Harriet Tubman

born 1820, died March 10, 1913

Harriet Tubman started her life as a slave named Araminta Greene.
She later adopted her mother's first name. Her early life was
spent doing back breaking labor on a plantation in Maryland where
she was often beaten. She suffered her whole life from a skull fracture
she received at age thirteen when an overseer struck her with a 
two-pound weight. After she escaped from slavery, she did not forget 
those left behind. She became part of the Underground Railroad, and
successfuly made about nineteen trips to free slaves. It is estimated
that she helped more than 300 people escape to Canada. She was called
"Moses" for having led so many of her people to freedom. It was her
shrewd intelligence and ingenuity which made her so successful. She
planned meticulously, never took the same route twice, and maintained 
strict discipline among her followers. The Maryland plantation owners
considered her such a threat that at one point rewards for her capture
totalled approximately $40,000.  During the Civil War, she worked as a Union
spy and scout. After the war, Tubman opened her home as the Harriet Tubman 
Home for Indigent Aged Negroes.