Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross in Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore around 1822, escaped slavery in 1849 and became one of the most consequential abolitionists in United States history. Over roughly the next decade, she returned to Maryland about 13 times and personally guided approximately 70 relatives and friends to freedom. She also supplied instructions that helped about 70 additional people escape independently. William Lloyd Garrison associated her with the biblical liberator Moses, giving rise to the name by which she became widely known. [S1] [S4] [S7] [S8]

Tubman’s work extended well beyond the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War she served the United States as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, spy, and operational leader. Her intelligence work aided Union campaigns, and she participated in the Combahee River raid, which liberated hundreds of enslaved people and damaged the Confederate plantation economy. After the war, she advocated women’s suffrage, racial equality, civil rights, and care for poor, disabled, homeless, and elderly people. [S1] [S6] [S7] [S8]

Her public image has evolved over time. Long presented chiefly as an elderly Underground Railroad heroine, Tubman is now more fully understood as a self-emancipated woman, military operative, political activist, humanitarian, homeowner, and provider whose leadership continued for decades after slavery ended. [S3] [S7]

Birth, family, and enslavement

Tubman was born Araminta—often shortened to “Minty”—Ross to enslaved parents Ben Ross and Harriet “Rit” Ross. The National Park Service lists March 1822 as her birth date, while the Smithsonian describes her birth as occurring around 1822 and an NPS fact sheet says early 1822. The evidence supplied here therefore supports 1822 more securely than a precise day. She was the fifth of nine children in her family. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S8]

Family separation defined her childhood. Edward Brodess moved Tubman, her mother, and her siblings to a farm in Bucktown while separating them from her father. Three older sisters were sold into the Deep South. By age six, Tubman herself had been hired out, removed from her mother, and compelled to care for other people’s children and trap muskrats in the Little Blackwater River. Accounts describe abuse, neglect, and the lasting emotional pain of these separations. [S4] [S8]

As she grew older, Tubman undertook demanding outdoor labor. Sources describe her working as a woodcutter, pest or animal trapper, field hand, and timber worker. She labored with her father around Stewart’s Canal at Parson’s Creek and learned to move through the forests, waterways, fields, and marshlands of the Eastern Shore. Work near African American mariners also exposed her to mobile communication networks reaching Baltimore, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. These experiences later furnished practical knowledge useful in escape and rescue missions. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S8]

The head injury and its consequences

While still young, Tubman resisted an overseer’s effort to stop another enslaved person seeking freedom. The overseer threw a heavy iron weight at the man, but it struck Tubman’s head and nearly killed her. She subsequently experienced lifelong episodes involving sudden sleep, severe headaches, vivid dreams, visions, or hallucinations, some of which she understood in religious terms. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S8]

The sources differ on her exact age and on the modern label for her condition. The National Park Service’s general biography places the injury at about age 13, whereas the Smithsonian says age 12. One NPS page calls the resulting sleep spells epilepsy, while the Smithsonian identifies a chronic sleep disorder, narcolepsy. The available evidence establishes the traumatic injury and enduring symptoms but does not resolve the retrospective diagnosis or exact age. [S1] [S3] [S4]

The injury did not end her forced labor or resistance. Her mother nursed her, but Tubman was again sent to work. By her later plantation years, she had become an experienced, muscular field worker despite her small stature; the Smithsonian reports a description of her as approximately 4 feet 11 inches tall and capable of carrying half-cords of wood. [S3] [S4]

Marriage, name, and the decision to escape

In 1844, Araminta Ross married John Tubman, a free Black man. She then took the name Harriet Tubman, perhaps choosing “Harriet” in honor of her mother. Their marriage illustrates the complicated status of Eastern Shore communities in which free and enslaved African Americans lived and worked near one another and sometimes married across the legal boundary between freedom and slavery. [S1] [S4] [S8]

Tubman’s desire for freedom intensified as she learned more about her family’s circumstances. Her father gained freedom when she was about 18, and she learned that a former owner’s will had provided for manumitting members of her family. A later owner nevertheless kept Tubman, her mother, and siblings enslaved. The threat of family separation became immediate after Edward Brodess died in March 1849 and his widow faced debts that could be paid by selling enslaved people. [S3] [S4]

Self-emancipation in 1849

On September 17, 1849, Tubman and two brothers began an escape north. Her brothers turned back, but she later escaped alone and traveled nearly 100 miles to Philadelphia with assistance from the Underground Railroad. She moved by night, used the North Star, and relied on directions and support from Black and white helpers. A reward of $100 was offered for her capture. [S1] [S3] [S8]

Freedom did not end her concern for relatives who remained enslaved. In Philadelphia, Tubman developed relationships with Black and white abolitionists and entered wider antislavery networks extending through Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. She resolved to return for family and friends despite the danger of enslavement or death if captured. [S1] [S4] [S8]

Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made more than a dozen journeys across the Mason–Dixon line; NPS accounts specify about 13 returns to Maryland. She led approximately 70 people—including her parents, brothers, other relatives, and friends—to freedom. Detailed guidance from Tubman helped roughly 70 more people escape without her accompanying them. The evidence therefore distinguishes those she personally conducted from those she assisted through instructions, rather than treating every person aided as a passenger on one of her journeys. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S7] [S8]

Tubman drew on skills developed under slavery: reading stars and natural features, navigating marshes and woods, understanding waterways, communicating through trusted Black networks, and using disguises, ruses, and safe houses. Free African Americans, sailors, abolitionists, and other Black and white allies supplied information and shelter. Tubman later said that she never lost a passenger. [S1] [S4] [S8]

Congress’s Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made northward escape more dangerous by empowering authorities in the North to seize alleged fugitives and threatening free Black people as well. In response, Tubman adopted more militant precautions and carried a firearm for protection. Some of those escaping slavery traveled beyond Philadelphia to St. Catharines in Ontario, Canada. [S3] [S4]

Her record brought national attention. Garrison’s comparison of Tubman to Moses became an enduring nickname, while her growing circle included Frederick Douglass, John Brown, William Henry Seward, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Susan B. Anthony, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bronson Alcott, Franklin B. Sanborn, and other reformers and intellectuals. She was especially close to Brown and Seward and collaborated with Brown before his failed 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. [S1] [S8]

Civil War service

Soon after the Civil War began in 1861, Tubman offered her services to Brigadier General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe, Virginia. As enslaved people sought refuge there, she worked as a cook, laundress, and nurse. During the winter of 1861–1862 she stayed in Boston, where Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew recruited her for humanitarian work in Port Royal, South Carolina. She arrived in South Carolina to provide nursing care for African American soldiers and civilians. [S1] [S6]

By spring 1863, military leaders allowed Tubman to move from nursing into frontline scouting and intelligence work suited to her Underground Railroad experience. She led a scouting party of eight men whose intelligence contributed to United States forces capturing Jacksonville, Florida, in March 1863. Her South Carolina service combined espionage, reconnaissance, nursing, cooking, and support for Black troops and civilians. [S1] [S6]

The Combahee River raid

Tubman planned the Combahee River operation with Colonel James Montgomery and accompanied his 2nd South Carolina Infantry, a unit composed of formerly enslaved men. Her reconnaissance helped Union boats evade Confederate troops and mines as they moved upriver to attack plantations, liberate enslaved residents, and weaken the Confederate economy. Many liberated men subsequently enlisted in the Union Army. [S1] [S6]

The supplied NPS sources disagree on details. One biography dates the raid to June 1, 1863, and says it rescued more than 700 people; a more focused NPS account dates it to June 2 and estimates nearly 800 men, women, and children. The secure conclusion is that the operation occurred at the beginning of June 1863 and liberated well over 700 people. Contemporary press coverage celebrated Tubman’s role and increased her fame. [S1] [S6]

The Combahee operation should not be conflated with Montgomery’s destruction of Darien, Georgia, on June 10–11, 1863. Tubman enthusiastically supported the Combahee raid against plantations and slavery, while Colonel Robert Gould Shaw objected to Montgomery’s later order that members of the 54th Massachusetts help sack and burn Darien. Even an abolitionist newspaper that had praised Combahee condemned the destruction at Darien. [S6]

Postwar activism and humanitarian work

After the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, where she had purchased property from William Henry Seward in 1859. She spent roughly the last 50 years of her life in Auburn. Her household and property became a base for supporting relatives and for providing food and shelter to poor, homeless, disabled, and elderly people. She ultimately established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged there. [S1] [S7]

In 1869, Tubman married Nelson Davis, a Civil War veteran. They adopted a daughter named Gertie. Personal objects preserved from Tubman’s life, including her hymnal, illuminate her identities as a wife and mother and the religious faith that informed her activism. A shawl given to her by Queen Victoria reflected recognition extending beyond the United States. [S3] [S8]

Tubman brought the determination of her antislavery work to the campaigns for women’s suffrage, racial equality, and civil rights. She maintained close relationships with prominent suffragists, including Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and Susan B. Anthony. Her later activism challenged the inferior political, economic, and social position assigned to women and African Americans. [S1] [S8]

Death and burial

Harriet Tubman died on March 10, 1913, in Auburn at the property she had purchased from Seward. Her funeral took place at Thompson A.M.E. Zion Church, and she was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. [S1] [S8]

