Harriet "Rit" Ross (b.
circa 1787 - d. 1880)
MSA SC 5496-8444
Fled from slavery, Caroline County, Maryland, 1857
Biography:
Harriet "Rit" Green was born the
property of
Atthow
Pattison of Dorchester County around 1787. In 1797, Atthow
Pattison
died, leaving Harriet to Mary Pattison Brodess, his
grandaughter. Years later, in 1803, Brodess married Anthony
Thompson of Dorchester County. It is here that Harriet met Benjamin
Ross, one of Thompson's slaves, and they were
married. In 1808,
Harriet and Ben had their first of nine children, Linah. In
1822,
they had their fourth child, Araminta, who was later known as Harriet
Tubman,
notable agent of the Underground Railroad.
1
According to her biographer, Tubman
hired a lawyer
in the late 1840's to find Atthow Pattison's will. Suspecting that
Rit's
then owner Edward Brodess had been dishonest regarding the topic,
Harriet
wanted to get the details about earlier manumissions. The
lawyer
discovered that Atthow had left Harriet Green to his granddaughter,
Mary,
with the provision that her and children be manumitted when they reach
forty-five years old.2 When
Mary
died in 1809 and Edward took full ownership of the slaves, he neglected
to follow those directions. It was not uncommon for owners to defy such
specifications regarding enslaved blacks. Naturally, they faced little
opposition from the largely illiterate slave population and other white
citizens were rarely concerned with the rights of blacks. Brodess did
not
stop there in his disrespectful affronts to the Ross family. He would
also
eventually sell two of Rit's children south, while hiring out many of
the
others, including Harriet Tubman.
After Edward died, his
wife, Eliza
Ann Brodess, managed his estate. In 1853, Gourney Pattison
filed
the lawsuit against Eliza Ann Brodess for the profits from hiring out
Harriet
and her children and the sale of Linah and Soph because he felt that
the
Pattison family had a right to the profits derived against the wishes
of
his great-grandfather. The case was dismissed despite the
validity
of Atthow Pattison's will and Harriet Ross' right to be manumitted
(along
with most of her children over the age of forty-five).
3 Between 1853 and June of 1855 Ben Ross
purchased
Harriet for $20 from Eliza Ann Brodess. 4
At this time, Rit became as close to freedom as she would ever be in
Maryland.
She could not be granted manumission from her new owner/husband because
of a Maryland law that forbade slaveowners freeing slaves over
forty-five
years of age.
Many accounts about Harriet Ross depict
her as being
very devoted to the safety of her family. For example, after
the
sale of Linah, Ross became weary of Edward Brodess. One day,
possibly
in the early 1840s, she overheard Edward Brodess bargaining with a
Georgia
slave trader for her son Moses. Harriet cunningly hid Moses in
the
woods until Edward finally devised a plan for getting him. A
slave
from a nearby plantation went to her and offered to bring Moses some
food
in the woods. Harriet was aware of the plot, but assured the
slave
that it would be all right to bring food to her son. However,
before
the slave reached him, Rit told Moses to come back to her cabin, where
she hid him until Edward Brodess gave up and the Georgia trader left. 5
In March of 1857, Ben Ross hid a group
of eight
runaways from Dorchester County in his cabin in Caroline
County. This group came to be known as the "Dover Eight"
because
they were captured
in a jail in Dover, Delaware, but escaped. The news of their escape
caused
a panic among Dorchester County slaveholders who called for the arrest
of individuals that aided the flight of the "Dover Eight". Upon hearing
that Ben's freedom was in danger, Harriet Tubman made a trip down to
Caroline
County to escort her aging parents to safety.
6
At almost seventy years of age, Harriet and Benjamin Ross fled Caroline
County for Canada in June, 1857. Some years after reaching Canada, they
moved to Auburn, New York into a home purchased by Tubman. Despite
enduring
economic instability and health issues, the Rosses lived out there
years
once again surrounded by family and enjoyed a measure of freedom that
would
not have been possible in Maryland. Harriet Ross died there in October,
1880, having lived nearly a century.
1 Kate Clifford Larson, Bound For The Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New York: Random House, 2004), 10.
2 Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn: W.J. Moses, Printer, 1869), 107. (© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. )
3 DORCHESTER COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Equity Papers) Gourney Pattison, et al. v. Eliza Brodess, et al, 1829-1842, MSA T2318-2.
4
DORCHESTER COUNTY CIRCUIT
COURT (Chattel Records), Bill of Sale for Ritty, FJH 2, 163, MSA C692-2.
5
Larson, p. 33.
6 Ibid., 140.
Researched and Written by David Armenti, 2011.
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