Harriet Tubman Parents: Who Are Harriet Tubman Parents?

Harriet Tubman Parents: Who Are Harriet Tubman Parents?: Harriet Tubman, officially known as Araminta Ross was an American abolitionist and social activist.

She was born enslaved in 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, and growing up, she was beaten and whipped by her various masters, leading to a traumatic head wound.

The traumatic head wound happened when an overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life.

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After several years of planning to escape in order to rescue other slaves, Tubman eventually escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 only to return to Maryland to save other slaves including her family.

Slowly, one group at a time, she led dozens of enslaved people to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad, an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose. Her role in freeing many slaves earned her the nickname ‘Moses’

During the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy under the command of Col. James Montgomery.

The American Civil War was between the Union (the North) and the Confederacy (the South) from April 12, 1861, to May 26, 1865.

Tubman spied on Confederate territory and when she returned with information about the locations of warehouses and ammunition, Montgomery’s troops were able to make carefully planned attacks.

She became the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war guiding the raid at Combahee Ferry, which freed over 700 slaves. Her role in freeing many slaves earned her the nickname ‘Moses’

For her wartime service, Tubman was paid so little that she had to support herself by selling homemade baked goods. She later settled in a property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York where she cared for her aging parents.

Tubman was active in the women’s suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.

As Tubman aged, the seizures, headaches, and her childhood head trauma continued to trouble her. She had this situation when she was a slave and an overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead.

At some point in the late 1890s, she underwent brain surgery at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.

Two decades after her brain surgery, Tubman died of pneumonia on Monday, March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family members.

Just before she died, she told those in the room: “I go to prepare a place for you.” She was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.