Biography: Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1820. While she grew up she served as a field hand and a house servant on a plantation in Maryland. In 1844 she married a free black named John Tubman. In about 1849 she escaped to the North and before the outbreak of the Civil War made nineteen trips back to lead other slaves to freedom, including her parents, on a clandestine route known as the Underground Railroad. She guided an estimated amount of 300 slaves to Canada. For leading her people to the "promised land", she became known as the Moses of her people. Her home in Auburn, NY, was an important station on the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she served the Union Army as a cook, nurse, spy, and scout working mostly in coastal regions of South Carolina. In the last years of her life, she maintained a home for elderly former slaves in Auburn, NY, where she died in 1913. For her efforts she became one of, if not the most famous slavery abolitionists.


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