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Harriet Tubman was born into slavery on March 10th 1820, in Dorchester County, Maryland. Harriet Tubman’s real name was Araminta Ross, and when she got married it would have been Araminta Tubman, but before that, in her childhood, she was called by her mother’s name, Harriet. She had 10 brothers and sisters in her family, along with her mother, Harriet Ross, and her father, Benjamin Ross. When she was young her mother forced her to marry John Tubman, a free man. Harriet Tubman is mainly known for her help to slaves, but she has done so much more. When Harriet Tubman was 13 a very large bag hit her in the head, causing her to have uncontrollable blackouts for the rest of her life. Later in her life she found out with two of her brothers that her husband, John Tubman, had remarried a different woman. Years later she remarried a Civil War veteran, Nelson Davis. She was often referred to in her life as “Moses of her People†because Moses helped free the Jewish people from Egypt from slavery, and much later on Harriet Tubman helped free most blacks from slavery. Harriet Tubman helped free more than 300 slaves by leading them through the Underground Railroad. She also helped out as a nurse, spy, scout, and a cook in the Civil War. In 1908 Harriet Tubman built and opened a home called the John Brown Home for aged, ill, and black people. Harriet Tubman was also honored for all of her good deeds. On June 14, 1914, she was honored with a large bronze plaque, which was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, along with a civic holiday in her remembrance. She was also honored in 1978 with a postage stamp with her picture and name on it. Freedom Park, another tribute to Harriet’s remembrance, opened in the summer of 1994. Since she was such a generous and considerate person, Harriet Tubman raised money for poor, unfortunate schools. She now has a school named after her called Harriet Tubman High School. Throughout her life Harriet Tubman had freed over 300 slaves. Doing all of these amazing things would be very hard because of the racism and prejudice during that time. "I grew up like a neglected weed-ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it." –Harriet Tubman. Sadly, on March 10, 1913, her 94th birthday, Harriet Tubman died of old age. Many people remember her as a wonderful person.
Harriet Tubman (1822 – March 10, 1913), also known as Black Moses, Grandma Moses, or Moses of Her People, was an African-American freedom fighter. An escaped slave, she worked as a lumberjack, laundress, nurse, and cook. As an abolitionist, she acted as intelligence gatherer, refugee organizer, raid leader, nurse, and fundraiser, all as part of the struggle for liberation from slavery and racism.Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland. Extensive research now reveals that Harriet Tubman was probably born in late February or early March, 1822 in an area south of Madison called Peter's Neck in Dorchester County. Harriet herself claimed she was born sometime between 1820-1825. Born Araminta Ross, she was the fifth of nine children, four boys and five girls, of Ben and Harriet Greene Ross. She rarely lived with her owner, Edward Brodess, but from the age of six was frequently hired out to other masters, some of whom were very cruel. She endured years of inhumane treatment from her various masters, including an incident where an overseer hurled a two-pound weight in her direction, striking her in the head while she was protecting one of her enslaved friends from a punishment. As a result of the severe blow, she suffered with intermittent epileptic seizures for the rest of her life. During this period Edward Brodess sold three of Harriet's sisters, Linah, Soph, and Mariah Ritty, permanently breaking apart the Ross family. When she was a young adult she took the name Harriet, possibly in honor of her mother. Around 1844 she married John Tubman, a free man.Edward Brodess died in early March 1849, leaving behind his wife, Eliza, and eight children. To pay her dead husband's mounting debts and to save her small farm from seizure, Eliza decided to sell some of the family's slaves. Fearing sale into the Deep South, Tubman took her emancipation into her own hands. Sometime in the fall of 1849 she escaped northward, leaving behind her free husband who did not want to follow. On her way she was assisted by sympathetic Quakers and other members of the Abolitionist movement, both black and white, who were instrumental in maintaining the Underground Railroad.Eventually, Tubman returned to the South many times to assist other slaves in escaping. Before long,she became known as the "Black Moses" by those she helped escape on the Underground Railroad. She made many trips to Maryland to help other slaves escape. According to her own estimates and those of her close associates, Tubman personally guided around 300 slaves to freedom in about 28 expeditions. She was never captured and, in her own words, "never lost a passenger." She also provided detailed instructions to many more who found their way to freedom on their own. Her owner, Eliza Brodess, posted a $100 reward for her return, but no one ever knew that it was Harriet Tubman who was responsible for spiriting away so many slaves from her old neighborhood in Maryland. She became so notorious in her career that it has been reported that combined bounties for her capture at times totaled $40,000. She was successful in bringing away her four brothers: Ben, Robert, Henry, and Moses, but failed to rescue her beloved sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children, Ben and Angerine. Rachel died in 1859 before Harriet could rescue her. During the American Civil War, in addition to working as a cook and a nurse, she served as a spy for the North. Again she was never captured, and she guided hundreds of people trapped in slavery into Union camps during the Civil War.In 1863, Tubman led a raid at Combahee River Ferry in Colleton County, South Carolina, allowing hundreds of slaves to run to their freedom. This was the first military operation in U.S. history planned and executed by a woman. Tubman, in disguise, had visited plantations in advance of the raid and instructed slaves to prepare to run in to the river where Union ships would be waiting for them. Union troops exchanged fire with Confederate troops in this incident; there were casualties on both sides.Tubman relied upon the closely knit black community for many of her rescue missions to Maryland to help her bring away her family and friends. She was careful not to meet her charges near the plantations they were running away from. Instead, she sent messages to them so they could meet her at another secret location. She was well versed in disguises, once taking the precaution of carrying two chickens with her. Feeling in danger when she recognized a former master nearby, she released the chickens and chased them to recapture them. This amused the master, who never realized the ineffectual chicken chaser was, in fact, a cunning slave stealer.One time at a train station, she found that slave-catchers were watching the trains heading north in hopes of capturing her and her charges. Without hesitation, she had her group board a southbound train, successfully gambling that the retreat into enemy territory would never be anticipated by her pursuers and later resumed her planned route at a safer location.In addition, she had a strict policy that while any slave could turn down the risk of going north, anyone who did decide to go north but then wanted to turn back halfway would be shot dead to prevent the dissenter from betraying the group. Fortunately, Tubman apparently never had to resort to such measures.Harriet Tubman was an activist for African-American and women's rights. With Sarah Bradford acting as her biographer and transcribing her stories, she was able to have the story of her life published in 1869 as Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. This was of considerable help to her sad financial state - she was not awarded a government pension for her military service until some 30 years after the fact. That same year she married Nelson Davis, another Civil War veteran twenty-two years her junior. They lived together in the home she purchased in Auburn, New York, from her famous friend William H. Seward, secretary of state of the United States of America under President Abraham Lincoln. She was surrounded by family and friends who chose to settle near her after the Civil War.