In the Spotlight: Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, born Araminta “Minty” Ross around 1820 to Harriet “Rit” Green and Ben Ross, who were slaves to Mary Pattison Bordess (later to be taken over by her son Edward) and Anthony Thompson (Mary’s second husband).  They had eight other children beyond Minty:  Linah (1808), Mariah Ritty (1811), Soph (1813), Robert (1816), Ben (1823), Rachel (1825), Henry (1830), and Moses (1832).  In those times, records were not kept accurately, especially for slaves, causing the EXACT dates of birth are not known, but at least the year was recorded.  Rit worked in the main house as a cook and Ben managed the timberworks on the plantation.  Eventually, Edward Bordess sold Linah, Mariah and Soph were sold and disconnected from the Ross family forever.  Araminta’s passion behind her work was influenced especially by her mother.  Rit made a stand after Edward sold her daughters when he had a trader interesting in buying Moses.  She hid Moses for a month.  Finally, when Edward and the trader came to take Moses, Rit stood outside and said, “You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open.”  With that, Edward and the trader from Georgia walked away and called off the sale. 

At six years old, Araminta started working for a lady named “Miss Susan” as a nursemaid.  She received multiple whippings at the drop of a hat ~ or a whimper of Miss Susan’s baby.  Minty would layer her clothes to absorb the beatings and made them somewhat tolerable.  She also worked for James Cook checking the muskrat traps set in he nearby marshes.  She contracted measles but was still forced to work in waist-high cold water looking for traps.  Harriet became highly sick and was ordered by Cook to stay at home and recover.  She did just that thanks to her mother who took utmost care of Minty.  Immediately after her recovery, Minty was back working on several different farms and as she matured, was given more and more physically challenging jobs such as plowing, hauling logs, etc. 

When Araminta was still in her youth, she survived a trauma that could have easily killed her but was nonetheless life changing..  While at a dry good store, she saw a fellow slave in the store, and it was obvious that he was there without his owner’s permission.  His owner found his slave and went to restrain him for the slave was trying to flee, and asked Minty for help in restraining him.  She refused to get in the midst of the struggle and the slave wiggled free and started to run.  The slave owner picked up a two-pound weight off the counter, threw it at the slave, but missed.  Instead, the weight hit Minty in the head, knocking her unconscious.  She was then taken back to her owner’s house, laid down and left unattended for two days without medical attention, etc.  She was soon found and once she was barely fit to go back to work, she was reinstated in the fields.  Minty’s owner noticed that her injury left her incompetent and sent her back to Edward.  Edward then tried to sell her again but failed.  She remained with her family, which was a blessing in disguise as she would need them to help take care of her.  She had began to have seizures, slipping in and out of consciousness.  Even when it seemed like she was unconscious, Minty claimed to have still known what was going on around her.  And sometimes, she would fall asleep without forewarning and sometimes she would have visions and vivid dreams.  Minty suffered with this disease for the rest of her life.  Some have said that she suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy because of the injury sustained by the slave owner’s hands that day in the store.

Around 1844, Minty married John Tubman who was a freed slave and she changed her name from Araminta to Harriet not long after they were married.  She was still enslaved to Edward Brodess and in 1849, she became seriously sick, which hindered her ability to work.  Edward tried to sell her yet again, but didn’t have any takers.  He eventually hired her out to Anthony Thompson to work on his plantation, Poplar Neck.  On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry successfully escaped the chains of slavery and amazingly enough, no one noticed their absence for two weeks.  Eliza Brodess then put up $100 per slave returned in a reward advertisement in the “Cambridge Democrat”.  Ben and Henry began thinking about the consequences if they were to get caught, and fearing their punishment, decided to turn around and go home.  Harriet was more or less forced to go back with them.  Not long after returning, she escaped for a second time, but without her brothers this time.  She used the Underground Railroad as an escape route through Caroline County, Maryland then along the Choptank River, through Delaware and then north into Pennsylvania.  Once she got to her safe haven, she began working to save money to return to her family and bring them to freedom.  In December 1850, she helped rescue her niece and her two children from being sold at an sale that she got wind that.  Technically, her niece, Kessiah, was bought, but it was part of a grand plan.  Kessiah and her children were bought by her husband, John Bowley (a freed slave), and at the end of the sale while John was making payment arrangements, Kessiah and the children found a safe house and hid until it was time to execute the rest of the plan.  Shortly after dark, John retrieved his family, loaded them up in a canoe and set out for the shores of Baltimore where Harriet awaited their arrival.  Sixty miles later, they arrive and Harriet leads them to Philadelphia from there.  Finally free!

Harriet continued to lead multitudes of people to freedom over the next year and her efforts were rewarded in giving her the nickname, “Moses”.  In the fall of 1851, Harriet decided to finally return for her husband, but found that he had married a woman named Caroline.  Harriet had the thought to go to their residence and make a huge commotion over this betrayal, but she decided “he wasn‘t worth it“.  Instead, she led other slaves into the freedom land of Philadelphia.

Over the next eleven years, Harriet continued with her work back and forth on the Underground Railroad.  The pressure from the Fugitive Slave Law, it was getting more and more difficult to keep the safe havens under wraps.  This made it to where more slaves were escaping into Canada to avoid getting caught.  On one of the trips to the north, the eleven-man “train” supposedly stopped at Frederick Douglass’s home.  Douglass referred to this visit in his third autobiography.

Harriet Tubman made her last mission in November 1860, a year after purchasing land in Auburn, New York, using her home as her own safe haven for family, friends and fellow fugitives.  Years passed filled with speeches, leading armies, serving as a nurse in Port Royal and many other activist activities.  And, she won a victory for her heart as well on March 18, 1869 when she married Nelson Davis.  Nelson was a Civil War veteran who she took in as a boarder and he worked as a bricklayer in Auburn.  They were married for twenty years and in that time had adopted Gertie, a baby girl about 1874, and numerous victories and losses together.  They faced a sea of debt to start because of the sacrifices Harriet made to fulfill her “Moses” duties.  But, friends, family, and many others came together and started raising money for her cause.  Some even raised funds by writing and publishing books in honor of Harriet.  Two men introduced themselves to Harriet and told her of a deal that might be of some interest to her.  The two men, John Thomas and a man only known as Stevenson, told her they had “come into” $5,000 worth of gold in South Carolina but needed to cash it in.  They asked if she would help them out, they would give her all the gold in exchange for $2,000 in cash.  She agreed and the three arranged to meet that night.  The men drew her into the woods and attacked Harriet with chloroform, knocking her out.  They then stole her purse, along with the money, and tied her up and gagged her.  Her family discovered her missing and set out to find her.  When they finally found her, she was confused and wounded.  Once again, her family aided in nursing Harriet back to health to continue her legacy.

In the last years of her life, Harriet’s missions expanded to include women’s suffrage.  She worked with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland to fight for equal rights for women.  The National Federation of Afro-American held their first meeting in 1896 and Harriet Tubman was their first main speaker for their meeting.  She received numerous awards and honors for her lifetime of dedication for the equality and freedom for all throughout the last years and even after her death.  Harriet Tubman passed away of pneumonia on March 10, 1913 and left behind some big shoes to fill indeed.  She was buried with military rites, with Booker T. Washington as speaker.