the underground railroad

Harriet Tubman was one of the most well known conductors on the Underground Railroad. She grew up on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. At the age of five she was forced to be a house servant and at the age of 7, she was sent to work on the cotton fields for hours on end. Harriet’s mother’s name was Harriet Green, but other slaves called her Rit. Rit worked in the big house as a cook for the Master. Harriets father's name was Benjamin Ross. Benjamin (Ben) was a timber worker and when Harriet was born he and his wife named her Araminta but the other slaves called her minty. Later on in Harriet's life she changed her name to Harriet in honor of her mother. Despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together it was not enough because after a couple years in slavery her family was ripped apart. At the age of twelve Harriet started to believe in freedom and justice so when she saw a slave overseer throw a heavy weight at a fugitive slave, she jumped in the way. This incident left her with permanent injuries to the head and brain. Due to Harriet’s injuries she would now fall asleep in the middle of her field work and have vivid dreams and hallucinations for the rest of her life.

Harriet's master decided to set her and her family free. He said he would free her father first, so that he could make them money before he set the rest of her family free too. Soon after Ben was freed their master got sick and died. Their new master refused to free them.

Around 1844 Harriet was sold to a black man named John Tubman who married her. She did not have a good marriage because John threatened to sell her and her brothers Henry and Ben, so they ran away. On the way to freedom her two brothers went back to the plantation but she continued on to freedom.

When she finally got to freedom she was not happy living an alone but free life, so she decided to go back to the old plantation and help her mother escape. When she freed her mother, Harriet decided to offer John (her husband) to live with her but John declined and remarried. For Harriet freeing her mother was not enough. She wanted to free every slave. One day Harriet had an idea how to make her dream a reality she had heard of a group of people called the Abolitionists who helped the slaves in every way they could so if she could convince them to help her they would free more slaves because with their numbers and her knowledge of inside routes she was convinced that they would make a great team. In the end she was right because with her help they freed about 100,000 slaves in total and their network ended up being called the Underground Railroad.

Henry Brown was a slave Louisa County Virginia. He worked in a field and was tired of being a slave. He wanted to be a free man. He worked with a white friend of his. He got this friend on board that would put him in a box and send him up to Pennsylvania. He was in his box for almost two days. Henry's friend painted on the box handle. Most people didn't even care and tossed him around and dropped Henry hard. It was limited with air and was hot and when he finally got to Pennsylvania people opened the box and Henry stepped right out and said nice to meet you.

Have you ever wanted to work on the Underground Railroad? Have you ever wanted your name in a history book? It’s not as easy as you think…

The Underground Railroad is no light topic. It has never been, and never will. It is just one of the many large events of the United States. Actually two, counting the Civil War. It would have been an honor to live in that time. But also a burden. It would have been an honor for many reasons. One, your name could go down in the history books. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, huh?

The burden is not as light as you may think. The worst of it is being executed for just helping people! You could also go to prison, which isn’t much better. It ain’t easy serving justice to the good people, is it? And I don’t even want to imagine what the slaves get when they are caught!

So in all, next time you think, oh, I want to be a person on the Underground Railroad, think about the cost.

Harriet Tubman was one of the most famous escaped slaves in all of history. She was born into slavery on a farm in Maryland. She was named Araminta Ross until she married and took her husband's last name and then she changed her first name to match her mother's: Harriet Tubman. In 1849 Harriet risked her life to escape to the free state of Pennsylvania. After gaining her own freedom she helped more than 300 other slaves escape to freedom using the UGRR/Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a secret patchwork of houses and stations made up of the Antislavery organization. Owners of these safe houses would give runaway slaves food and a bed for a night or two. Harriet Tubman was one of the best conductors of the Underground railroad, because it is said that she never lost a single passenger.also she even threatened to shoot her passengers if they said they could not go on which is kinda crazy. And those are some interesting facts about Harriet Tubman.