written by Shawnda Fletcher Harriet Ross Tubman was an African American who escaped slavery and then showed runaway slaves the way to freedom in the North for longer than a decade before the American Civil War. During the war she was as a scout,spy, and nurse for the United States Army. After that she kept working forrights for blacks and women. Harriet Tubman was originally named Araminta Ross. She was one of 11 childrenborn to Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross on a plantation in Dorchester County,Maryland. She later took her mother's first name. Harriet was working at theage of five. She was a maid and a children's nurse before she worked in thefield when she was 12. A year later, a white guy either her watcher or hermaster smacked her on the head with a really heavy weight. The hit was sohard it left her with permanent neurological damage. In result of the hit shehad sudden blackouts during the rest of her life. In 1844 she got permission from her master to marry John Tubman, a free blackman. For the next five years Harriet Tubman was a semi-slave. She was stilllegally a slave, but her master let her live with her husband. In 1847 her masterdied. Followed by the death of his recipient and young son in 1849. That madeHarriet’s status uncertain. In the middle of rumors that the family's slaves werebeing sold to clear the estate, Harriet Tubman went to the North and freedom.Her husband stayed in Maryland. In 1849 Harriet Tubman moved toPennsylvania. She returned to Maryland two years later hoping to get herhusband to come to The North with her. John Tubman had remarried by then.Harriet did not marry again until after John Tubman died. In Pennsylvania, Harriet Tubman became an abolitionist. She worked to endslavery. She decided to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad (anetwork of antislavery activists who helped slaves escape from the South). Onher first trip in 1850, Harriet Tubman brought her sister and her sister's ...
