Born: February or March, 1922 (?)
Died: March 10, 1913
Place of Birth: Bucktown, Dorchester County, Maryland

• Harriet Tubman is credited with having helped free as many as 300 Negro people from slavery.

• Her given name was Araminta and she was one of nine children born to slaves Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene Ross.

• She was owned by Edward Brodess who often hired her out to other slave masters.

• At one point when Harriet Tubman was just 13, one of her overseers struck her with a two pound weight which caused Tubman to have epileptic seizures the rest of her life.

• Although as a slave Tubman was never allowed to attend school, she had innate intelligence and determination.

• At 24, she married a freeman named John Tubman but she still had to work as a slave.

• She wanted to be free like her husband and, using her own resources, hired a lawyer to check her situation.

• The lawyer found out that her mother should have actually been free because of a previous master having died.

• This meant that Tubman and her mother should both have been set free but were kept on as slaves.

• Finding that she was to be sold to someone in the south, Tubman with two brothers escaped to the north.

• At this time, states in the north did not uphold slavery, and Tubman reached Philadelphia through use of the Underground Railway.

• The Underground Railway was a system of safe houses that protected slaves as they went north.

• Tubman disguised herself and returned to Maryland to bring her husband back north.

• To Harriet Tubman's disappointment, her husband had taken another wife while she was away.

• She then decided to change her name to Harriet and become a "conductor" on the Underground Railway.

• Over the next ten years, Harriet Tubman made many trips from Maryland to Philadelphia bringing slaves to freedom.

• During the Civil War, Tubman took an active part as a spy, scout, cook, and nurse for the north.

• Over the next several years, she was admired by both blacks and white for her tremendous contribution.

• She wrote a book about her life which paid off a mortgage on her house.

• Harriet Tubman was further recognized by the Postal Service issuing a stamp in her honor.