Character, faith, and leadership

Tubman’s leadership rested on a combination of physical endurance, environmental knowledge, secrecy, religious conviction, strategic flexibility, and commitment to family. Her desire to undo the separations imposed during her childhood became a sustained campaign to reunite relatives in freedom. The same practical abilities that helped her navigate Maryland’s wetlands later translated into scouting and intelligence work in coastal South Carolina. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S6]

Her religious visions were integral to her understanding of liberation. The Smithsonian connects her hymnal and personal testimony to a devout faith that inspired her Underground Railroad work. Yet her methods were also concrete and disciplined: she used geographic knowledge, intelligence networks, safe houses, disguises, careful timing, and armed self-protection. [S3] [S8]

Tubman’s career also defied the narrow roles available to Black women in her era. She moved between humanitarian care and military intelligence, private family rescue and public political action, and direct resistance to slavery and institution-building for vulnerable people. [S1] [S6] [S7]

Historical interpretation and changing public memory

For much of the twentieth century, Tubman’s reputation rested heavily on two nineteenth-century biographies by Sarah Bradford and on children’s literature. Earl Conrad’s General Tubman appeared in 1943, while the civil rights movement renewed interest in African American history and prompted many new children’s books. By the 1980s, Tubman was firmly established in school literature, although she remained less prominent in adult nonfiction. Academic biographies and new primary research in the early 2000s challenged folklore and expanded scholarly attention to the full scope of her life. [S7]

A previously unknown photograph acquired jointly by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2017 presented a younger, stylish Tubman closer in appearance to the woman who operated on the Underground Railroad. The feature film Harriet followed in 2019. The NPS notes that the film combines real people and circumstances with fictional elements and therefore should not be treated as a documentary. [S7]

Tubman’s legacy has been especially important to Black women. After her death, Black women’s organizations embraced her as a feminist icon, while artists including Elizabeth Catlett, Betye Saar, Alison Saar, Bisa Butler, Faith Ringgold, and Elizabeth Catlett drew on her image to address race, gender, oppression, courage, and freedom. Catlett’s 1946–1947 linocut Harriet Tubman I Helped Hundreds to Freedom connected Tubman’s historical struggle with the continuing burdens borne by Black women. [S3]

Preservation and public legacy

Tubman is commemorated at two National Park Service sites central to her life. Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park preserves 11,750 acres of wetlands, fields, forests, rivers, and streams in Dorchester County, where she was born, enslaved, and self-emancipated. Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn includes her former 32-acre farm, brick residence, Home for the Aged, and Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and rectory. [S7]

Maryland opened Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center at Church Creek in March 2017. It serves as the centerpiece of a 126-mile Harriet Tubman byway, while sites associated with her Underground Railroad missions have received recognition through the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. [S7]

Tubman’s enduring significance comes from the breadth as well as the daring of her work. She liberated herself, repeatedly endangered herself for others, supplied military intelligence, helped execute a major wartime emancipation operation, campaigned for political equality, and created material support for vulnerable people. Her historical identity is therefore larger than the familiar label “conductor”: she was also a military leader, activist, suffragist, humanitarian, and enduring symbol of freedom. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S6] [S7]

Frequently asked questions

What was Harriet Tubman’s birth name?

She was born Araminta Ross and was commonly called Minty. After marrying John Tubman in 1844, she adopted the name Harriet Tubman, possibly honoring her mother, Harriet “Rit” Ross. [S1] [S4] [S8]

When and where was she born?

She was born enslaved in Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1822. The sources do not establish a universally precise birth date: they variously say March, early 1822, or around 1822. [S1] [S3] [S4] [S8]

When did Tubman escape slavery?

She escaped in the fall of 1849 and reached Philadelphia. An initial attempt with two brothers began on September 17, but they turned back; Tubman subsequently completed the journey alone with Underground Railroad assistance. [S3] [S4]

How many people did she rescue?

The strongest supplied evidence says Tubman personally guided approximately 70 people during about 13 trips and gave instructions that helped roughly 70 more escape independently. Claims that she personally conducted “hundreds” should therefore be distinguished from the larger number she aided through multiple forms of assistance. [S1] [S7] [S8]

Did she serve in the Civil War?

Yes. Tubman worked for the United States as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy. She led a scouting group, gathered intelligence, and helped conduct the Combahee River raid in South Carolina in June 1863. [S1] [S6]

Why was she called Moses?

The name compared her to the biblical leader who brought an enslaved people toward freedom. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison used the comparison, and the nickname became closely associated with her Underground Railroad missions. [S1] [S8]

What did she do after slavery ended?

Tubman advocated women’s suffrage, racial equality, and civil rights; supported poor, disabled, homeless, and elderly people; and established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn. [S1] [S7] [S8]

When did Harriet Tubman die?

She died in Auburn, New York, on March 10, 1913, and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery. [S1] [S8]