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UnderGround Railroad
At some point, Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet, which was her mother's name. Some biographers think that she made the change when she got married. Others say that she did it when she escaped to freedom. Many runaway slaves took new names to protect themselves against being recognized by slave catchers and sent back to the plantations from which they had fled. -
Born A Maryland Slave
No one knew the date on which a baby named Araminta Ross was born, in a slave cabin on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime about 1820. Araminta, who was nicknamed Minty, was a middle child of Harriet Green and Ben Ross, a slave couple on a timber plantation in Dorchester County. Most likely, none of their children, who numbered nine in all, had birth certificates. Slave owners did not mark the births of slaves, who were considered property,not people -
First Taste Of Freedom
Tubman experienced her first year of freedom. She found employment as a cook and household worker, possibly in hotels. During the summer, she worked at Cape May, a summer resort town on the New Jersey shore that was a short distance away. -
Marriage
Around 1844, when Araminta was in her twenties, she married a free black man named John Tubman, and she took his last name. Slaves could not be legally married, nor were their marriages protected from interference by their owners. Often, a marriage was just a matter of two slaves getting permission to move in with each other. There was no ceremony or legal document. After a slave couple married, if they lived on different plantations, they had to get permission from their owners to visit each ot -
Escape
Tubman's father was free, and so was her husband. Tubman dreamed of crossing the River Jordan to the land of Canaan. Desperately unhappy, she began to pray that her master, Edward Brodess, would become more Christian and moral. She even wished for his death. When that death came unexpectedly early, Tubman felt a little guilty. As she told Sarah Bradford: "Then I changed my prayer, and I said, 'Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way, -
After the Fugitive Slave Act
In 1849, Tubman arrived in Philadelphia. It was a bustling and industrious city with a history of antislavery activity. Founded by the English Quaker leader William Penn in 1682, Philadelphia was built on a philosophy of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. -
Journey To Freedom
When she was in her teens, Araminta was rented out by her owner to work in the fields at a neighboring farm during the harvest. One day, a young slave ran off without permission. The overseer chased him to a local store at a cross-roads in Buckstown. Araminta may have followed the runaway, or she might have been at the store on an errand. According to some versions of the story, she was asked to help restrain the boy but did not. -
Speaking Out And Answering Critics
Sojourner Truth became a well-known figure in both the antislavery and women's rights movements after her autobiography was published in 1850. William Lloyd Garrison and his associate Wendell Phillips persuaded her to lend her splendid voice to the abolitionist cause, and she soon began traveling with other lecturers on tours throughout New England. While traveling on the lecture circuit, she sold many copies of her book, and with proceeds from the sales, she bought a house in Northampton. -
Bound for the Promised Land
With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman's journeys on the Underground Railroad became even more dangerous. Philadelphia was not safe from slave catchers. Tubman had to lead her charges onward to New York, where she could get them onto northbound trains so that they could make it to true freedom in Canada... They was Kidnapping slaves! -
A Banner For Liberty
During the remainder of 1852 and 1853, Truth continued her lecture tour in Ohio and Michigan. Friends lent her a horse and buggy for her travels, and a women's abolitionist group made her a white satin banner on which was embroidered the message: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." In every town that she visited, she attracted a crowd. Setting her banner on a pole in the ground, she would sing her favorite hymns until a crowd had gathered around her. -
A Home of Her Own
One of Tubman's most heartbreaking rescues occurred around Christmas in 1854. At that time three of Tubman's brothers still lived in slavery in Maryland. The brothers had tried several times to get away. They may have even tried to negotiate for their freedom with their owner, Eliza Ann Brodess, but their attempts had not succeeded -
Nursing and the Civil War
When the war erupted in 1861, there was neither an organized nursing force nor an ambulance service nor a medical team. The need for trained and organized medical personnel became clear almost immediately. Nuns from various religious denominations, who were accustomed to treating the ill and maimed, volunteered to treat injured and sick soldiers. So Harriet Tubman was a nurse until 1926. -
A Country Still Divided
After four long years of war, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army and General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army met in the parlor of a house in the small town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. "It would be useless and therefore cruel to provoke the further effusion of blood.. -
The Moses of Her People
Harriet Tubman was entering her nineties. She had to use a wheelchair and she was known as Aunt Harriet to her family , friends. The entire community could no longer let her live on her own. With the help of friends, she moved into the Harriet Tubman Home. She was unable to pay the costs, however. Several newspapers ran articles about her and asked for donations. -
Honors Come Later
After a life that stretched across a turbulent American century, Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, in Auburn. Throughout her many years, she always had tried to help others. By some accounts, her last words were as generous as her life, "I go to prepare a place for you." A service was held at the Harriet Tubman Home. Her body then lay in state at her longtime place of worship,
