Harriet Tubman was a slave who escaped through the "Underground Railroad". Tubman also helped more than three hundred slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad is not a true railroad. It is a bunch of abolitionists that help free slaves. The slaves follow the North Star, and go to designated houses and there, the abolitionists provide the slaves with food, clothing, and shelter. They had to travel to Pennsylvania, to be free.
Harriet was born in 1820, on a plantation in Maryland. She and the rest of her family were slaves, and their master Edward Brodas, could work them or sell them as he pleased. But all her life she knew that she wanted to be free. She was prepared to do whatever it took to get that freedom. As a little girl she was a house slave. Her duties were helping another slave cook the meals, cleaning the house, tending to the master's baby, and any other tasks that needed done. After that did not work out she soon became a field hand.
In 1835 Harriet was 15 and tried to help another slave escape. She got in between the slave and the master and she would not move so the master threw a lead weight at her head which put her in a coma, from fall until the next spring. After that she had sudden sleeping spells, and they would be with her for the rest of her life. She would just suddenly drift off, whether she was cooking, cleaning, or laying the laundry out on the bushes to dry. Slowly she regained her strength though. For fifteen more years she worked as a slave. Then her master let her hire herself, out to other farmers as long as she gave him part of the money she earned. She baked pies to sell, and grew crops to sell in Cambridge. One day she was in Cambridge selling some crops, when she met John Tubman. He was a free black man. In 1844 they became engaged. That spring they were married. John then moved into her cabin in the Stewart slave quarters, and she struggled to make it into a home for him.
