WELCOME TO BOUND
FOR THE PROMISED LAND: HARRIET TUBMAN, PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN HERO!
Click the tabs to the
left and find the latest research and information about Harriet Tubman, her family, the places she lived and worked, the people
she knew and loved, and her activities on the Underground Railroad.
IMPORTANT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As an historian
of the American experience, I believe that it is vitally important to preserve historical places related to our national history
and cultural heritage. Many sites and landscapes, however, associated with the histories and contributions of minorities and
women have traditionally been overlooked and ignored. I am profoundly pleased, then, that legislation has recently been introduced
into Congress to create The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park to honor Harriet Tubman, the formerly enslaved Underground
Railroad conductor, Civil War hero, community and civil rights advocate. The establishment of this national park would recognize,
preserve and interpret for Americans, and others from around the world, the nationally significant places of Tubman's birth,
enslavement, and Underground Railroad activity on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the home she created in freedom in Auburn,
N.Y., where she spent the last 50 years of her activist life. The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park Act is now pending
in Congress, notably Senate bill S. 227 and House bill H.R. 1078. If the bills are passed, this park would preserve and interpret
approximately 6,700 acres of historic significance to Harriet Tubman's life and legacy This national park would incorporate
two park locations: the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, N.Y., and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad
National Historical Park in Maryland. The park in Auburn would include Tubman's residence, the Home for the Aged she established
for African Americans, the Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church, and her gravesite at Fort Hill Cemetery. These historic sites
would be complimented by a related park site in Maryland that encompasses the landscapes of her birth, childhood and young
adulthood in slavery, as well as the sites of her escape missions and Underground Railroad activity in Dorchester, Caroline
and Talbot counties. I am urging passage of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park Act now. Harriet Tubman is an essential
historical figure in the American story. More famous today than the day she died in 1913, Tubman represents and embodies what
we as Americans hold dear perhaps more than ever: the struggles for freedom, equality, justice and self-determination. It
is through the commemoration and recognition of her individual contributions to these American ideals, her continued activism
in pursuit of them, and her memory, which continues to inspire generations of Americans and others of all backgrounds, that
we as a nation can celebrate what is truly unique about our democracy and national story. One individual can indeed make a
difference, and through the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park we can include in our national historical narrative the
presence of women and minorities who have long and quietly shaped the nation we have become and continue to hope to be.
HARRIET ROSS TUBMAN LIFE:
Tubman, Harriet Ross (1822-1913). Born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Tubman gained international
acclaim as an Underground Railroad operator, abolitionist, Civil War spy and nurse, suffragist, and humanitarian. After escaping
from enslavement in 1849, Tubman dedicated herself to fighting for freedom, equality, and justice for the remainder of her
long life, earning her the biblical name "Moses" and a place among the nation's most famous historical figures.
Originally
named Araminta, or "Minty," Harriet Tubman was born in early 1822 on the plantation of Anthony Thompson, south of Madison
in Dorchester County, Maryland. Tubman was the fifth of nine children of Harriet "Rit" Green and Benjamin Ross, both slaves.
Edward Brodess, the stepson of Anthony Thompson, claimed ownership of Rit and her children through his mother Mary Pattison
Brodess Thompson. Ben Ross, the slave of Anthony Thompson, was a timber inspector who supervised and managed a vast timbering
operation on Thompson's land. The Ross's relatively stable family life on Thompson's plantation came to abrupt end sometime
in late 1823 or early 1824 when Edward Brodess took Rit and her then five children, including Tubman, to his own farm in Bucktown,
a small agricultural village ten miles to the east. Brodess often hired Tubman out to temporary masters, some who were cruel
and negligent, while selling other members of her family illegally to out of state buyers, permanently fracturing her family.
Working as a field hand while a young teen, Tubman was nearly killed by a blow to her head from an iron weight, thrown
by an angry overseer at another fleeing slave. The severe injury left her suffering from headaches, seizures and sleeping
spells that plagued her for the rest of her life. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Tubman worked for John T. Stewart,
a Madison merchant and shipbuilder, bringing her back to the familial and social community near where her father lived and
where she had been born. About 1844 she married a local free black named John Tubman, shedding her childhood name Minty in
favor of Harriet.
On the road to Ben Ross's probable cabin site, and possibly
Harriet Tubman's birthsite, near Madison and Woolford in Dorchester County, MD.
On March
7, 1849, Edward Brodess died on his farm at Bucktown at the age of 47, leaving Tubman and her family at risk of being sold
to settle Brodess's debts. In the late fall of 1849 Tubman took her own liberty. She tapped into an Underground Railroad that
was already functioning well on the Eastern Shore: traveling by night, using the North Star and instructions from white and
black helpers, she found her way to Philadelphia. She sought work as a domestic, saving her money to help the rest of her
family escape. From 1850 to 1860, Tubman conducted between eleven and thirteen escape missions, bringing away approximately
seventy individuals, including her brothers, parents, and other family and friends, while also giving instructions to approximately
fifty more who found their way to freedom independently.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 left most refugee slaves
vulnerable to recapture, and many fled to the safety and protection of Canada. Indeed, Tubman brought many of her charges
to St. Catharines, Ontario, where they settled into a growing community of freedom seekers. Her dangerous missions won the
admiration of black and white abolitionists throughout the North who provided her with funds to continue her activities. In
1858, Tubman met with the legendary freedom fighter, John Brown, in her North Street home in St. Catharines. Impressed by
his passion for ending slavery, she committed herself to helping him recruit former slaves to join him on his planned raid
at Harper's Ferry, Va. Though she hoped to be at his side when the raid took place in October 1859, illness may have prevented
her from joining him. In 1859, William Henry Seward, Lincoln's future Secretary of State, sold Tubman a home on the outskirts
of Auburn, New York, where she eventually settled her aged parents and other family members. On her way to Boston in April
1860, Tubman became the heroine of the day when she helped rescue a fugitive slave, Charles Nalle, from the custody of United
States Marshals charged with returning him to his Virginia master.
In early 1862, Tubman joined Northern abolitionists
in support of Union activities at Port Royal, South Carolina. Throughout the Civil War she provided badly needed nursing care
to black soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated slaves who crowded Union camps. Tubman's military service expanded to include
spying and scouting behind Confederate lines. In early June 1863, she became the first woman to command an armed military
raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina black regiment up the Combahee River, routing out Confederate
outposts, destroying stockpiles of cotton, food and weapons, and liberating over 700 slaves.
After the war, Tubman
returned to Auburn, New York. There she began another career as a community activist, humanitarian, and suffragist. In 1869,
Sarah Bradford published a short biography of Tubman called "Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman," bringing brief fame and
financial relief to Tubman and her family. She married Nelson Davis, a veteran, that same year; her husband John Tubman had
been killed in 1867 in Dorchester County, Maryland. She struggled financially the rest of her life, however. Denied her own
military pension, she eventually received a widow's pension as the wife of Nelson Davis, and, later, a Civil War nurse's pension.
Her humanitarian work triumphed with the opening of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, located on land abutting
her own property in Auburn, which she successfully purchased by mortgage and then transferred to the African Methodist Episcopal
Zion Church in 1903. Active in the suffrage movement since 1860, Tubman continued to appear at local and national suffrage
conventions until the early 1900s. She died at the age of 91 on March 10, 1913 in Auburn, New York.
Selected Bibliography:
Bradford, Sarah H. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, New York: W.J. Moses, 1869.
Bradford,
Sarah H. Harriet, The Moses of Her People. New York: Geo. R. Lockwood & Son, 1886.
