Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous woman from the American Civil War era. She was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and ran away to freedom in her twenties. Soon enough, she went back to Maryland to help other slaves (including friends and family) escape along the
Underground Railroad. When the Civil War broke out, she joined the army, eventually working as a spy and leading a raid. After the war, she lived on a farm she had in New York. She was involved in the
women's suffrage movement.
The town of Salisbury has a memorial garden to Tubman, featuring a small mural of her and some informational signs.
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| Harriet Tubman Garden Mural |
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| The fall isn't the best time to visit the garden |
In front of Dorchester's County Courthouse is a statue of Tubman called "The Beacon of Hope."
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| Pic with me blocking, whoops! |
The downtown
Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge is closed for repairs. The famous mural outside is still visible. It's called "Take My Hand," and was painted by Michael Rosato.
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| "Take My Hand" |
Our first stop was at the
Stanley Institute, a classic "one room" school that opened in 1867 to teach blacks since it became legal to do so in post-war Maryland. Ten years earlier, two large groups fled from slavery in this area, making the locals more vigilant in patrolling and keeping watch on blacks, free or slave, in the area. Tubman was not able to come back to this particular area for three years. The building is now a museum which wasn't open when we visited.
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| Stanley Institute |
The Church Creek area south of Cambridge was a hub of shipbuilding which allowed enslaved people to learn valuable skills in crafting boats and piloting them, enabling them to escape through the many waterways on Maryland's eastern shore.
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| Info about Church Creek |
The next stop was the
NPS Visitor Center, which has very fine exhibits on the life of Harriet Tubman, from her birth as a slave, though her career as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and on to her activism for women's suffrage.
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| Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center |
She was born Araminta "Minty" Ross in March of 1822 to slaveholders in the area. Her father Ben lived on a different plantation from his wife and children. He could only visit them when time allowed (hardly ever).
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| Model of a slave cabin |
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| Artist's rendition of family reunions |
Minty was hired out by the Brodess family (who owned her mother) on several different jobs, including setting traps and retrieving muskrats for their pelts.
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| Child trapper |
As she grew older, an altercation at a nearby drygoods store made a profound change in her life. A slave was escaping from his master. Araminta did nothing to stop him, so the clerk threw a two-pound scale weight at the fleeing slave and accidentally hit Minty. She was knocked down and had a severe injury but still had to return to work in the fields. She started having epileptic fits and visions that she attributed to God. In 1844, she married the free black man John Tubman but still had to remain a slave. In 1849 Brodess died and his widow planned to sell off the slaves to repay debts. Tubman (who changed her name to Harriet in honor of her mother) decided to run. When she finally fled north from slavery, her crossing into Pennsylvania was a religious experience too.
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| Artist's rendition of Harriet crossing into Pennsylvania |
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| A mockup of a slaves house with a barrel of corn in front |
While "up North," Harriet's visions convinced her to go back and bring family and friends North too. She became a very active and highly successful conductor on the Underground Railroad, a network of homes and hiding places where fleeing slaves could get respite and help on the perilous journey north. Historical documents show over seventy people she led to freedom, though obviously records were not kept in any detail, so it could have been more.
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| Lists of people she saved from slavery |
The museum has a bust of
Frederick Douglass, another freed slave who worked with abolitionists to expose the horrors of chattel slavery. Douglass also grew up on Maryland's eastern shore.
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| Frederick Douglass |
Other exhibits show her many collaborators on the Underground Railroad.
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| Fellow travelers |
When the Civil War began, she joined the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, later as a spy and a commander for a raid. After the war, she moved to Auburn, New York, where she had bought a farm. She still remained active, even working with
Susan B. Anthony on women's suffrage in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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| Susan B. Anthony and a family photo |
Tubman was the first black woman to be honored by appearing on a United States postage stamp and by having
a Navy vessel named after her. The effort to put her on the twenty-dollar bill has been recently renewed (in March 2025) after being tossed around like a hot potato for the past ten years.
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| Tubman cultural impact |
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| A last memorial |
Back out on the trail, the
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge presents the kind of land fleeing slaves typically traveled through. A sign talks about Tubman's brother Moses, who was hidden by their mother in Greenbrier Swamp so he would not be sold into slavery when they were children.
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| Tubman info sign |
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| We did not visit this visitor center |
Further down the road is the area that was Brodess's plantation where Tubman was born. It was an empty field when we visited in late November, though I am sure it is probably still farmed today.
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| Info on Tubman |
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| The Tubman trail sign |
In nearby Bucktown (less than a mile away), the stores look like they could be from the ante-bellum days.
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| A store in Bucktown, maybe the store |
The weather was very cold when we visited and a couple of us were under the weather, so we did not do much more exploring. Such an important history is well worth visiting.
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