Harriet Tubman’s parents, Rit and Ben Ross, moved to Poplar Neck in 1847, where her father worked as a lumber foreman on Dr. Anthony C. Thompson’s 2,200 heavily forested acres. Harriet probably made her first escape from this place in 1849, and on Christmas Day in 1854 she covertly led her brothers to freedom from here. Her parents were Underground Railroad agents, and in 1857 they were suspected of aiding a group of escaped slaves known as the Dover Eight. Fearing their imminent arrest, Harriet returned to rescue them, risking her own life and freedom. With little time to prepare, she hastily rigged an axle and wheels with a rickety seat for her elderly parents, hooked up a horse, straddled the contraption, and raced them up the lane into the night. After settling in St. Catherines, Canada, they joined their sons and other former slaves in freedom, and Harriet moved them to a new home in Auburn, NY, in 1859.