Search results
Kids. Students. Scholars. Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in the southern United States. She then helped lead many other enslaved people to freedom. She also served the Union during the American Civil War. Harriet Tubman was born in about 1820 in Dorchester county, Maryland.
Learn how Harriet Tubman helped the Union Army during the Civil War by leading a raid to free enslaved people from South Carolina. Discover her role as a spy, a conductor for the Underground Railroad, and a brave African American hero.
Learn about the life and achievements of Harriet Tubman, a leader in the Underground Railroad and a civil rights activist. Find out where she was born, how she escaped from slavery, how she helped others to freedom, and what she did after the Civil War. See facts, activities, and videos related to her biography.
- Early Life and Education
- Head Injury
- Family and Marriage
- Escape from Slavery
- John Brown and Harpers Ferry
- Auburn
- American Civil War
- Later Life
- Harriet Tubman Quotes
- Interesting Facts About Harriet Tubman
Tubman's mother Rit (whose father might have been a white man) was a cook. Her father Ben was a woodsman who did the timber work on a plantation. Ben and Rit married around 1808. According to court records, they had nine children together. Linah was born in 1808, Mariah Ritty in 1811, Soph in 1813, Robert in 1816, Minty (Harriet) in 1821, Ben in 18...
One day when she was an adolescent, Tubman was sent to a dry-goods store for supplies. There she met a slave owned by another family. That slave had left the fields without permission. His overseer was angry and demanded that Tubman help restrain the young man. Tubman refused. As the slave ran away, the overseer threw a two-pound weight at him. The...
Around 1844, Tubman married a free black man named John Tubman. Little is known about him or their time together. Their marriage was complicated because she was a slave. Since children from the marriage would have the status of the mother, any children born to Harriet and John would become slaves. By this time, half the black population on the East...
In 1849, Harriet became ill again. This reduced her value when Edward Brodess tried to sell her. Edward could not sell her and died shortly thereafter. Edward's wife, Eliza began working to sell the family's slaves. Tubman did not wait to be sold, but escaped with two of her brothers, Ben and Henry. Later, the two men had second thoughts about esca...
In April of 1958, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown. Harriet did not agree that violence should be used against white people as John Brown did, but she did help him by sharing her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states. Brown asked Tubman, who he called "General Tubman," to gather former slaves who might...
In early 1859, abolitionist Republican U.S. Senator William H. Sewardsold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York, for $1,200 ($39,084 in 2024). Her land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. For years, she took in relatives and boarders, offering a safe place for black Americans seeking a better life i...
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman saw a Unionvictory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery. Harriet hoped to offer her own expertise and skills to the Union cause, too, and soon she joined a group of abolitionists who helped fugitives. Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, making medicines from local plants and helping soldiers...
Even though Harriet Tubman served the U.S. government for years, she did not receive a regular salary. Tubman spent her last years in Auburn, tending to her family and other people in need. She worked various jobs to support her elderly parents and took in boarders to help pay the bills. Her friends and supporters from her earlier abolition days he...
“I said to the Lord, 'I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you will see me through.'”“I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all here.”“If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.”“I ain’t got no heart to go and see the sufferings of my people played on the stage."When Harriet was helping slaves to freedom, her code name was "Moses" and she was known as the "black ghost."She used spirituals and songs as coded messages for her followers.When she had brain surgery to help with her seizures and headaches, she did not receive anesthesiafor the procedure. Instead, she bit down on a bullet as she had seen Civil War soldiers do.Harriet Tubman has two National Park sites dedicated to her: the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Dorchester County, Maryland, and the Harriet Tubman National Histori...Learn about Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad leader who risked her freedom and life to help other slaves. Find out her fun facts, such as her birth name, her nickname, her injuries, and her legacy. See questions and answers for kids to test their knowledge.
American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in the South. She then helped other enslaved African Americans to flee to free states in the North and to Canada along the Underground Railroad —an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose.
Searches related to harriet tubman for kids
