HTubman - Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) (2024)

Conductor on the Underground Railroad, military leader, suffragist, and descendant of the Ashanti ethnic group in Ghana, Harriet Tubman is an American hero. The sacrifices she made to save her family and friends from slavery continue to inspire others today.

Enslaved Families in Dorchester County

Araminta Ross (Harriet Tubman) was born enslaved in 1822 in Maryland's Eastern shore in Dorchester County. Harriet Tubman’s parents, Harriet “Rit” (mother) and Ben Ross (father), had nine children. As a child, Tubman did not have the opportunity to spend time with her family. She was separated from her father when her slaveholder, Edward Brodess, moved only Tubman, her mother and siblings to his farm in Bucktown. Also, three of her older sisters were sold into slavery in the Deep South. By age six she was separated from her mother when she was rented out and forced to work for other masters to care for their children, and catch and trap muskrats in the Little Blackwater River. Tubman remembered the emotional pain being separated from her family, which she never wanted to experience again.

During her years in slavery, Harriet Tubman resisted. In the Bucktown Village Store, she refused to help an overseer stop a freedom seeker (runaway slave). The overseer threw a two pound weight at the enslaved man, but it hit Tubman in the head instead, almost killing her. This blow to the head caused Tubman to have sleeping spells (epilepsy) her entire life. Her mother did the best she could to nurse her daughter back to health, but again, Tubman was taken from her mother and forced back to work. Despite continuous separation, Harriet Tubman found ways to spend time with her family. Tubman hired herself out and worked in the timber fields with her father at Stewart’s Canal in Parson’s Creek, cutting and logging wood down the canal.

Harriet Tubman worked in the marshlands (swamps) on the Eastern Shore of Maryland as an enslaved child into adulthood which gave her the skills to navigate the marshlands and gain her freedom. Other skills Tubman gained to navigate the landscape came from African American mariners (sailors) working in the timber fields at Parson’s Creek. African American sailors had more mobility than free and enslaved people. They transported goods on their ships to Baltimore, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. These sailors provided a network of communication on the Underground Railroad for Tubman and other freedom seekers.

During her time working in the marshlands at Parson’s Creek she married her first husband, John Tubman, who was a free man. She changed her name from Araminta Ross to Harriet Tubman, perhaps in honor of her mother. In Dorchester County, free and enslaved African Americans lived and worked in the same community. Some enslaved men and women married free African Americans. Free African Americans provided freedom seekers information on the location of safe houses and routes on the Underground Railroad.

Escape from Slavery

In March of 1849, Tubman’s enslaver, Edward Brodess, died. Tubman knew that in order for Brodess’s wife to pay her husband’s debts, she needed to sell some of her slaves. Tubman did not want to be sold away from her family and into the even more brutal conditions of slavery in the deep South. In the fall of 1849, she escaped from slavery alone, and found freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Tubman made connections and found support among other black and white abolitionists. Although Harriet Tubman found her freedom, she was separated from her family. Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland 13 times and freed more than 70 family and friends so that they could be free together.

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