Araminta (Ross) Tubman
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Harriet (Ross) Tubman (1822 - 1913)

Harriet (Araminta) "Minty, Moses" Tubman formerly Ross aka Davis
Born in Bucktown, Dorchester, Maryland, United Statesmap
Ancestors ancestors
Wife of — married about 1844 (to after 1851) in Maryland, United Statesmap
Wife of — married 18 Mar 1869 in Auburn, Cayuga, New York, United Statesmap
Mother of
Died at age 91 in Auburn, Cayuga, New York, United Statesmap
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Contents

Biography

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Araminta (Ross) Tubman is Notable.
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Araminta (Ross) Tubman was a part of the Freedom Movement.
Araminta (Ross) Tubman served in the United States Civil War.
Side: USA
Regiment(s): Union Army nurse, scout, cook, spy

Harriet Tubman is an iconic figure in the history of U.S. civil rights. Harriet was a renowned abolitionist, and a conductor of the famed Underground Railroad.[1]

Harriet Tubman, born as Araminta "Minty" Ross, was born into slavery around 1822 on Anthony Thompson's plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland.She was the fifth of nine children of Ben Ross and Harriet "Rit" Greene[2][3][4] Her parents had married around 1808 after their respective enslavers had married, bringing them into the same household. At the time her father was enslaved by Thompson and her mother was enslaved by Mary (Pattison) Brodess. Around 1810, Mary had passed away, leaving Rit and her children enslaved by Mary's minor son, Edward Brodess but under Anthony Thompson's guardianship. This allowed the family to stay together for a while. However, around the time of Harriet's birth, Edward reached adulthood and moved Rit and many of her children to a nearby property, separating them from Harriet's father. Brodess began to hire out Rit and her children, including Harriet, and they were often treated very harshly.[3][5] At one point, Harriet was struck in the head with a heavy weight or stone and the affects of this injury, including headaches and seizures, plagued her for the rest of her life.[6][7] Eventually, several of Harriet's sisters were sold.[8]

Harriet Tubman in her 40's, seated in a wooden chair, wearing a dark blouse and a light checkered skirt.
Harriet Tubman around 1868.

Around 1836, Anthony Thompson, Harriet's father's enslaver, died. This ushered in a new phase in the life of the family. Thompson's will provided for Ben Ross, Harriet's father, to be freed around 1840 and left him 10 acres of land.[9] Ben seems able to have paid Brodess to allow Harriet's mother Rit and some of the children to live with him on this land.[10] Around 1844, Harriet married a local free Black man, John Tubman. Around the time of her marriage, she began using the name Harriet instead of her childhood name Araminta, or "Minty" for short.[11] In 1849, Edward Brodess died and his wife Eliza began selling a number of enslaved persons to pay off his debts and provide for herself and her children. Several of Harriet's nieces were sold. In September 1849, Harriet and several of her brothers first tried to escape in order to avoid being sold. Harriet's brothers eventually decided to return and took Harriet with them. But Harriet would not stay for long.[12]

Soon after, likely in 1849, Harriet escaped enslavement,[3] and went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She worked there, saving her money and repeatedly returning to Maryland to rescue others from slavery. The actual number of trips and people she led to freedom is unknown, but it's believed that she made about thirteen trips over an eleven-year period, leading about 70 to 80 people[13] to safety in the free northern U.S. states, as well as Canada.[14][15] After Harriet escaped slavery, her first husband John Tubman remarried to another woman, sometime before 1851.[13] After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, Harriet lived in St. Catharines in Ontario, Canada for roughly 8 years and brought many of the people she helped escape slavery to St. Catharines. This included her parents and several siblings.[3][16]

During the American Civil War, Harriet served with the Union Army in various roles: a scout, nurse, cook, and spy.[17][18] On 1 and 2 June 1863, she led the raid on the Combahee River Ferry which rescued more than 750 former enslaved people.[19][20] After the war, she eventually received a pension for serving as a nurse in the U.S. Army,[21] and also as the widow of Union veteran Nelson Davis.[22]

Around the time of the Civil War, Harriet moved to Fleming, New York, right outside of Auburn. She purchased a home on seven acres of land there from Sen. William Henry Seward.[15] Around 1869, she married Nelson Charles Davis, a Union Civil War veteran who Harriet met when he became a boarder at her home. They later adopted a daughter, Gertie Davis.[3][23][24][25] Her second husband died in 1888.

