HARRIET TUBMAN

By: Amber Shelton

Harriet Tubman was born in 1822 to slave parents. Her mother, Harriet Green (also called Rit), was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Rit was later owned by Mary Pattison Brodess’ son Edward. Her father, Ben Ross, was legally owned by Mary’s second husband, Anthony Thompson, who ran a large plantation near Blackwater River in Madison, Maryland. RIt was a cook for the Brodess family. Ben was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on the plantation. They married around 1808 and had nine children together. Lenah, Mariah RItty, Soph, Robert, Harriet, Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses. As a child, Harriet took care of a younger brother and a baby because her mother was assigned to “the big house” and had scarce time for her own family. At the age of five or six, she was hired out to a woman named “Mrs. Susan” as a nursemaid. Harriet was ordered to keep watch over the baby as it slept. She was whipped every time the baby woke and cried. Later, Harriet was threatened for stealing a lump of sugar, and hid in a neighbor’s pig sty for five days where she fought the animals for scraps of food. Starving, she returned to Mrs. Susan’s house and received a heavy beating. To protect herself from such abuse she wrapped herself in layers of clothing, but cried out as if less protected. Harriet also worked at the home of a planter named James Cook, where she was ordered into nearby marshes to check the muskrat traps. Even after contracting measles, she was sent into waist-high cold water. She became very ill and was sent back home. Her mother nursed her back to health and was immediately hired out again to various farms. As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to grueling field and forest work such as driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs. By 1840, Harriet’s father Ben was released from slavery at the age of fifty-five. He continued working as a timer estimator and foreman for the Thompson family, who had owned him as a slave. Several years later, Harriet contacted a white attorney and paid him five dollars to investigate her mother’s legal status. The lawyer discovered that a former owner had issued instructions that Rit, like her husband, would be released at the age of fifty-five. The record showed that a similar provision would apply to Rit’s children, and that any children born after she reached forty-five would be legally free. Around 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. In 1849, Harriet became ill again and her value as a slave was diminished. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but couldn’t find a buyer. Angry at his effort, Harriet began to pray for her owner, asking God to make him change his ways. Edward finally found someone to buy her. When the deal was being finalized she changed her prayer, asking God to kill him. A week later Edward died, and Harriet expressed regret for what she had said earlier. Ironically, Edwards death increased the likelihood that she would be sold and the family would be broken apart. His widow Eliza began working to sell the family slaves. Harriet refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate. She thought that if she couldn’t have liberty, she would take death. Harriet and her brothers Ben and Harry escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Harriet had been hired out to Dr. Anthony Thompson, who owned a very large plantation called Poplar Neck, in Caroline county. Two weeks later, Eliza posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a one hundred dollar reward for each slave returned. Ben had just become a father, and the two men went back, forcing Harriet to go with them. Soon after, Harriet escaped again, this time without her brothers. The night before she left, she tried to send word to her mother of her escape. Harriet made great use of the extensive network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal but well organized system was composed of free and enslaved blacks, white abolitionists, and other activists. The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a significant amount of members of the Religious Society of Friends, also called Quakers. This was probably a very important stop during her escape, if not the starting point. From there, she probably took a common route for fleeing slaves: northeast along the Chaplain River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly ninety days, but by foot it would take between five days and three weeks. Her dangerous journey required her to travel by night, during which she guided herself by the North Star, avoiding the careful eyes of “slave catchers.” The “conductors” of the Underground Railroad used a variety of deceptions to hide and protect her. At one of the earliest stops, the lady of the house ordered Harriet to sweep the yard to make it appear as though she worked for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Giving her familiarity of the swamps and marshes of the region, it is likely that she hid in these locales during the day. The routes she followed were used by other fugitive slaves. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe. Immediately after reaching Pennsylvania she began thinking of her family. She was free and thought that they should be free. She began to work odd jobs and save money. In December 1850, Harriet received a warning that her niece was ging to be sold In Cambridge, Maryland. Horrified at the idea of having her family broken further apart, she voluntarily returned to the land of her enslavement. She went to Baltimore, where her brother-in-law, Tom, hid her until the time of the sale. Kessiah’s husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife. Then while he pretended to make arrangements to pay, Kessiah and her children fled to a nearby safe house. When night fell, John ferried the family on a log canoe sixty miles to Baltimore. They mat up with Harriet, who brought them to Pennsylvania. The following spring she headed back into Maryland to help guide away other family members. On this, her second trip, she brought back her brother Moses, and two other unidentified men. Word of her exploits encouraged her family. As she led more and more individuals out of slavery, she began popularity known as “Moses,” who was an illusionist to the prophet in the Book of Exodus who led the Hebrews to freedom. In the fall of 1851, she returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, this time to find her husband John. She once again saved money from various jobs, purchased a suit for him, and made her way south. John, meanwhile, had married another woman named Caroline. Harriet sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. At first, Harriet prepared to storm into their house and make a scene, but then decided that he wasn’t worth the trouble. Suppressing her anger, she found some slaves who wanted to escape and she led them to Pennsylvania. John and Caroline raised a family together, until John was killed sixteen years later in a roadside argument with a white man named Robert Vincent. For eleven years Harriet returned again and again to the eastern shore of Maryland, rescuing some seventy slaves in thirteen expeditions, including her three brothers Henry, Ben, and Robert, and their wives and children. She also provided specific instructions for about fifty or sixty other fugitives who escaped to the north. Her dangerous work required tremendous ingenuity; she usually worked during winter months, to minimize the likelihood that the group would be seen. Once she made contact with escaping slaves, they left town on Saturday evenings, since the newspapers wouldn’t print runaway notices until Monday morning. Her journey back into the land of slavery put her at tremendous risks, and she used a variety of deceptions to avoid detection. She once disguised herself with a bonnet and carried two live chickens to give the appearance of running errands. She occasionally would run into old owners and quickly begin doing something else to avoid them. Her religious faith was another important resource as she ventured again and again into Maryland. She spoke of “consulting with God,” and trusted that He would keep her safe. Slaveholders in the region, meanwhile, never knew that Harriet was behind so many slave escapes in their community. In fact, by the late 1850’s they began to suspect a northern abolitionist was secretly hiding their slaves away. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. Her father, Ben, had purchased her mother, Rit, in 1855 from Eliza Brodess fr twenty dollars. Even when they were both free, the area became hostile to their presence. Two years later, Harriet received word that her father had harbored a group of eight escaped slaves, and was at risk of arrest. She traveled to the eastern shore and lad them north into the Canadian city of St. Catherine’s, Ontario, where a community of former slaves had gathered. In April1858, Harriet was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown. He also spoke of being called by God, and trusted that He would take care of him. She meanwhile claimed to have had a prophetic vision of meeting John before ther encounter. They began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders. Although other abolitionists like Fredrick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison did not endorse his tactics, John dreamed of fighting to create a new state for freed slaves, and made preparations for military action. After he began the first battle, he believd slaves would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the south. He asked Harriet to gather former slaves living in Canada and those who might be willing to join his fighting force. On may 8, 1858, John held a meeting in Catham-Kent, Ontario, where he unveiled his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When word of the plan was leaked to the government, he put the scheme on hold and began raising funds for its eventual resumption. Harriet aided him in this effort, and with detailed plans for the assault. Harriet was busy at this time, giving talks to abolitionist audiences and tending to her relatives. In late 1859, as John and his men prepared to launch the attack, Harriet couldn’t be contacted. When the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 6, she wasn’t present. Some believe she was recruiting more escaped slaves in Canada, while others believe she may have been in Maryland attempting to rescue more family members. The raid failed and John Brown was convicted of treason and hanged in December. His actions were seen by abolitionists as a symbol of proud resistance, carried out by a noble martyr. Harriet herself was effusive with praise. She later told a friend: “He done more in dying than one hundred men would in living.”
Harriet spent her remaining years n Auburn tending to her family and other people in need. She worked various jobs to support her elderly parents, and took in boarders to help pay the bills. One of the people she took in was a civil war veteran named Nelson Davis. He began working as a bricklayer, and they soon fell in love. Though he was twenty-two years younger than her, on March 18, 1869, they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They spent the next twenty years together and adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* Wikipedia * www.nyhistory.com