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Harriet Tubman > A Brief Chronology of Harriet Tubman's Life
A Brief Chronology of Harriet Tubman's Life
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Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge,
Cambridge,
Maryland (National Park Service). |
This chronology was developed with the assistance
of Kate Clifford Larson, whose biography, Bound
for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero,
has recently been published.
1820 or 1821 - Araminta "Minty" Ross born
to Rittia Green and Benjamin Ross, in Dorchester County, MD. She
was one of their nine children. (She took the name "Harriet" in
adulthood, after she was married.)
1820s - As a young girl, Minty was hired
out to a succession of masters, in an effort by owner Edward Brodess
to recoup financial losses: to a weaver, a farmer who hunted and
trapped, and a farmer for field work.
1833-1835 - As a young teen, Minty received
a brutal head injury caused by a crushing blow from a heavy weight
thrown by an overseer from a nearby farm, who was in pursuit of
a defiant slave boy.
1836-1844 - Minty was hired out to John
T. Stewart, a local merchant and shipbuilder, and others.
1840 - Ben Ross was freed by a provision
in the will of his deceased enslaver, Anthony Thompson.
1844 - Minty married freeman, John Tubman,
and began to use the name Harriet.
1847-1849 - Harriet Tubman was hired out
to Dr. Anthony C. Thompson
1849 - Edward Brodess died. On hearing
that she and two brothers were to be sold to the Deep South to settle
debts of her deceased owner, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia
1850 - Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress
- In December Tubman went to Baltimore and brought
out her niece and took her to Canada.
1851 - Working as a cook and a domestic
in hotels and private homes in Philadelphia and Cape May, NJ, Tubman
saved money to begin her work escorting other slaves, both family
and friends, to freedom. She first brought away a brother and two
other men, then returned in the late fall to bring her husband North,
but discovered her husband had left her for another woman. She brought
away another party of freedom seekers to Canada, instead.
1852-1860 - Tubman made several trips back
into Maryland to bring away more freedom seekers. Her preferred
escape route was populated by free blacks and white abolitionists,
which took her through dangerous slaveholder territory in Maryland
and Delaware, then on to Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Syracuse,
Auburn, Rochester, and finally St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
She was also known to escape by water through Baltimore.
1854 - At Christmas time, Tubman brought
away three more brothers, stopping at her parent's home in Caroline
County, MD, to hide before running to freedom. They were helped
along the way by abolitionists and Underground Railroad operators,
Thomas Garrett of Wilmington and William Still of Philadelphia.
1855 - Ben Ross purchased Rit's freedom for twenty
dollars from Eliza Brodess, Edward Brodess's widow.
1857 - After her father was implicated
in aiding the escape of a group of self-liberators, Tubman returned
to Maryland to help her parents Rit and Ben secretly leave their
home. With help from Thomas Garrett and William Still, Tubman took
them to St. Catharines, Ontario for two years, later moving them
to Auburn, New York.
1858-1859 - Tubman met with John Brown
in Canada and agreed to help him gather recruits for his planned
raid in the South.
1859 - Tubman contracted with William Henry
Seward to buy seven acres of land and a house in Auburn (Town of
Fleming), New York, on a long-term lease-purchase agreement.
- John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry Armory;
Tubman was probably in New Bedford, Massachusetts, detained by illness.
1860 - Tubman made her last visit to Maryland
to bring out 7 fugitives, one of them an infant.
- Tubman attended a Women's Rights Convention
in Boston, the first of many that she would attend over the next
fifty years.
- In an event famous at the time, Tubman rescued
runaway slave Charles Nalle in Troy, New York, as he was about to
be extradited to Virginia.
1861 - Civil War began April 12, with Confederates
firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.
1862 - Tubman was sent to Hilton Head,
SC, by Massachusetts Governor Andrews to give aid to the hundreds
of slaves, called contrabands, who were fleeing nearby plantations
for freedom and safety at Union Army camps. She soon became an active
scout and spy, attached to headquarters of General Stevens
1863 - Emancipation Proclamation issued;
William Seward was co-author
- Tubman executed her first official raid, under
the command of Col. Montgomery, on the Combahee River, South Carolina,
helping to liberate more than 700 slaves from nearby plantations.
- The first published biographical sketch of Tubman
was written by Franklin B. Sanborn and published in his anti-slavery
newspaper The Commonwealth.
1863-1865 - Tubman worked for the Union
army in various places - South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida,
providing badly needed nursing and cooking services, in addition
to spying and scouting.
1865 - The 13th Amendment banning slavery
in the United States was adopted. "Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,
or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
- Tubman was hired by the New England Freedman's
Aid Society to teach marketable skills to newly freed slave-women
in the South, and provide nursing services to wounded and sick soldiers
at Fortress Monroe.
1867 - Harriet Tubman’s husband,
John Tubman, died in Dorchester County.
1868 - Tubman entered a claim for $1800
for three years of military services as a nurse, a cook in hospitals,
and as a commander of male scouts; it was rejected. She later received
a pension in 1899 for her nursing services.
1869 - Harriet Tubman married Nelson Davis
at Central Presbyterian Church in Auburn, New York.
- Sarah H. Bradford's biography of Tubman, called
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, was published.
1870 - The 15th Amendment gave
black American men the right to vote, effectively making them citizens
for the first time.
1871 - Ben Ross, Tubman's father, probably
died this year.
1880 - Rittia Green, Tubman's mother, died.
1886 - Sarah Bradford's second biography
of Tubman, called Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People,
was published.
1888 - Nelson Davis died; was buried in
Fort Hill Cemetery, Auburn, New York
1895 - With a mortgage Tubman purchased
25 acres (including two houses, barns, and outbuildings) adjoining
her property
1896 - Tubman was the oldest attendee at
the organizing meeting of National Association of Colored Women
in Washington, DC.
1903 - Tubman deeded 25 acres with buildings
to AME Zion Church to be continued as a home for aged.
1913 - Harriet Tubman died at her home.
Her funeral was held at Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church and burial
was at Fort Hill Cemetery, Auburn, New York.
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