Harriet Tubman with family and neighbors at her home outside of Auburn, New York around 1887.
Left to right: Harriet Tubman; Gertie (Watson) Davis (adopted daughter) behind Tubman; Nelson Davis (husband); Lee Chaney (neighbor's child); John Alexander (boarder in Tubman's home); Walter Green (neighbor's child); Sarah Parker (boarder); Dora Stewart (great-niece and granddaughter of Tubman's brother Robert Ross aka John)

In her later life, Harriet continued to live in her home outside of Auburn. Her parents and other relatives lived with her at various points in her life. She later used her property as a home for indigent African Americans.[15][26]

Harriet Tubman died in her nineties on March 10th, 1913. Her funeral, which was attended by "hundreds of admirers," was held at Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church.[27][28] She was buried next to her brother at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York,[3][29] with military honors. A three-foot granite gravestone with her name, Harriet Tubman Davis, marks the place she rests.[28]

Harriet Tubman as an old woman, seated, with a white shawl draped over her head.
Harriet Tubman, about 1911.

Legacy

Harriet Tubman is one of the most well-known Underground Railroad conductors and abolitionists in American history. She was known as the "Moses of Her People" for leading so many out of slavery. Among many other honors and recognitions she has received are:
  • In 1944 a Liberty Ship was named the SS Harriet Tubman in her honor.[30]
  • In 1974 and 2001, her home in Fleming and two associated properties were made into the Harriet Tubman National Historic Park.[31]
  • On April 2nd, 1999, Harriet's grave became listed in the National Register of Historic Places.[28]
  • On April 20th, 2016, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that Harriet Tubman's image will replace Andrew Jackson's on the front side of the nation's $20 bill. Jackson was a slave owner, who became the seventh U.S. president.[32] The redesigned currency is scheduled for release in 2028.[33]
  • On Monday, February 8th, 2020, "Maryland unveiled bronze statues of famed abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass during a ceremony ... in the Maryland State House."[34] This is just one of multiple statues of Harriet Tubman throughout the country.[35]

