Harriet Tubman
| Armanita Greene was born in Dorchester County, close to the town of Cambridge on Maryland's eastern shore. Her parents, Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross, along with her ten brothers and sisters were slaves. Taking her mother's name "Harriet," the young girl led a rough childhood under the harsh conditions of slavery. Starting off as a houseworker as a child, she was put into the fields upon her teenage years. This new work in the fields was much more strenous and required more manual labor. It was here many said that she gained her physical endurance that would mark her apart from others. At the age of 12 Tubman was seriously injured by a blow to the head, inflicted by a white overseer for refusing to assist in tying up a man who had attempted escape. Such harshness would play a great role in her developing hatred of the institution of slavery. |
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n 1844 Harriet "married" John Tubman, a free black man. Though she was allowed to sleep in his cabin at night, her slavery continued. After her slavemaster died, Tubman feared being sold to an even more harsh plantation owner. Tubman was given a piece of paper by a white neighbor with two names, and told how to find the first house on her path to freedom. At the first house she was put into a wagon, covered with a sack, and driven to her next destination. Following the route to Pennsylvania, she initially settled in Philadelphia,where she met William Still, the Philadelphia Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. With the assistance of Still, and other members of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery
Society, she learned about the workings of the Under Ground Rail Road. |
| After freeing herself from slavery, Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland to rescue other
members of her family. Not stopping there, this now free woman risked her life countless times making in all 19 trips back to the South. In all she is believed to have conducted approximately 300 Blacks to freedom in the North. Determined to secure their freedom, when one slave declined her offer it was said she forced him free by gunpoint. Over the years she remained a painful thorn
in the side of Southern slaveholders who offered a reward of $40,000 for her capture; she was never caught. For such courage she was referred to as, "The Moses of her people." (Information and photo courtesy of Before the Mayflowerby Lerone Bennett and There is a River by Vincent Harding) |
