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 [1] [2] [3] [4] in her father's cabin. [2] [3] [5] [lower-alpha 1] 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. [2] [8] [lower-alpha 2]
After a few years, she lived on the Brodess farm with her mother and siblings. [2] [8] In the early 1840s, her father was emancipated and received 10 acres of land following Anthony Johnson's death. She was married in 1844 to John Tubman, [3] [4] at the same time, she changed her given name, becoming Harriet Tubman. [2] Realizing she was to be sold following her enslaver's death, Tubman escaped in 1849, when she was 27 years of age. [4] [8] [lower-alpha 3] A conductor on the Underground Railroad, she made 13 return trips over 10 years to lead her parents, siblings, and friends to freedom. [4] [6]
In March 2021, archaeologists excavated what they determined to be the site of Ben Ross's cabin. They found artifacts from the 1800s, including broken dish ware, glass, a button, and nails. [2] [lower-alpha 4] In April 2021, it was said that the site was to be added to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway. It is a scenic drive with more than 30 stops over 125 miles. [2]
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.
Kate Clifford Larson is an American historian and Harriet Tubman scholar. Her 2003 biography of Harriet Tubman, Bound for the Promised Land was one of the first non-juvenile Tubman biographies published in six decades. Larson is the consultant for the Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study of the National Park Service and serves on the advisory board of the Historic Context on the Underground Railroad in Delaware, Underground Railroad Coalition of Delaware.
Harriet Tubman National Historical Park is a US historical park in Auburn and Fleming, New York. Associated with the life of Harriet Tubman, it has three properties: the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, in Auburn; the nearby Harriet Tubman Residence, just across the city/town line in Fleming; and the Thompson A.M.E. Zion Church in Auburn. They are located at 180 and 182 South Street and 90 Franklin Street, respectively. The Zion Church unit is administered by the National Park Service (NPS), and the South Street properties, including a historic barn and a visitor center, are jointly managed and operated by both the NPS and the Harriet Tubman Home, Inc. The church also works with the NPS in park operations. The Harriet Tubman Grave, in nearby Fort Hill Cemetery, is not part of the park.
Harriet Tubman Grave is an historic gravesite located in Fort Hill Cemetery at Auburn, in Cayuga County, New York. The granite gravestone marks the resting place of famed African-American abolitionist and Christian Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery in Maryland in the United States in 1822.
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.
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park is a Maryland state park dedicated to the life and work of abolitionist and Underground Railroad activist Harriet Tubman. The park is on Route 335 near Church Creek in Dorchester County, adjacent to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
The Harriet Tubman Memorial Garden is part of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway (Maryland) and is located in Cambridge, Maryland. It honours the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman and the journeys of the many people she assisted to escape slavery. The garden features information boards and murals, some of which were painted by Charles Ross, a relative of Tubman's.
Harriet Tubman Day is an American holiday in honor of the anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman, observed on March 10, and in the U.S. state of New York. Observances also occur locally around the U.S. state of Maryland. After Juneteenth became a federal holiday, there are growing calls for this day to also be observed at the federal level.
Harriet, the Woman Called Moses is an opera in two acts composed by Thea Musgrave who also wrote the libretto which is loosely based on episodes in the life of the American abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman. The opera premiered on 1 March 1985 in Norfolk, Virginia, performed by Virginia Opera with subsequent broadcasts of the Virginia Opera production on National Public Radio and BBC Radio 3. Musgrave also wrote two shortened versions of the opera—The Story of Harriet Tubman and the concert work Remembering Harriet.
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.
Harriet is a 2019 American biographical film directed by Kasi Lemmons, who also wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard. It stars Cynthia Erivo as abolitionist Harriet Tubman, with Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, and Janelle Monáe in supporting roles. A biography about Harriet Tubman had been in the works for years, with several actresses, including Viola Davis, rumored to star. Erivo was cast in February 2017, and much of the cast and crew joined the following year. Filming took place in Virginia from October to December 2018.
Bucktown is an unincorporated community in Dorchester County, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
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.
Hugh Hazlett was an Irish American lawyer and abolitionist. Born in Ireland, Hazlett immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Maryland. He became a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Maryland's eastern shore, and was jailed for his activities between 1858 and 1864.
Ross and his family were enslaved on the Thompson farm, where Tubman was born in 1822. Tubman and her mother were enslaved by the Brodess family a few years later and forced to move away from the Thompson farm.
The exact date of her birth is unknown, but historians generally agree that Tubman, who had eight siblings, 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. Many have incorrectly cited her birthplace as Bucktown. She was actually born in nearby Peters Neck, on a farm owned by Anthony Thompson, a medical doctor and timber magnate, and was later moved to Bucktown.
On March 15, 1822, Anthony Thompson paid a midwife $2 to assist Harriet "Rit" Green in childbirth.
Born circa 1822 as an enslaved person in Dorchester County, Maryland.
Harriet Tubman was born enslaved in 1822 in Dorchester County... the Anthony Thompson home site at Peters Neck, where Tubman was probably born.