Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery around March 1822 in Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and her parents named her Araminta Ross. Her parents, Harriet “Rit” Ross and Ben Ross, had nine children; their enslaver was Edward Brodess, and the family was repeatedly separated, with three of her sisters sold away during her childhood.⁠[1][2][3]

While enslaved she did childcare, plowing and work on the wharves. At the Bucktown Village Store she once refused to help an overseer capture a freedom seeker; a two-pound weight the overseer threw struck her in the head, and she suffered sleeping spells for the rest of her life.⁠[2][1]

In 1844 she married John Tubman, a free Black man, and took the name Harriet, possibly in honor of her mother. The marriage lasted until 1849.⁠[3][1][4]

After Edward Brodess died in March 1849, she escaped alone that fall and reached freedom in Philadelphia, where she worked with William Still.⁠[1][5]

Between 1850 and 1860 she returned to Maryland’s Eastern Shore 13 times and freed more than 70 family members and friends. She later said she never lost a passenger, and the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave her the nickname “Moses.” The National Archives and Records Administration judges that she was arguably the most successful individual leading enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad.⁠[1][3][2]

In the late winter or early spring of 1859 she bought a seven-acre farm at 182 South Street in Fleming, New York, from Frances Seward, the wife of William H. SewardWilliam H. SewardWilliam H. Seward (1801–1872) was an American lawyer and politician who served as governor of New York and as a U.S. senator from New York, and as U.S. Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869 under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, during which he negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia.Open the full entry, for $1,200 with $25 down; it had a 22-by-28-foot wood-frame farmhouse and lay just over a mile south of the Seward mansion. On the eve of the Civil War she moved her parents and other relatives from Canada to the Auburn farm.⁠[6][5]

The National Park Service notes that by 1834 Auburn was an Underground Railroad hub with about 200 free Black residents and a nearby AME Zion church founded in 1838, and that its roads and proximity to Canada also made it a useful choice.⁠[5]

In 1862 she went to Port Royal, South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry, to help recruit Black troops and to serve as a spy and nurse; she also worked for the Union Army as a scout and cook.⁠[1][2]

In June 1863 she led an armed raid along the Combahee River with Black troops that destroyed roads and plantations and freed more than 750 enslaved people. The National Park Service describes her as the first woman in U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry military history to lead an armed raid, and the National Archives and Records Administration as the only woman to lead a military action in the war.⁠[1][2]

In 1869 she married Nelson Davis, a formerly enslaved Civil War veteran who had served as a private in the Eighth United States Colored Infantry; they adopted a daughter, Gertie. The marriage lasted until Davis’s death in 1888.⁠[4][7][1]

In 1880 a careless boarder set fire to her wood-frame farmhouse, destroying it. In 1881–1882 the community helped build a new brick house of about two stories with an attic and roughly 1,200 square feet of finished space; it was designed and built by African Americans, most likely including Nelson Davis and relatives and friends, and some of the bricks were made on site.⁠[6]

In 1896, at 74, she used the profits from her second biography to buy at auction a 25-acre parcel with several buildings next to her home, intending it as a home and hospital for elderly and sick African Americans. Unable to raise the funds to open it, she transferred the land in 1903 to the AME Zion Church, which agreed to open and run it. The home began accepting patients in 1908 and operated until the early 1920s.⁠[8][6]

After the war she received a pension as the widow of Union veteran Nelson Davis, and she petitioned Congress for additional benefits for her own service, submitting an affidavit, dated around 1898, describing her wartime duties. In 1899 Congress passed and the President signed H.R. 4982 (the bill is dated January 19, 1899), raising her pension to $20 a month for her service as a nurse.⁠[7]

In 1911 she entered the home as a patient and stayed in John Brown Hall. She died of pneumonia in Auburn on March 10, 1913; her funeral was held on March 11, and she was buried with military honors in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. She had lived in Auburn since 1859 and worshiped at Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church for 22 years.⁠[6][8][1][9][3][5]

She was close to suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and worked with abolitionists and reformers across the country; after the Civil War she campaigned for women’s suffrage, and she later became a co-founding member of the National Association of Colored Women.⁠[3][1]

A presidential proclamation in March 2013 created the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland, which Congress redesignated as a national historical park in December 2014 in the same legislation that created the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York. The Maryland park commemorates her through the preserved landscape of Dorchester County and includes Stewart’s Canal, built by enslaved laborers in the 1830s, and the home site of Jacob Jackson, a free Black man who helped her; its visitor center is owned by the State of Maryland and co-managed with the National Park Service.⁠[10][11]

Her Auburn home was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 30, 1974, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 2, 1999, and became part of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park on January 10, 2017; the park is the 414th unit of the National Park System.⁠[6][10]

On March 10, 2010, the anniversary of her death, the SmithsonianSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is a museum, education and research institution created by the U.S. Congress in 1846 with the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson. Based in Washington, D.C., it runs museums such as the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, as well as the National Zoo.Open the full entry’s National Museum of African American History and Culture unveiled a collection of Tubman items donated by the historian Charles L. Blockson, including an 1876 hymn book signed by her in pencil, a lace shawl given to her around 1897 by Queen Victoria and photographs of her funeral. In 2017 the Library of Congress and the museum jointly purchased from Swann Galleries a photograph of her taken in 1868 or 1869 by the Auburn photographer Benjamin F. Powelson, formerly part of Emily Howland’s album.⁠[9][12]

During World War II a cargo ship was named the SS Harriet Tubman in her honor. On Veterans Day 2024 she was posthumously awarded the rank of brigadier general in the Maryland National Guard for her Civil War military service.⁠[4][13]

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park (National Park Service): Web page: https://www.nps.gov/hatu/learn/historyculture/htubman.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

Harriet Tubman National Historical Park (National Park Service): Web page: https://www.nps.gov/hart/learn/historyculture/home-for-the-aged.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

National Archives and Records Administration (Harriet Tubman records): Web page: https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/harriet-tubman (opens in a new window).⁠[2]