Harriet Tubman

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” Harriet Tubman

 Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream activity, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited.
When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women's suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped found years earlier.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman 





 
The Life of Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman's life was a monument to courage and determination that continues to stand out in American history. Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman freed herself, and played a major role in freeing the remaining millions. After the Civil War, she joined her family in Auburn, NY, where she founded the Harriet Tubman Home.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Auburn
Harriet Tubman Home
Harriet Tubman Life
Harriet Tubman Resources
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm


Harriet Tubman's Life in Slavery
Dates: about 1820 - March 10, 1913
While Harriet Tubman remains one of history's best-known African Americans, until recently there have been few biographies of her written for adults. Because her life is inspiring, there are appropriately many children's stories about Tubman, but these tend to stress her early life, her own escape from slavery, and her work with the Underground Railroad. Less well known and neglected by many historians are her Civil War service and her activities in the nearly 50 years she lived after the Civil War ended. In this article, you'll find details about Harriet Tubman's life in slavery and her work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but you'll also find information about Tubman's later and less-known work and life. For the basics on Tubman, see Harriet Tubman Facts
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Dorchester County on the Eastern shore of Maryland, in 1820 or 1821, on the plantation of Edward Brodas or Brodess. Her birth name was Araminta, and she was called Minty until she changed her name to Harriet - after her mother - in her early teen years. Her parents, Benjamin Ross and Harriet Green, were enslaved Ashanti Africans who had eleven children, and saw many of the older children sold into the Deep South.
At five years old, Araminta was "rented" to neighbors to do housework. She was never very good at household chores, and was beaten regularly by her owners and those who "rented" her. She was, of course, not educated to read or write. She eventually was assigned work as a field hand, which she preferred to household work. Although she was a small woman, she was strong, and her time working in the fields probably contributed to her strength.
At age fifteen she sustained a head injury, when she deliberately blocked the path of the overseer pursuing an uncooperative fellow slave, and was hit by the heavy weight the overseer tried to fling at the other slave. Harriet, who probably sustained a severe concussion, was ill for a long time following this injury, and never fully recovered. She had periodic "sleeping fits" which, in the early years after her injury, made her less attractive as a slave to others who wanted her services.
When the old master died, the son who inherited the slaves was able to hire Harriet out to a lumber merchant, where her work was appreciated and where she was allowed to keep some money she earned from extra work.
In 1844 or 1845, Harriet married John Tubman, a free black. The marriage was apparently not a good match, from the beginning.
Shortly after her marriage, Harriet hired a lawyer to investigate her own legal history, and discovered that her mother had been freed on a technicality upon the death of a former owner. But her lawyer advised Harriet that a court would be unlikely to hear the case, so Tubman dropped it. But knowing that she should have been born free -- not a slave -- led her to contemplate freedom and resent her situation.
In 1849, several events came together to motivate Harriet Tubman to act. She heard that two of her brothers were about to be sold to the Deep South. And her husband threatened to sell her South, too. She tried to persuade her brothers to escape with her, but ended up leaving alone, making her way to Philadelphia, and freedom. 
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/harriettubman/a/tubman_slavery.htm


“I freed thousands of slaves, and could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.” Harriet Tubman

 
Her Escape to Freedom in Canada
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 UGRR.
In 1851 she began relocating members of her family to St. Catharines, (Ontario) Canada West. North Street in St. Catharines remained her base of operations until 1857. While there she worked at various activities to save to finance her activities as a Conductor on the UGRR, and attended the Salem Chapel BME Church on Geneva Street.
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm

Her Role in the Underground Railroad
After freeing herself from slavery, Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland to rescue other members of her family. In all she is believed to have conducted approximately 300 persons to freedom in the North. The tales of her exploits reveal her highly spiritual nature, as well as a grim determination to protect her charges and those who aided them. She always expressed confidence that God would aid her efforts, and threatened to shoot any of her charges who thought to turn back.
When William Still published The Underground Railroad in 1871, he included a description of Harriet Tubman and her work. The section of Still's book captioned below begins with a letter from Thomas Garret, the Stationmaster of Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington and Philadelphia were on the major route followed by Tubman, and by hundreds of others who escaped from slavery in Maryland. For this reason, Still was in a position to speak from his own firsthand knowledge of Tubman's work:
WILMINGTON, 12 mo. 29th, 1854
Esteemed Friend, J. Miller McKim: - We made arrangements last night, and sent away Harriet Tubman, with six men and one woman to Allen Agnew's, to be forwarded across the country to the city. Harriet, and one of the men had worn the shoes off their feet, and I gave them two dollars to help fit them out, and directed a carriage to be hired at my expense, to take them out, but do not yet know the expense....


