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Harriet Tubman's family includes her birth family and life with her two husbands, John Tubman and Nelson Davis, and her daughter Gertie Davis.

Background

Family members were often spread out over a distance, sometimes it was because they were sold to other slaveholders. In some cases it was because their enslaver had multiple properties that required slaves to be rotated across locations or when their white owners moved to another residence. Sometimes, enslaved people were hired out for work. Children born to an enslaved woman were owned by the mother's slaveholder.

Ben and Rit Greene Ross

Born Araminta "Minty" Ross, her parents were Benjamin (Ben) and Harriet (Rit) Greene Ross. Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross were born about 1785 in Dorcester County, Maryland.

Her enslaved parents and siblings lived in a cabin on the Anthony Thompson farm at Peters Neck in Dorchester County, Maryland, in what is now the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. After a few years, her mother and children moved to the Brodess farm.

Anthony Thompson was a "timber magnate" and a physician. Tubman's father was a lumberman, bringing down trees that would be used to build ships in Baltimore. In the early 1840s, her father was emancipated and received 10 acres of land following Anthony Johnson's death, as stipulated in Thompson's will. He stayed on the farm and continued to work as a lumberman.

Her parents were among the numerous people that she brought north and out of slavery. They escaped with Tubman in 1857.

I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in de old cabin quarter wid de ole folks, and my brothers and sisters. But to dis solemn resolution I came: I was free and dey should be free also. I would make a home for dem in de North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring democracy all here.

Her father died about 1871 in Auburn, New York. Rit died in October 1880, nearly 100 years of age.

Siblings

A conductor on the Underground Railroad, she made 13 return trips over 10 years to lead her parents, siblings, and friends to freedom. Tubman rescued 70 people from Maryland, including three brothers and other people led away from Peters Neck on Christmas, 1854. Doing so, she took the risk of becoming enslaved again or lynched if she was caught.

Her siblings included Linah (b. 1808), Mariah (b. 1811), Sophisticating (b. 1813), and Robert (b. 1816), Benjamin (b. 1824). Her brother John, his wife Millie, and their son Moses lived next to her in Auburn. A number of nieces and nephews lived in Auburn, New York.

John Tubman

She was married in 1844 to John Tubman, a free man. She changed her given name about the same time, becoming Harriet Tubman. Realizing she was to be sold following her enslaver's death, Tubman escaped in 1849, when she was 27 years of age. When she returned to lead him to freedom, he had married another woman. He was killed during a dispute.

Nelson Davis

In 1866, Tubman met Nelson Davis from Elizabeth City at her boarding house in Auburn, New York. He boarded with her for three years and they were married on March 18, 1869 at the Central Presbyterian Church. Davis was more than twenty years younger than Tubman. He first known as Nelson Charles who had worked for a Charles family and probably escaped slavery by the Underground Railroad around 1861, perhaps on the Pasquotank River and the Great Dismal Swamp, which are both sites on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. After he escaped, he changed his name to Nelson Davis, using the surname of his father, Milford Davis. He lived in Oneida County, New York by 1861. About 1863, he enlisted in the Union army and fought during the American Civil War. At the end of the war, he was discharged in Texas.

Tubman and Davis operated a 7-acre farm and brick business in Auburn. They raised chickens and pigs and grew potatoes, vegetables and apples. Tubman sold butter and eggs. Tubman also continued to board people. Rit Ross lived at the house, as did four boarders. Between 1882 and 1884, their frame house was burned down, and a brick building was constructed. Around that time, Davis was very ill, requiring care, and he was unable to work. A number of her pigs had a rare illness that initially killed 40 hogs. And, she helped out family members in need, like her nephew John Henry Stewart's surviving wife Eliza and three children.

Davis died in 1888 of tuberculosis. Under the name Harriet Tubman Davis, she filed for pension benefits, which were provided for Civil War veteran's spouses.

Gertie Davis

In 1874, Tubman and Davis adopted a girl named Gertie.

Notes

1. In 1850, George Charles had 22 slaves, two of whom were 5 and 6 years of age. This would have been his age at that time.

References

1. Larson, Kate Clifford (2009-02-19). Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero. Random House Publishing Group. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-0-307-51476-9.
2. ^ "Harriet Tubman (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
3. ^ "Inspiration along Tubman byway". The Atlanta Constitution. 2017-03-09. pp. E4. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
4. ^ Larson, Kate Clifford (2009-02-19). Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero. Random House Publishing Group. pp. 261, 296–297. ISBN 978-0-307-51476-9.
5. ^ "Historic Find: Archaeologists discover home of Harriet Tubman's father". The News Journal. 2021-04-25. pp. A26. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
6. ^ "Presidential Proclamation -- Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument". whitehouse.gov. 2013-03-25. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
7. Larson, Kate Clifford (2009-02-19). Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero. Random House Publishing Group. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-307-51476-9.
8. ^ Hampton, Jeff (April 11, 2009). "Life of Harriet Tubman's husband intrigues historians". The Virginian Pilot. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
9. ^ Larson, Kate Clifford (2009-02-19). Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero. Random House Publishing Group. pp. 252, 260, 261, 374. ISBN 978-0-307-51476-9.

• Harriet Tubman
• People from Dorchester County, Maryland