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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 368 Print image (90K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 368 Print image (90K) |
| Harriet Ross Tubman (1820-1913) Conductor of the Underground Railroad, Spy, and Nurse Harriet Ross was born a slave on the Edward Broadus plantation in Bucktown, in Cambridge, in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was one of eleven children of Harriet Green and Ben Ross, who could not protect her from the cruelty of her master. At the age of six, Harriet was hired out to learn a skill, but Harriet was not a very good slave, so she was hired out numerous other times, for various reasons. She was hired out as a child nurse, but she did not always awaken during the night to tend to the needs of the child and was whipped as a result. Harriet was finally hired out as a field worker, which she seemed to have preferred over any other type of work. At the age of 13 or 15 she observed an overseer following a field hand who appeared to have been running away, so Harriet attempted to warn the slave, and in the process positioned herself between the slave and overseer. The overseer threw a weight to stop the slave; instead the weight hit Harriet in the head and left a huge indenture. As a result, Harriet suffered from narcolepsy, or sleeping sickness, for the remainder of her life. Harriet married John Tubman, a free-black man, in 1844, and was determined to be free. A year later, Harriet paid a lawyer to search the records and he found that her mother, "Ole Rit," had been emancipated by will, but had never been informed of her freedom. Even though her mother was to have been freed at the age of 45, it would not have freed Harriet because she had been bom prior to her mother's forty-fifth birthday. Between 1845 and 1849, the death of the heir to the Broadus estate prompted the executor of the estate to plan to sell some of the slaves, including Harriet's family; two of her sisters were sent off with the chain gang. Harriet had every reason to fear for her safety, so she began to plan her escape. She told her husband of her plan and he informed her that he would notify her master and stop her escape. She was successful in stealing herself. She went first to Philadelphia, and later moved to Cape May, New Jersey. Between 1850 and 1857, Harriet went to Baltimore to free a sister who had been taken there for auction. She returned to Dorchester County several times and freed members of her family and numerous others. In 1857, her father, Ben Ross, was arrested as an aide on the Underground Railroad, and she had to rescue her parents. This aroused the Eastern Shore slaveholders to organize against the Underground Railroad. The Dorchester County slaveholders held a convention in Baltimore against abolition and the Underground Railroad. They called for the re-enslavement of free Negroes, and offered a bounty of $40,000 for the capture of the "Moses of her people" (Harriet). The bounty on her head did not deter her from helping to lead other slaves to freedom. For her efforts, Harriet became a friend and confidante of John Brown, Gerritt Smith, Frederick Douglass, and other abolitionists. When she was in the Boston area, she resided at the homes of the Emersons, the Alcotts, the Whitneys, Mrs. Horace Mann, Frank Sanborn, and other well-known persons. But when the slave catchers came north to New York and points beyond, as a result of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and its enforcement, Harriet's friends forced her to go to Canada, and there she remained until the spring of 1861. Upon the start of the Civil War in 1861, Harriet headed south to help the Union effort. She went to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a liaison between the military men and the Negro, at the suggestion of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts. She also went to Florida, where she served as a nurse and cured many of the soldiers of smallpox and fevers. She additionally became a scout and spy within the Department of |