The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided, but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.
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.
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.
The Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1933 as a waterfowl sanctuary for birds migrating along the critical migration highway called the Atlantic Flyway. The refuge is located on Maryland's Eastern Shore, just 12 mi (19 km) south of Cambridge, Maryland in Dorchester County, and consists of over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of freshwater impoundments, brackish tidal wetlands, open fields, and mixed evergreen and deciduous forests. Blackwater NWR is one of over 540 units in the National Wildlife Refuge System, which is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Delaware Route 6 (DE 6) is a state highway in Kent County, Delaware. It runs from Maryland Route 291 (MD 291) at the Maryland border west of Blackiston east to the Delaware Bay in Woodland Beach. The route passes through rural areas of northern Kent County as well as the towns of Clayton and Smyrna. DE 6 intersects DE 42 in Blackiston, DE 15 in Clayton, DE 300 and U.S. Route 13 (US 13) in Smyrna, and DE 9 to the east of Smyrna. The road was built as a state highway during the 1920s and 1930s and received the DE 6 designation by 1936. The easternmost part of the route was paved in the 1960s and the route was moved to its current alignment bypassing downtown Smyrna by the 1990s.
Delaware Route 52 (DE 52) is a state highway in New Castle County, Delaware. The route runs from U.S. Route 13 Business in downtown Wilmington north to Pennsylvania Route 52 (PA 52) at the Pennsylvania border near Centerville. DE 52 runs through the city of Wilmington and passes through areas of the Brandywine Valley north of Wilmington. DE 52 intersects Interstate 95 (I-95)/US 202 and DE 2 in Wilmington and DE 100/DE 141 and DE 82 in Greenville. The entire route is designated as part of the Brandywine Valley National Scenic Byway, a National Scenic Byway and Delaware Byway, while most of the route is also designated as part of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway of the Delaware Byways system. The road was built as the Kennett Pike, a turnpike, between 1811 and 1813. The Kennett Pike was bought by Pierre S. du Pont in 1919 and was widened and paved before being sold to the State of Delaware for $1. The road received the DE 52 designation by 1936.
Maryland Route 335 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 16.36 miles (26.33 km) from the upper end of Hooper's Island north to MD 16 in Church Creek. MD 335 provides access to several communities along the Honga River in southern Dorchester County. The state highway also passes through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. MD 335 was designated as one of the original state roads, but only the portion of the highway from Crossroads to the Blackwater River was completed by the early 1920s. The highway was constructed from Crossroads to Golden Hill in the mid-1920s, from Crossroads to Church Creek in the late 1920s, and from Golden Hill to Hooper's Island with the completion of a modern bridge over Fishing Creek in 1934.
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 and parsonage in Auburn. They are located at 180 and 182 South Street and 47–49 Parker Street, respectively. The A.M.E. 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.
The Conservation Fund is a U.S. nonprofit organization with a dual charter to pursue environmental preservation and economic development. From 2008–2018, it has placed more than 500,000 acres under conservation management through a program whose goal is to purchase and permanently protect working forests. Since its founding in 1985, the organization has protected land and water in all 50 states, including parks, historic battlefields, and wild areas. The Fund works with community and government leaders, businesses, landowners, conservation nonprofits and other partners to integrate economic and environmental objectives.
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.
The Harriet Tubman Memorial, also known as Swing Low, located in Manhattan in New York City, honors the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The intersection at which it stands was previously a barren traffic island, and is now known as "Harriet Tubman Triangle". As part of its redevelopment, the traffic island was landscaped with plants native to New York and to Tubman's home state of Maryland, representing the land which she and her Underground Railroad passengers travelled across.
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 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.
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.
Harriet Tubman (1822–1913) 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 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.
