Qualla: Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. She never learned to read, but she memorized the stars. On roughly thirteen separate journeys back into slaveholding territory, Harriet Tubman navigated by the North Star, by moss on tree trunks, by the current of rivers whose names she kept to herself. She carried a revolver and a supply of paregoric to quiet crying babies. She never lost a passenger. The woman born Araminta Ross around March 1822 on Maryland's Eastern Shore -- a woman who suffered a traumatic head injury as a child that caused seizures, headaches, and vivid visions for the rest of her life -- became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, a Union Army spy and scout, the leader of a military raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people, and a tireless advocate for women's suffrage. She lived her last fifty-four years in Auburn, New York, at the western edge of the Finger Lakes, on property she purchased from Senator William Seward in 1859. The house still stands. So does her legacy.

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Image: unattributed | Public domain

Harriet Tubman: The Weight That Changed Everything

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Samuel J. Miller; American, 1822-1888, Public domain. As an adolescent working on a Maryland plantation, young Araminta stepped between an overseer and an enslaved man trying to flee. The overseer hurled a two-pound metal weight intended for the fugitive. It struck Araminta in the head instead. She nearly died. For the rest of her l...

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Image: Samuel J. Miller; American, 1822-1888 | Public domain

Harriet Tubman: Thirteen Journeys South

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photographer William H. Cheney, South Orange, NJ, Public domain. In 1849, Tubman escaped from Maryland's Eastern Shore to Philadelphia. She could have stayed free. Instead, she went back. Starting in December 1850, after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act making even free states unsafe for people who had escaped slavery, Tubman began guidi...

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Image: Photographer William H. Cheney, South Orange, NJ | Public domain

Harriet Tubman: The Raid at Combahee Ferry

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John G. Darby, illustrator; W.J. Moses, printer; stereotyped by Dennis Bro's & Co., Public domain. When the Civil War began, Tubman's skills found a new application. She worked first as a cook and nurse for the Union Army in South Carolina, then as a spy and scout, using her years of covert travel to map Confederate territory around Port Royal. In early 1863, she led a band of...

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Image: John G. Darby, illustrator; W.J. Moses, printer; stereotyped by Dennis Bro's & Co. | Public domain

Harriet Tubman: Auburn's Most Famous Resident

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photographer: Horatio Seymour Squyer, 1848 - 18 Dec 1905, Public domain. Tubman settled in Auburn, New York, in 1859, purchasing a property from William Seward -- then a senator and soon to become Lincoln's Secretary of State. Auburn sat in the heart of abolitionist country, near Seneca Falls where the women's rights movement had launched a decade ear...

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Image: Photographer: Horatio Seymour Squyer, 1848 - 18 Dec 1905 | Public domain

Harriet Tubman: A Legacy Still Unfolding

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ennsberger? Auburn, NY, Public domain. Tubman's Auburn home is now part of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, established to preserve the places where she lived and worked during her final fifty-four years. Her gravesite at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn draws visitors year-round. In 1978, she became the first...

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Image: Ennsberger? Auburn, NY | Public domain