Born To Be Free

Harriet Tubman, known as Minty, was born to Rittia "Rit" Green Ross and Benjamin "Ben" Ross while both parents were enslaved to different owners, and under Maryland law before the Civil War she inherited her mother’s legal status, so because Rit was enslaved to Edward Brodess, Harriet and her siblings were born enslaved and remained under Brodess’s ownership until his death in 1849. The number of Harriet Tubman’s brothers and sisters is unknown, and although her brother Henry Ross believed Brodess intended to free them by will, no one was freed and the family soon understood that some of them might be sold to pay Brodess’s debts. After severe mistreatment, Harriet left alone one night in the fall of 1849, guided when possible by the North Star, hiding in the woods by day, crossing into Delaware, and then receiving help through New Jersey into Pennsylvania, where she later recalled the joy of crossing from bondage into freedom. On her first known return to Maryland, in 1850, she is said to have met Keziah Bowley in Baltimore and helped Keziah, her husband, and their two children reach Canada; testimony in a court case over Edward Brodess’s estate recounted that Keziah had been taken to the courthouse in Cambridge, auctioned to the highest bidder, who was her husband, and then she and her husband slipped away without making payment.

Cambridge, Maryland · United States