Slave Owners

Sources

  1. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman
  2. Larson, K.C. (2019, December). Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument: Historic Resource Study, p. 127. National Park Service, US Dept. of the Interior. oah.org. PDF
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 "Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park", Timeline (From "Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero - Bound for The Promised Land" By Kate Clifford Larson). Maryland.gov.
  4. "Benjamin "Ben" Ross (b. circa 1787 Dorchester co., Maryland - d. 1871), MSA SC 5496-8445, Accomplice to slave flight, Caroline County, Maryland, 1857." Archives of Maryland: Biographical Series. Maryland.gov.
  5. Larson, 2019, pages 127-128, 132, 143-145, PDF
  6. Larson, 2019, pages 154-155, PDF
  7. Sarah H. Bradford, Some Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, (Auburn: W.J. Moses, 1869), page 13; image copy, Internet Archive, (https://archive.org/details/scenesinlifeofha00brad/page/12/mode/2up : accessed 14 Nov 2022).
  8. Larson, 2019, pages 175-176, PDF
  9. Larson, 2019, pages 165-169, PDF
  10. Larson, 2019, page 172, PDF
  11. Larson, 2019, pages 14, 174-175. PDF.
  12. Larson, 2019, pages 186-189, PDF
  13. 13.0 13.1 Harriet Ross Tubman Davis (b. circa 1822 - d. 1913). MSA SC 5496-13562. Archives of Maryland: Biographical Series. Maryland.gov. Web.
  14. Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman (New York: Random House, 2009) pp. 16-17.
  15. 15.0 15.1 15.2 New York MPS Tubman, Harriet, House. National Archives Identifier: 75312226. File Unit: National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: New York, 1964 - 2013; Series: National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records, 2013 - 2017; Record Group 79: Records of the National Park Service, 1785 - 2006. Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (3/2/1934 - ) (Most Recent). US National Archives. Web.
  16. "History of the City," St. Catharines, https://www.stcatharines.ca/en/arts-culture-and-events/history-of-the-city.aspx : accessed 8 Nov 2022).
  17. Brown, D.L. (2021, February 12). "Renowned as a Black liberator, Harriet Tubman was also a brilliant spy." Washington Post.
  18. "A history concerning the pension claim of Harriet Tubman," written by Charles Wood. National Archives Identifier: 306575. File Unit: Accompanying Papers of the 55th Congress, 3/15/1897 - 3/3/1899; Series: Accompanying Papers, 1865 - 1903; Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789 - 2015. U.S. House of Representatives. 3/4/1789- (Most Recent). US National Archives.
  19. Wikipedia:Raid on Combahee Ferry. Accessed 3 November 2022.
  20. Spies, Medics, Soldiers, & Peacemakers: 16 Women Wartime Heroes You Should Know. Blog post by Katherine, 11 November 2021. Accessed 3 November 2022.
  21. H.R. 4982, A Bill Granting a Pension to Harriet Tubman Davis, Late a Nurse in the U.S. Army. National Archives Identifier: 306578. File Unit: Accompanying Papers of the 55th Congress, 3/15/1897 - 3/3/1899; Series: Accompanying Papers, 1865 - 1903; Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789 - 2015. U.S. House of Representatives. 3/4/1789- (Most Recent). US National Archives.
  22. Claim of Harriet Tubman. US National Archives. Web.
  23. "United States Census, 1880," images, Harriet Davis in household of Nelson Davis, Fleming, Cayuga, New York; citing enumeration district 20, sheet 47D, NARA microfilm T9 (DC: NARA, n.d.), roll 0814; FHL microfilm 1,254,814.[1]
  24. Senate Report 1619 to Accompany a Bill Granting a Pension to Harriet Tubman Davis. National Archives Identifier: 7330232. File Unit: Accompanying Papers of the 55th Congress, 3/15/1897 - 3/3/1899, Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789 - 2015, US National Archives. Web.
  25. Approved Pension File for Harriet Tubman Davis, Widow of Private Nelson Davis (alias Nelson Charles), Company G, 8th U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment (WC-415288). National Archives Identifier: 5939992. Series: Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Widows and Other Dependents of the Army and Navy Who Served Mainly in the Civil War and the War With Spain, 1861 - 1934; Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773 - 2007. Veterans Administration. (7/21/1930 - 3/15/1989) (Most Recent); Department of the Interior. Bureau of Pensions. 1849-1930 (Predecessor). US National Archives.
  26. See census records for 1870-1910.
  27. "New York, State Death Index, 1880-1956", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG5F-WF3S : 3 March 2022), Harriet T Davis, 1913.
  28. 28.0 28.1 28.2 New York MPS Tubman, Harriet, Grave. National Archives Identifier: 75312228. File Unit: National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: New York, 1964 - 2013; Series: National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records, 2013 - 2017; Record Group 79: Records of the National Park Service, 1785 - 2006. US National Archives.
  29. Find A Grave, Harriet Tubman (6 Mar 1822–10 Mar 1913), Find A Grave: Memorial #1247, citing Fort Hill Cemetery, Auburn, Cayuga County, New York; Maintained by Find A Grave.
  30. Wikipedia: SS Harriet Tubman
  31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman_National_Historical_Park
  32. "Harriet Tubman, American who helped free slaves, to be on U.S. $20 bill," CBC News, April 20, 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/harriet-tubman-us-20-bill-1.3544809
  33. Tucker Higgins, "Harriet Tubman $20 bill no longer coming in 2020: Mnuchin says redesign postponed," CNBC News (WED, MAY 22, 2019, 11:04 AM EDT, UPDATED THU, MAY 23, 2019, 2:50 PM EDT) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/harriet-tubman-20-bill-no-longer-coming-in-2020.html
  34. White, B. (2021, February 10). Maryland unveils statues of Tubman, Douglass in Capitol. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/5ad3289a4b4c10de5e2820cfbc296ff2.
  35. See Wikipedia pages for the DeDecker statues, the New York City memorial, and the Boston Memorial


See also:
  • Smith, K.N. (2021, April 27). "Archaeologists found the site of Harriet Tubman’s family home." ArsTechnica.com.
  • Bradford, S.H. (1886). Harriet, the Moses of Her People. NY: Geo. R. Lockwood & Son. Project Gutenberg. eBook.
  • "Great Lakes Seaway Trail - Harriet Tubman." National Archives Identifier: 7718799. Series: Digital Photographs Relating to America's Byways, ca. 1995 - ca. 2013; Record Group 406: Records of the Federal Highway Administration, 1956 - 2008. US National Archives. Photo.
  • Williams J.T. (2016). "Harriet Tubman" in Women in Black History: Stories of Courage, Faith, and Resilience, p. 33. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell.
  • Free space page: The Night the Stars Fell