THOMAS GARRET
Harriet Tubman had been their "Moses," but not in the sense that Andrew Johnson was the "Moses of the colored people." She had faithfully gone down into Egypt, and had delivered these six bondmen by her own heroism. Harriet was a woman of no pretensions, indeed, a more ordinary specimen of humanity could hardly be found among the most unfortunate-looking farm hands of the South. Yet, in point of courage, shrewdness and disinterested exertions to rescue her fellow-men, by making personal visits to Maryland among the slaves, she was without her equal.
Her success was wonderful. Time and again she made successful visits to Maryland on the Underground Rail Road, and would be absent for weeks at a time, running daily risks while making preparations for herself and her passengers. Great fears were entertained for her safety, but she seemed wholly devoid of personal fear. The idea of being captured by slave-hunters or slave-holders, seemed never to enter her mind. She was apparently proof against all adversaries. While she thus maintained utter personal indifference, she was much more watchful with regard to those she was piloting. Half of her time, she had the appearance of one asleep, and would actually sit down by the road-side and go fast asleep* when on her errands of mercy through the South, yet, she would not suffer one of her party to whimper once, about "giving out and going back," however wearied they might be by the hard travel day and night. She had a very short and pointed rule or law of her own, which implied death to any who talked of giving out and going back. Thus, in an emergency she would give all to understand that "times were very critical and therefore no foolishness would be indulged in on the road." That several who were rather weak-kneed and faint-hearted were greatly invigorated by Harriet's blunt and positive manner and threat of extreme measures, there could be no doubt.
After having once enlisted, "They had to go through ordie." Of course Harriet was supreme, and her followers generally had full faith in her, and would back up any word she might utter. So when she said to them that "a live runaway could do great harm by going back, but that a dead one could tell no secrets," she was sure to have obedience. Therefore, none had to die as traitors on the "middle passage." It is obvious enough, however, that her success in going into Maryland as she did, was attributable to her adventurous spirit and utter disregard of consequences. Her like it is probable was never known before or since.
On the road between Syracuse and Rochester, would be found a number of sympathetic Quakers and other abolitionists settled at Auburn. Here also was the home of US Senator and former New York State Governor William H. Seward. Sometime in the mid-1850s, Tubman met Seward and his wife Frances. Mrs. Seward provided a home for Tubman's favorite niece, Margaret, after Tubman helped her to escape from Maryland. In 1857, the Sewards provided a home for Tubman, to which she relocated her parents from St. Catharines. This home was later sold to her for a small sum, and became her base of operations when she was not on the road aiding fugitives from slavery, and speaking in support of the cause.
Tubman was closely associated with Abolitionist John Brown, and was well acquainted with the other Upstate abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Jermain Loguen, and Gerrit Smith.She worked closely with Brown, and reportedly missed the raid on Harper's Ferry only because of illness.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, Tubman served as a soldier, spy, and a nurse, for a time serving at Fortress Monroe, where Jefferson Davis would later be imprisoned. While guiding a group of black soldiers in South Carolina, she met Nelson Davis, who was ten years her junior. Denied payment for her wartime service, Tubman was forced, after a bruising fight, to ride in a baggage car on her return to Auburn.
* note: Harriet Tubman reportedly suffered narcolepsy as a result of the head injury she sustained as a child.
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm






Her Life In Auburn, NewYork
After the close of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman returned to Auburn, NY. There she married Nelson Davis, and lived in a home they built on South Street, near the original house. This house still stands on the property, and serves as a home for the Resident Manager of the Harriet Tubman Home.
Only twelve miles from Seneca Falls, Tubman helped Auburn to remain a center of activity in support of women's rights. With her home literally down the road, Tubman remained in contact with her friends, William and Frances Seward. In 1908, she built the wooden structure that served as her home for the aged and indigent. Here she worked, and herself was cared for in the period before her death in 1913.
After her death, Harriet Tubman was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn [grave], with military honors. She has since received man honors, including the naming of theLiberty Ship Harriet Tubman, christened in 1944[photo] by Eleanor Roosevelt. On June 14, 1914 a large bronze plaque was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, and a civic holiday declared in her honor. Freedom Park, a tribute to the memory of Harriet Tubman, opened in the summer of 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn. In 1995, Harriet Tubman was honored by the federal government with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her name and likene
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm

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