INTRODUCTION H arriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross around 1820 on a plantation near Bucktown Maryland on the eastern shores of Chesapeake Bay Her par ents Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross were slaves That meant Araminta would be a slave too She had ten sib lings Above all else Araminta wanted her large family to stick together Two of her sisters had already been sold carried off farther south despite their protests and tears Her mother stood before her as a powerful example of resistance She had hidden one of Araminta’s brothers for a month with friends in the woods from a Georgia slave buyer From her mother she learned just how strong a woman could be As early as age five Araminta was hired out to help care for a white baby At such a young age she was not at all prepared for the responsibility Her mistress whipped her five times every morning to make sure she did her work Sixty years later she still bore the scars around her neck to prove it She continued to be hired out to do housework and care for white children on nearby farms Quick-thinking and clever Araminta soon adopted habits that cleverly protected her against her mistress whippings She would wear as much clothing as possible and when about to receive the usual morning punishments she would cry out as if she had felt the full force of the whip By the age of twelve she made the transition from an inside slave to a farmhand helping with the harvest But 6
INTRODUCTION 7 Born a slave Harriet Tubman risked her life to bring others to safety and to serve her country as a Union spy
8 HARRIET TUBMAN she could no longer defend herself from beatings When an overseer tried to harm a field worker for deserting his post Araminta blocked the overseer’s path her first act of defiance His temper raging he struck her on the head with a piece of iron Despite the head covering she wore the wounds ran deep breaking her skull She was car ried back to her owner with the message that she was no longer worth anything Her family worried she would not recover from the injury Her owner tried to sell her but no one offered to buy Her family’s prayers were eventually answered Although it took months she healed However as a result of the blow she would fall asleep suddenly sev eral times a day for the rest of her life Despite the injury Araminta grew strong She hauled flour barrels onto carts She was hired out with her father and brothers to cut and haul timber Soon she was chop ping more wood than most men She exceeded what was expected of her She gained physical stamina She grew accustomed to back-breaking work At the same time she relied on her faith to get her through the day She would need that strength of body and mind to realize her own destiny Araminta’s father’s owner died in 1836 and Ben Ross was granted his freedom several years later He stayed on the plantation though working as a timber inspec tor Araminta wanted more She wanted to run free She wanted her whole family to run free She wanted all slaves to run free
VISIONS NORTH A raminta Ross married John Tubman a free black man in 1844 She took her husband’s surname and around that time she also changed her first name to Harriet after her beloved mother The laws at that time outlawed any marriage between a slave and a free black Instead it was considered an informal arrangement The slave’s owner could completely ignore it That also meant that the slave and any of the slave’s children could be sold at whim since a child born to a slave was automat ically put into bondage However after her father gained his freedom in 1840 Tubman wanted to explore her own status She believed that her mother may have mistakenly been kept a slave after her first owner died In 1845 she hired a lawyer and he investigated the matter The lawyer and other white authorities determined that her mother Harriet Ross could have been freed when she turned for ty-five But because Tubman’s mother had been passed as property from owner to owner it was unclear whether she could still be freed Tubman nevertheless vowed to free herself To do so would involve a long dangerous journey to the North 9 CHAPTER ONE