Memories: 3
Enter a personal reminiscence or story.
"When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy."
posted 8 Jun 2021 by Carole Taylor   [thank Carole]
I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other. Harriet Tubman
posted 6 Nov 2009 by Araminta (Ross) Tubman
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

Harriet Tubman

posted 6 Nov 2009 by Araminta (Ross) Tubman
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Hey, folks- correct me if mistaken, but wouldn't it make more sense/fit better with our standards for the two given names on this profile to be switched? By our standard guide, the "Proper First Name" field is more accurately the "First Name at Birth," which all sources & discussion seems to agree is Araminta, with Harriet being the chosen/preferred name. I can't see any reason for the current order to be what's listed, but I also don't want to step on any toes, so please enlighten me if there is a particular reason for the current formatting.
posted by Thomas Koehnline
Hi Thomas, you are correct. The names might be in this order to prevent duplicates. Let me play around with the search bar and see if it would be an issue to change the name order. Emma~~USBH Project
Today in Washington Post:

Archaeologist Julie Schablitsky found the coin with her metal detector along an old, abandoned road in an isolated area of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She dug it out of the ground and scraped off the mud.

She hadn’t been finding much as she and her team probed the swampy terrain of Dorchester County last fall searching for the lost site where the famous Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman lived with her family in the early 1800s.

She’d been frustrated that there had been no hint that she was anywhere near the home of Tubman’s father, Ben Ross. But as she cleaned the coin, the profile of a woman with flowing hair, and wearing a cap that said, “Liberty,” emerged. At the bottom was the date: 1808.

Tuesday morning state and federal officials announced that Schablitsky, guided in part by the coin, believes she has found the site where Tubman lived with her parents and several siblings during formative teenage years before she escaped enslavement.

It was the spot, experts said, where a long-vanished cabin stood, which had served for a time as Tubman’s family home. The structure, of unknown form, was owned by her father. A timber foreman and lumberjack who had been enslaved, he had been given his freedom, the house where he lived, and a piece of land near the Blackwater River by his enslaver.

Officials said bricks, datable pieces of 19th-century pottery, a button, a drawer pull, a pipe stem, old records, and the location all pointed to the spot being the likely site of the Ben Ross cabin.

The announcement was made at 10 a.m. at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, in Church Creek, Md.

The find is a crucial piece of Tubman’s story, experts said. And it illuminates the role that her father, and her family, played in her development into the fearless Underground Railroad conductor that she became.

The Underground Railroad was the clandestine network of guides, like Tubman, and safe houses mostly across the eastern United States that rescued thousands of enslaved people from bondage in the South in the years before the Civil War.

Between about 1850 and 1860, using stealth and disguise, Tubman made 13 trips home, spiriting 70 people out of enslavement, historians believe. Among those she saved were several brothers and her parents, who, while no longer enslaved, were still in danger in Maryland.

Her father was a devout patriarch who taught Tubman the ways of the marshy woodlands where they lived and struggled to keep his family together within the machinery of slavery, experts said.

Once free, Ben purchased his enslaved wife, Rit, and for a time sheltered Tubman and several of her siblings, all still enslaved, in his cabin in what is now the federal Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, south of Cambridge, Md.

“Think of it as a place where [Harriet] came of age in a loving household within a close knit community,” Tubman biographer Kate Clifford Larson said in an email.

“That landscape became her classroom,” Larson said. “Those years she lived with her father were absolutely crucial to the development of Harriet Tubman.”

Schablitsky, an archaeologist with Maryland’s State Highway Administration, said: “A lot of us think we know everything … about Harriet Tubman. This discovery tells us that we don’t, and that we have the opportunity to … understand her not just as an older woman who brought people to freedom, but … what her younger years were like.”

The project began last year when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought for $6 million a 2,600-acre tract adjacent to Blackwater to replace refuge areas lost to rising sea levels elsewhere, said refuge manager Marcia Pradines.

Pradines said she had heard that the Ben Ross cabin might have existed in the tract, and contacted Maryland experts to see if an archaeologist wanted to investigate. Schablitsky said she was interested.

But she recognized the challenge: How to narrow down where to look and how to tell if a site might be Ross’s.

Old records provided a rough starting point. Last fall Schablitsky and her team went to the area and dug over 1,000 test pits. She had been afraid that numerous unrelated artifacts would turn up. But as they dug, nothing turned up.

“We were coming up basically empty-handed,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Where is this place? Where is this place?’

posted by L A Banta
The area was often waterlogged, sometimes inaccessible, and most of what was being found was “dripping wet mud,” she said.

