Dorchester County occupies a central place in the story of the Underground Railroad, the secret network of stations and conductors that sheltered and shepherded hundreds of enslaved African Americans to freedom in the mid-1800s. Harriet Tubman grew up in Bucktown, where as a girl of about age 13 she made an early stand against slavery at the village store by refusing a white overseer’s order to help tie down an enslaved man he was disciplining. After the man broke free, the overseer hurled a two-pound weight at him but struck Tubman in the head with a blow that nearly killed her; many historians believe this injury was linked to the frequent seizures and vivid dreams she experienced as an adult and regarded as messages from God. In 1857, Thomas Elliot, Denwood Hughes, and Henry Predo fled a nearby farm then owned by Prichett Meredith, joined five others, and headed north to freedom, but their conductor betrayed them and led them to jail in Dover, Delaware. The Dover Eight escaped through the sheriff’s private living quarters and out a window, and all eight eventually reached freedom in Canada, where Elliott and Hughes became supporters of John Brown.