gold coins which would provide a good margin for the investment.

The exchange was planned to take place at night in the woods. The con men were able to separate Harriet from her brother and husband. She was then knocked down and injured and the money was taken away. The two men were never found.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly

Tubman showed special concern for the old. Few social services were available to them and they were too old to make a living. In 1896 Tubman acquired in auction 25 acres of land adjacent to her property, located at 130 South Street. With money raised by the AME Zion Church and with the support of a local bank, Harriet was able to afford such an acquisition. Her dream was to build a house for the aged colored people. Her winning bid was $1450.

In 1903 she decided to donate the property to the AME Zion Church with the condition that it would be maintained as a home for the elderly. The Board of the Lady Managers helped raise funds to equip and staff the home. It took five years for Tubman's dream to realize. On June 23, 1908 Harriet Tubman Home was inaugurated with Tubman as the guest of honor in the opening celebration.

Following her hospitalization in 1911 she moved out of her house and into the care of the facility next door where she was to spend the rest of her life.

Category: Biography, Later Years and Death

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When the Civil War ended Harriet Tubman returned home to Auburn, New York. Her parents were old and had a good support system during her absence but they still needed her daughter's financial support. Her brothers and their families eventually moved from St. Catharine's to Auburn. Her parents passed away of old age.

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"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to..." - Harriet Tubman

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http://www.harriet-tubman.org/

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Tubman always looked older than she was. Years of hard labor had taken a toll on her. Her brain injury was everyday debilitating; she had brain surgery in Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate pain. In 1911 she was too frail to live alone and moved next door to the Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly.

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animated hero classics season 2 episode 3

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Animated Hero Classics S2 Ep 3 Harriet Tubman | harriet tubman for kids | harriet tubman cartoon

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Animated Hero Classics S2 Ep 3 Harriet Tubman | harriet tubman for kids | harriet tubman cartoon You will Watch Animated Hero Classics Season 2 Episode 3 online for free episodes with HQ / high quality. Stream cartoons Animated Hero Classics Episode 12 Harriet Tubman.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her. As a result of a head injury caused by one of these men, she suffered from seizures and "visions" for the rest of her life, which she believed were sent from God.

In 1840, Tubman's father was freed as a result of a stipulation in his master's will, but continued to work for his former owner's family. Although Tubman, her mother, and her siblings were also supposed to be freed, the law was ignored and they remained enslaved. Tubman married a free black in 1844, and changed her first name from Araminta to Harriet.

In 1849, Tubman became seriously ill with complications from her head injury, and her owner decided to sell her, but could not find a buyer. After her owner's sudden death, the family began selling off all of the slaves. Not wanting to have her family separated, Tubman was determined to escape. A first attempt, in which Tubman was accompanied by her brothers, was aborted when they had second thoughts. Tubman decided to try again on her own, and she escaped via the Underground Railroad into Pennsylvania.

Tubman settled in Philadelphia and was able to support herself doing odd jobs. But in 1850, word came that her niece and her two children were to be sold. Tubman was determined to help, and went back to Maryland. With the assistance of her brother-in-law, Tubman was able to bring her niece and the two children back safely to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips that Tubman would make to lead family members and others to freedom. On one expedition, Tubman contacted her husband in the hopes that he would follow her to Pennsylvania, but he had remarried and preferred to remain in Maryland.

Over the course of 11 years, Tubman rescued over 70 slaves from Maryland, and assisted 50 or 60 others in making their way to Canada. During this time, her reputation in the abolitionist community grew, and she became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. She also moved her base of operations to Auburn, New York, closer to the Canadian border. Tubman conducted her last rescue mission in November 1861, as the Civil War enveloped the nation.

Tubman offered her services to the Union Army, and in early 1862, she went to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for black soldiers and newly liberated slaves. Working with General David Hunter, Tubman also began spying and scouting missions behind Confederate lines. In June of 1863, she accompanied Colonel James Montgomery in an assault on several plantations along the Combahee River, rescuing more than 700 slaves. Her deed was celebrated in the press and she became even more famous.

With the end of the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, NY and married a Civil War veteran. Although her service in the Union Army was much publicized, she had great difficulty in getting a pension from the government, but was eventually awarded a nurse's pension in the 1880s. She did not stay idle in her later years, taking on the cause of women's suffrage with the same determination she had shown for abolition.

Tubman established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on a property adjacent to her own. After undergoing brain surgery to try to alleviate the symptoms from the head injury that had plagued her since childhood, and being essentially penniless, Tubman was forced to move into the home herself in 1911. She died there on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

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Perhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was "hired out" to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriett and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
READ MORE: 6 Strategies Harriet Tubman and Others Used to Escape Along the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
READ MORE: The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico
Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslave people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.
READ MORE: After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid
Harriet Tubman: 20 Dollar Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

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harriet tubman the undergrond railroad slaves on the shore delmava peninsula

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The Eastern Shore of Maryland's tribute to Harriet Tubman - a very strong woman on the shore and in Eastern Shore history as well as black history.

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her experience leading slaves along the Underground Railroad was especially helpful because she knew the land well. She recruited a group of former slaves to hunt for rebel camps and report on the movement of the Confederate troops.

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.