In desperation, she started walking an old road with a metal detector. A knife sheath turned up, and a shotgun shell, and then something else.

“I dug it out of the ground thinking I was going to get, like, a shotgun shell,” she said.

It was the coin. “When I looked at the date, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It was totally a eureka moment.”

The coin was found about a quarter-mile from where the cabin would eventually be located, she said. But it “told us that we were on the right path, that we were getting closer.”

A few other artifacts were found at the end of the dig and the team decided to return this March for a more thorough examination.

Last month, as they dug further, more artifacts began to appear — chunks of brick, rusty nails, bits of ceramics with designs patterns that could be dated, she said. Many patterns dated to the “1820s, 1830s, 1840s time period,” she said.

“That’s when we had our … moment,” she said. “That’s when we knew that this is it. Because it couldn’t be anywhere else. There was nothing else … that dated to that time period.”

The combination of records, location and artifacts finally added up, she said. “It’s not just one artifact that tells us we have something. It’s the assemblage. It’s the multiple pieces.” Harriet Tubman was born Araminta “Minty” Ross about 1822 outside the hamlet of Tobacco Stick, modern-day Madison, in Dorchester County, according to Kate Clifford Larson’s biography, “Bound for the Promised Land.”

One of nine children, she slept in a cradle made of a hollowed-out sweetgum log, and was hired out to work by the time she was 6. Her parents, who were enslaved at the time, had been married about 1808, the year the coin was dated.

As a child, Tubman was beaten by a mistress who slept with a whip under her pillow, so she began to work outdoors.

There, in part under the tutelage of her father, she checked muskrat traps, broke flax and hauled logs with a team of oxen she was later permitted to purchase.

She was only 5 feet tall, but her work made her strong.

Her know-how gave her some freedom of movement and she was able to live in her father’s cabin roughly between 1839 and 1844, when she was ages 17 to 22, Larson said.

“She got to live with him, worked in the woods with him,” Larson said in an interview.

“He was an amazing figure, and a committed father,” she said. “He taught her how to survive. … She learned how to survive in those woods. She learned how to read the night sky. … He taught her things that helped her become the woman she was.”

He also told her about the Underground Railroad. “He was an Underground Railroad agent himself,” Larson said. In 1844, she married John Tubman. She moved out, changed her first name to Harriet, and became Harriet Tubman. In the fall of 1849, fearing that she was about to be sold, she fled, later returning to conduct others on the secret railway.

Over Christmas in 1854, she came back to rescue two of her brothers and some others. The meeting place was outside a home in Caroline County, Md., where her parents had moved a few years earlier.

The siblings couldn’t tell their mother, Rit, for fear she would create an “uproar,” Larson recounted.

But they did tell Ben, who brought them food. Ben made sure not to look at his children, so he could later tell slave catchers he had not “seen” them.

On Christmas night, he had himself blindfolded with a handkerchief. And with a son on each arm, he walked with his children on the start of their journey, Larson reported. After a few miles, he stopped and said goodbye. He stood in the dark until he couldn’t hear their footsteps.

Three years later, Harriet came back for her parents.

posted by L A Banta
Harriet Tubman has been inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/08/harriet-tubman-spy-civil-war-union/

posted by S Stevenson
I understand that her birth name was Araminta Ross, and that she adopted he mother's name, Harriet, while still a child. Tubman was her married name. I added Harriet as her middle name to make her easier to find in searches.
posted by Stephanie Ward
Can anyone speak to the historicity or sources about a daughter to Harriet Tubman:
  • Jency Tubman Mattox (1846-1944), m. Robert E Mattox (1851-1937) ?

Thanks

posted by David Brodeur
She gave testimony stating that she had no biological children with either of her two husbands. (see her wid. pension apps.)
posted by [Living Ogle]
Harriet Tubman had excaped and made it to freedom in the North but knew she had to go back, risk capture and her life and help others make it to this new life she had. She risked her own life over 19 more trips. She hid by day, held her breath in hidden rooms, stayed completely still under false floors, and traveled by night, all to lead over 300 more people to their freedom. All that mattered was that it was the right thing to do even though it was not the safe thing. She is quoted as saying "Every great dream begins with a dreamer".

Meltzer, Brad, Heroes for my son, pgs 26-27, Harper Collins Publishing

posted by Lisa (Kelsey) Murphy
It seems Harriet was married a second time to Nelson Davis (1869–1888

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

posted by Matt Pryber