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Maybe it was just her personality, or maybe it was the head injury she suffered as a teenager, but Harriet knew no fear. She had an uncompromising faith in God, and was comforted and guided by dreams and visions. Plus she made it a point to be always well-armed. She was not going down without a fight.
In the last three years or so there has been the discovery and archaeological excavation of Harriet's father's cabin in what is now known as Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge outside of Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Harriet, who was then known as Araminta Ross, or "Minty" was one of the many children of the freeman Benjamin Ross and his enslaved wife Harriet Ross. Because their father Benjamin Ross was free and married to their mother, Minty, her mother and her siblings went by the Ross name rather than the last name of their enslaver, as was usually the custom. Their enslaver was Edward Brodess who owned several properties in Dorchester County. Minty, her mother and siblings worked at a farm in Bucktown, Maryland. It was in the general store in Bucktown that thirteen-year-old Minty tried to protect an escaped slave but the white overseer threw a lead weight at her head, causing a brain injury. Minty afterwards suffered from headaches, seizures and narcolepsy but she also began to have prophetic dreams and visions. The Bucktown General Store where she was attacked and injured is now a museum.
Minty was often given child care jobs that took her away from her family. She was also hired out to work at other farms in the area. According to The National Women's History Museum:
The pain of separation from her family and the cruelty of slavery never left Tubman. Forced back to the fields immediately after her injury, Tubman recounted: “there I worked with the blood and sweat rolling down my face til I couldn’t see” (Wickenden 2021). She became determined to find some sense of autonomy wherever she could, despite the confines of enslavement (NPS n.d.). She negotiated with her enslaver to select her own work assignments. He agreed so long as she paid him a yearly fee. From then on, Tubman hired herself out on her own terms.
With new tasks came the exploration of new geographic areas. Dorchester County’s environment is marshland (NPCA n.d.). As such, the duties given to the enslaved in this area were unique to the landscape of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Tubman became familiar with the intricacies of the environment through these tasks. Down the line, her familiarity with Dorchester County would be key in her journey to freedom.
In an unexpected turn of events, one assignment required her to work alongside her father in the timber fields. Not only did this allow her to spend time with him despite years of separation, but also to work alongside Black sailors. As regular travelers along the East Coast, these men were well connected. They shared their knowledge of the surrounding areas with Tubman and assisted her in tapping into a network of those also seeking liberation (Wickenden 2021). It was around this time that she met her future husband, freedman John Tubman. The couple married in 1844 when Tubman was 22 years old. Upon their union, she changed her name from Araminta “Minty” Ross, to Harriet (likely after her mother) Tubman. (Read more.)
When Harriet (formerly Minty) discovered that the Brodess family had financial problems, and were going to sell her and her siblings, she ran away to Philadelphia. There she joined the Underground Railroad in order to help enslaved persons escape. The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses and hiding places for escaping slaves. Only someone like Harriet, who was intimately familiar with the network of swamps and creeks on Maryland's Eastern Shore, could reliably lead persons of all ages to freedom in Pennsylvania. Her first trip back to Maryland was to rescue her family members. Myths and exaggerations have grown around her although the verified facts of her mission are astonishing enough. From a scholar at the University of Syracuse:
It’s said that over the next decade she made approximately 19 trips to the eastern shore of Maryland, bringing 300 slaves to freedom and earning the title of the “Black Moses.” (Well, not quite. Kate Clifford Larson, author of another recent scholarly biography of Tubman, puts the number of trips between 11 and 13. Sernett says the documented number of slaves rescued is closer to 70, although an exact number is impossible to know. Additional slaves made it north on their own using instructions from Tubman, but that number is also impossible to calculate.) Those rescued include her parents, brothers, and other family members, many of whom settled in Canada and Central New York. As word of her success spread, the bounty for her capture rose to as high as $40,000. (False! According to Larson, “There never was a $40,000 reward for Tubman’s capture, a figure that became grossly exaggerated through the retelling of her story.”)
....During the Civil War she headed back south, where she provided nursing care to black soldiers and the hundreds of newly liberated slaves who crowded Union camps. Her service also included spying and scouting behind Confederate lines.... After the war, Tubman lived for almost 50 years in Auburn, where she raised pigs and vegetables. She remarried (having been abandoned by her first husband) and was active as a suffragist and humanitarian, opening a home for indigent African American elderly, many of them former slaves. (Read more.)
The site of the cabin of Harriet's father in Maryland has been described in Archaeology. To quote:
The site of the cabin where Harriet Tubman lived with her family as a young adult in the early 1840s has been located in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. According to the will of his former owner, Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, was to be freed from slavery and granted 10 acres in the area. The precise location of his plot, however—referred to as “Old Ben’s Place” in later land deeds—was unknown.
A recent excavation led by Julie Schablitsky, project director and chief archaeologist with the Maryland Department of Transportation, has unearthed a range of evidence of the cabin. This includes a coin dating to 1808 found on an old road leading to the site, ceramic sherds imprinted with dishware patterns popular in the 1820s to 1840s, and bricks, nails, and hinges thought to have been part of the cabin itself. While living there, Tubman likely gained important skills for her career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. “The area is wet, swampy, full of bugs, and wooded,” Schablitsky says. “She was able to learn to navigate brutal terrain, providing confidence to lead her people through such harsh environments.” (Read more.)
As we continue to discover more about the lives of enslaved persons in America in general and in Maryland in particular, the personalities of individuals shine through the darkness of the past. And one who shines without any need for exaggeration is a black Maryland woman named Araminta Ross aka Harriet Tubman.
