Harriet Tubman biography

The Harriet Tubman biography starts somewhere between 1820 and 1825. Because she was born a slave, the exact date of her birth was never registered. She was born Araminta Ross to slave parents Harriet Green and Ben Ross and was the 5th of 9 children. What complicated matters further was that her parents were slaves to different owners, so the family got split up.

She worked for the slave owner Edward Brodess from Dorchester County, Maryland, from the age of 5. As she grew older she was given more laborious work and was moved outside. At one point in her young life, an angry overseer through a heavy weight at another slave but it hit Harriet instead. She nearly died, but she recovered and was put back to work, though seizures and 'sleeping spells' from the injury would plague her the rest of her life.

In 1844 she married a local free black man, John Tubman, took his surname and also changed her name to Harriet in honor of her mother. They could spend nights together, but during the day, she was still a slave.

When Edward Brodess died in 1849, the slaves were to be sold to cover the family's debts. Not looking forward to being sold, Harriet escaped and with the help of the Underground Railroad, made it to Pennsylvania. She started doing various odd jobs in Philadelphia to earn some money.

In 1850 she heard news that her niece in the Maryland was to be sold. Not wanting the family to be further torn apart, she headed back into slave country and brought the family out. This was the start of her career as a 'conductor' on the Underground Railroad and people came to call her 'Moses' for leading them from slavery to freedom.

With the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which said that fugitive slaves in the north have to be returned to their owners in the south), it became more dangerous to be an escaped slave in the north, so she started moving people further north into Canada. In total, Harriet Tubman made the trip into slave territory 19 times and rescued over 300 slaves. She was one of the most successful conductors of the Underground Railroad and never lost a 'passenger' - an anecdote was that she once threatened a slave who became disheartened and wanted to return with a revolver 'you go on or you die'.

In 1859 abolitionist senator William Henry Seward sold her a piece of land in Auburn, New York which would become a haven for her, her parents and her family.

When Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet believed that the Union cause will support abolition so she joined them. She worked as nurse, scout and as a spy behind enemy lines. She even joined and advised in a raid down the Combahee river (close to where she was a slave) destroying Confederate stockpiles and freeing over 700 slaves.

After the war, she returned to Auburn and in 1870 she married a soldier Nelson Davis. They adopted a daughter Gertie and they were married until his death 18 years later. She continued her work as activist and became involved with the Women's Suffrage movement. In 1903 she donated a piece of land to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to turn it into a home for the elderly. She moved into that home in 1908, where she told tales of her life to fellow residents until her death of pneumonia on March 10, 1913.

The Harriet Tubman biography is an inspirational tale of someone born into slavery, but would not be shackled. She broke free, but instead of just savoring the freedom and forgetting the past, she went back again and again, risking not only her freedom, but also her life, so that others, too, can be free.

More Harriet Tubman biography resources

• Harriet Tubman biography - From the author of Bound for the Promised Land.
• Harriet Tubman biography from the PBS series Africans in America.