The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada. The network, primarily the work of free African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively. Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Samuel Green was a slave, freedman, and minister of religion. A conductor of the Underground Railroad, he was tried and convicted in 1857 of possessing a copy of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe following the Dover Eight incident. He received a ten-year sentence, and was pardoned by the Governor of Maryland Augustus Bradford in 1862, after he served five years.
Thomas Garrett was an American abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad movement before the American Civil War. He helped more than 2,500 African Americans escape slavery.
John Hunn was an American farmer and abolitionist who was a "station master" of the Underground Railroad in Delaware, the southernmost stationmaster and responsible for slaves escaping up the Delmarva Peninsula.
Samuel D. Burris was a member of the Underground Railroad. He had a family, who he moved to Philadelphia for safety and traveled into Maryland and Delaware to guide freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania.
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park is a 480-acre (190 ha) National Park Service unit in the U.S. state of Maryland. It commemorates the life of former enslaved Harriet Tubman, who became an activist in the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument was created by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act on March 25, 2013. The portion of the monument administered by the National Park Service was later designated a National Historical Park in 2014, and the remainder is managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as part of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center is a visitors' center and history museum located on the grounds of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Church Creek, Maryland, in the United States. The state park is surrounded by the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, whose north side is bordered by the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. Jointly created and managed by the National Park Service and Maryland Park Service, the visitor center opened on March 10, 2017.
Moses Viney was born into slavery in Maryland in 1817. During his lifetime he escaped slavery and settled in Schenectady, New York. Viney is best known for his association with Eliphalet Nott for whom Viney was a coachman, messenger and constant companion.
Harriet Tubman's birthplace is in Dorchester County, Maryland. Araminta Ross, the daughter of Benjamin (Ben) and Harriet (Rit) Greene Ross, was born into slavery in 1822 in her father's cabin. It was located on the farm of Anthony Thompson at Peter's Neck, at the end of Harrisville Road, which is now part of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
Harriet Tubman (1822 – 1913) was an American abolitionist and political activist. Tubman escaped slavery and rescued approximately 70 enslaved people, including members of her family and friends. Harriet Tubman's family includes her birth family; her two husbands, John Tubman and Nelson Davis; and her adopted daughter Gertie Davis.
The Tilly Escape occurred in October 1856 when an enslaved woman, Tilly, was led by Harriet Tubman from slavery in Baltimore to safety in Philadelphia. Historians who have studied Tubman consider it "one of her most complicated and clever escape attempts." It was a risky trip because Tubman and Tilly would not have been able to travel directly from Baltimore to Philadelphia without proof that they were free women. In addition, local slave traders would have recognized strangers. Tubman sought to evade capture by going south, before heading north, and using different modes of transportation over water and land.
The Dover Eight refers to a group of eight black people who escaped their slaveholders of the Bucktown, Maryland area around March 8, 1857. They were helped along the way by a number of people from the Underground Railroad, except for Thomas Otwell, who turned them in once they had made it north to Dover, Delaware. There, they were lured to the Dover jail with the intention of getting the $3,000 reward for the eight men. The Dover Eight escaped the jail and made it to Canada.
William Brinkley was a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped more than 100 people achieve freedom by traveling from Camden, Delaware, past the "notoriously dangerous" towns of Dover and Smyrna north to Blackbird and sometimes as far as Wilmington, which was also very dangerous for runaway enslaved people. Some of his key rescues include the Tilly Escape of 1856, the Dover Eight in the spring of 1857, and the rescue of 28 people, more than half of which were children, from Dorchester County, Maryland. He had a number of pathways that he would take to various destinations, aided by his brother Nathaniel and Abraham Gibbs, other conductors on the railroad.
Emeline and Samuel Hawkins were a couple from Queen Anne's County, Maryland who had six children together and ran away from Emeline and her children's slaveholders in 1845, with the assistance of Samuel Burris, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. They made it through a winter snowstorm to John Hunn's farm, where they were captured and placed in the New Castle jail. Thomas Garrett interceded and as a result the Hawkins were freed and they settled in Byberry, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two slaveholders, Charles Glanding and Elizabeth Turner, claimed to own Emeline and her six children. Glanding and Turner initiated lawsuits against Hunn and Garrett. Found guilty by a jury primarily made up of slaveholders, Hunn and Garrett were financially devastated by the fines levied against them.
Isaac S. Flint was an Underground Railroad station master, lecturer, farmer, and a teacher. He saved Samuel D. Burris, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, from being sold into slavery after having been caught helping runaway enslaved people.
Ann Maria Jackson was an enslaved woman with nine children who ran away from her enslaver in November 1858 after two of her eldest children had been sold. Her husband became mentally ill and died in a poor house. After finding out that four more of her children were about to be sold, she gathered the seven children who were with her and traveled along the Underground Railroad for Canada. She went through the way of Wilmington, then to Philadelphia, later to St.Catherines, and then to Toronto. This was rare as she had brought her seven children with her through the Underground Railroad. It was difficult for women to run away secretly. The Jacksons established new lives for themselves in Toronto. Her two eldest children later reunited with the family, and the youngest, Albert Jackson, became the first African American to work as a letter carrier in Toronto.
