molly.cronin

  Harriet Tubman


 * < This is a picture of Harriet in her older ages. ||


 * < This is a picture of the route of the Underground Railroad. ||





For my biography I chose to research Harriet Tubman. She was a great leader and strong, brave women! Harriet was born in 1820 in Dorechestor County Maryland. Let’s start learning all the interesting, cool facts about her! Tubman’s mothers name was Harriet Green Ross and her fathers name was Ben Ross. They had a very large family with 11 children. Unfortunately everyone in the Tubman family became slaves on the Thompson Plantation. Harriet, who’s real name was Araminta Ross, started working in the fields at age five, and started off really poorly. The first job she had was working as a house keeper and babysitter! Only five years old, she would need a babysitter! Later at age 11 Harriet started working in the fields. She preferred this because even though she was so small, she was really strong. While working in the fields one day, she had a really bad accident! Little Harriet wasn’t pulling all the corn she needed and then her master threw a two pound lead at her head! Now for the rest of her life she had permanent brain damage and memory loss. This was really bad for a slave because she was always tired and couldn’t do her best work.

When Harriet became in her twenties, she decided this wasn’t fair for blacks to do. When she was really young, Harriet married John Tubman which she was forced to do. This was how she got her last name Tubman. But when Harriet told John she wanted to escape, he didn’t accept and they never spoke again. Finally Harriet started the Underground Railroad! This railroad helped people escape slavery in a safer way. People who participated were able to stay in safe homes and traveled late at night when they wouldn’t be seen. Harriet made 19 trips and saved 300 people! She had to be very brave to start this because if you were found you be killed. Each trip she brought a gun and threatened people who wanted to turn back. She told people “move or die” This is a famous quote said by her to one passenger on the journey. This was very amazing because most slavery was in Alabama and Georgia and they made it all the way to Philadelphia. That is a very far walk and she did this 19 times and was never captured or anyone who traveled with her. This shows how dedicated she was to helping people and how kind she was. People called her “Moses” this means she was a real leader to them.

During this time was the Abolition Movement. This began in the late 1600’s and still was going on during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The Abolition Movement was about freeing blacks from the practice of slavery. This is exactly what Harriet Tubman was permitting while doing the Underground Railroad. Harriet was just their before the Civil war which brought the subject to its climax in 1861-1865. After those four years the 13th amendment was made which declared slavery illegal in the United States.

After Harriet was in Philadelphia for good, she re-married a man named Nelson Davis. She kept the last name Tubman but she still loved Nelson. He agreed with her how slavery was wrong and helped support her. Harriet worked in a hotel before the civil war started. During that she served as a nurse and a spy. Also, she was the only women to lead the troops to battles! The people in war sometimes called her Minty. After Harriet served a little over three years, she started to make speeches. She spoke to so many people, Harriet was even brave enough to talk to whites about slavery! This is a very challenging thing to do because they were probably very angry crowds of people but she stood up and spoke for her rights.

After all her hard work she finally took a small break to spend time with her husband. Harriet even adopted a little girl, Gertie. She was three years old when they adopted her and as she grew up, her parents told her all about the slavery and Harriet told her about working in the fields and everything about being a slave. So many things about Harriet made her so famous because if she had never done anything our world might have never changed. Unfortunately, Harriet died in New York in 1913. She made it to be almost 96 years old, this is very old for someone of that time! It was very sad for many people but all the people that knew her were proud to know her. Also, very thankful for all that she has done

I chose to research Harriet Tubman because she is a brave, strong, great leader that helped changed the United States! Harriet Tubman is a truly amazing person and changed so many lives. Also, so many people looked up to her as a role model. Another way that she is so amazing is that she was a woman to do this and they usually didn’t do things like that, only men. During this time there were other heroic black woman as well such as Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges. They were both brave woman too. Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus when blacks were supposed to be seated in the back. She refused to give up the seat and went to jail. Also, Ruby Bridges was the first black girl to go to an all white’s school. So like Harriet there were so many courageous women. While reading all this information about her I really thought about how hard-working she was. Overall doing this research project really helped me to understand and how people like Harriet Tubman changed the world!

Bibliography Online Periodical: Author: Unknown Title of article: Harriet Ross Tubman Title of original publication: Encyclopedia of the world biography- second edition Publishing Company: Gale Year of publication: 1998 Date accessed: 9/30/09  www.galenet.galegroup.com/>

Online Encyclopedia: Author: Matthew Clavin Title of article: Harriet Tubman Title of encyclopedia: World book Year of publication: 2009 Publishing company: World book, Inc. or Grolier Online Date accessed: 9/21/09 : www.worldbookonline.com/

Book: Author: Kathleen Krull Title of book: Lives of extrodinary women Place of publication: San Diego, New York Publishing company: Harcourt Inc. Year of Publication: 2000

Encyclopedia: Author: Unknown Title of article: Tubman, Harriet Title of encyclopedia: Compton Place of publication: Encyclopedia Britannica