Harriet Tubman

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Harriet Ross was born between the years of 1819 or 1820. She was born in Dorchester County, Maryland. Being born into slavery, Harriet was frequently whipped and when she was 12 years old, she suffered a severe blow to the head by her white overseer. She married John Tubman, a free African American, when she was 25 years old. Five years later, she escaped for fear she would be sold to the South.

Harriet escaped to Canada after a white neighbor gave her a piece of paper that had two names on it. She was given directions to the first home, and there she was put in a wagon, covered with a sack, and hauled to her second destination. When she settled in Philidelphia, she met a man named William Still, Philidelphia Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. Still helped Harriet to learn more about the UGRR (Underground Railroad). In 1851, she relocated her family members to St. Catharines, Canada West, which remained her base of operations until 1857.

Harriet soon returned to Maryland to rescue more members of her family. She is believed to have saved 300 people while smuggling them to the North by way of the UGRR. William Still later published a book called The Underground Railroad. In it, it describes some of Harriet's work.

After the Civil War, Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, where she married Nelson Davis. She died in 1913, it was the death of a wonderful woman.