The "The Story Of The Legendary Harriet Tubman - Part I" Story

Harriet Tubman

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about a young woman by the name of Harriet Tubman who was one of the best known activists on the Underground Railroad.  Harriet was born Araminta Ross on Maryland's Eastern Shore sometime around 1822.  She was born enslaved and as a child was rented out to neighbors as a domestic servant.  She eventually escaped to Philadelphia and later returned to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania area to help her family and friends escape slavery along the Underground Railroad.  It was said that she helped close to 70 slaves escape along the Underground Railroad to freedom during her nine decades of heroism.  But, she was more than just someone who helped others escape slavery.  She was also a spy and nurse for the Union during the Civil War.  She also helped Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in their struggles for woman's voting rights.  She also cared for battered women and children and raised money to build schools for those that had been recently freed from slavery.   She founded the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes as well as a nursing home for African Americans who had no where else to go.  She was a true humanitarian who never got the credit she should had received during her lifetime.  It has been close to 200 years since her birth and historians still are attempting to unravel the secrets of her life.  Today she has two national parks named in her honor; one in Auburn, New York and another in Dorchester County, Maryland.  She is the only African American as well as woman to have two named national parks.  Her story begins in the open fields of Dorchester County when as a young woman she found the courage to escape her slaveholder....alone!  In 1849 her "master", Edward Brodess, tried to sell her, but found no buyers due to the fact that she had a brain injury which she had suffered while helping another slave run away.  The overseer aimed a two-pound metal weight at the man escaping in an attempt to make him return to work, but it struck Harriet, who was only 13 at the time.  In later life she would have constant migraines, narcolepsy and vivid dreams she would interpret as divine visions.  Her enslaver died shortly after in 1849 so she and her brother fled.  They were caught, but that didn't stop her from trying again.  This time she tried leaving on the Underground Railroad which was a network of safe houses and routes established by Black and white abolitionists that guided enslaved people from the South to freedom in the North...usually through Philadelphia and then to Ontario, Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act became law in 1850.  This act threatened imprisonment for anyone caught helping fugitive slaves.  At the time, she had met a free Black man, John Tubman, who married her, but refused to flee with her and eventually remarried someone else the following year.  To this day...there is still so much that historians don't know about Harriet Tubman's life.  Today she has become an American folk hero with legendary status.  Check out my story tomorrow as I tell what else I could find out about the legendary Harriet Tubman.  She was, and still is, an American folk hero!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.