50 Fun Facts About Harriet Tubman

What was Harriet Tubman's name at birth?

She was called 'Minty' as a child and adopted her mother's name, Harriet, around the time of her first marriage.

Roughly how many enslaved people did Tubman personally guide to freedom over some 13 missions?

She also gave instructions to 50 or 60 more who escaped on their own.

What biblical nickname was Tubman given for leading people out of slavery?

Like the prophet who led the Hebrews from Egypt, she brought her people out of bondage.

In which state was Tubman born into slavery?

Her home was Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore, where by the 1840s half the black population was free.

What did an overseer throw that struck young Tubman's head and caused her lifelong seizures?

He was aiming at another enslaved man; she lay untreated on a loom seat for two days.

Which year do modern biographers, following Kate Larson, accept as most likely for Tubman's birth?

Tubman herself said 1825, her death certificate says 1815 and her gravestone says 1820.

How many children did Tubman's parents, Rit and Ben Ross, have according to court records?

Several of her sisters were sold away and separated from the family forever.

What was Tubman's job when, aged five or six, she was hired out to a woman called 'Miss Susan'?

She was whipped whenever the baby cried, once five times before breakfast.

As a child working for planter James Cook, what did Tubman have to check in the marshes even while sick with measles?

She became so ill that Cook sent her back and her mother nursed her to health.

What was the status of John Tubman, whom Harriet married around 1844?

Any children they had would still have been enslaved because status followed the mother.

On what date did Tubman first escape from slavery, along with her brothers Ben and Henry?

Her brothers had second thoughts and turned back, forcing her to return; she left again alone weeks later.

What reward did Eliza Brodess offer in the Cambridge Democrat for each of the three runaways?

The popular legend of a $40,000 bounty on Tubman is a figure invented in an 1867 pension letter.

To which city did Tubman escape in 1849?

The journey of nearly 90 miles on foot could take anything from several days to several weeks.

What did Tubman say she looked at to see if she was 'the same person' after crossing into Pennsylvania?

She recalled the sun coming 'like gold through the trees' and feeling as if she were in Heaven.

Which 1850 federal law forced officials in free states to help catch escapees?

After it passed, she began guiding people all the way to Canada.

Tubman's first rescue mission, in December 1850, saved her niece Kessiah, who was rescued from where?

Kessiah's free husband made the winning bid, then spirited the family away while the auctioneer went to lunch.

What did Tubman discover when she returned to the Eastern Shore in 1851 to fetch her husband John?

He refused to leave, so she gathered other people who wanted to escape and led them north instead.

Which famous abolitionist likely sheltered Tubman's group of 11 escapees in 1851?

He later wrote to her: 'I have wrought in the day – you in the night.'

On which day of the week did Tubman like to start escapes, and why?

She also preferred winter, when long nights and cold weather kept people indoors.

What did Tubman carry as a disguise when she found herself walking toward a former enslaver?

She yanked the strings on the birds' legs so their flapping let her avoid eye contact.

How did Tubman avoid recognition when she spotted a former enslaver on a train?

Everyone knew she was illiterate, so the man ignored the 'reading' woman.

Which Wilmington Quaker regularly arranged Tubman's onward transport from Delaware into Pennsylvania?

He said he never met anyone 'who had more confidence in the voice of God'.

Which spiritual did Tubman sing with altered words to signal whether it was safe to proceed?

She also carried a revolver and told anyone wanting to turn back, 'Go on or die.'

Tubman said she never did what, in eight years as an Underground Railroad conductor?

'I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,' she told an audience.

To which Canadian town did Tubman lead her elderly parents in 1857?

A community of formerly enslaved people, including relatives, had gathered there.

Which abolitionist called Tubman 'General Tubman' while recruiting for his raid on Harpers Ferry?

She helped him plan and raise funds; when the raid took place in October 1859 she was in New York City.

Whose wife sold Tubman a seven-acre farm near Auburn, New York, in 1859?

Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and the farm became a haven for her family and boarders.

Why did Tubman's last rescue mission, in 1860, fail to free her sister Rachel's children?

Rachel had already died; Tubman still led another group, the Ennalls family, north on that trip.

In which South Carolina district did Tubman start working with freed refugees for the Union in 1862?

She served as a nurse there, making remedies from local plants and selling pies and root beer to support herself.

Tubman guided how many steamboats of black soldiers up the Combahee River in the 1863 raid?

They steered past mines to burn plantations, and more than 750 enslaved people were carried away to freedom.

Tubman is widely credited as the first woman in US history to do what?

Her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry liberated more than 700 people.

Tubman reportedly served which colonel his last meal before the 1863 assault on Fort Wagner?

She later described the battle: 'we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of blood falling'.

How much was Tubman paid in total for more than three years of Union service?

Her nursing work was entirely unpaid, and Congress took decades to grant her any pension.

What happened to Tubman on a train to New York in October 1865?

White passengers cursed her and told the conductor to throw her off the train.

Tubman's second husband, Nelson Davis, was how much younger than she was?

A Union veteran turned bricklayer, he married her in 1869; they adopted a daughter, Gertie, in 1874.

Who wrote the authorised 1869 biography Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman?

It earned Tubman about $1,200; a rewritten version followed in 1886.

In 1873 swindlers lured Tubman into the woods with a promise of what?

They chloroformed her and stole her purse; the trunk was full of rocks.

What monthly pension did Congress finally approve for Tubman in 1899?

It combined her $8 widow's pension with $12 for nursing, but never recognised her as a scout and spy.

Asked whether women should have the vote, how did Tubman reply?

She worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and spoke in New York, Boston and Washington for suffrage.

What did Tubman have to sell to afford a train ticket to receptions in her honour in Boston in 1897?

Her constant giving to others had left her in poverty.

What did Tubman name the main building of the home for the aged she founded, in honour of an old ally?

The AME Zion Church took the property over in 1903 and opened the home in 1908.

What did Tubman reportedly bite on during brain surgery in the late 1890s, having refused anaesthesia?

She had seen Civil War soldiers do the same during amputations.

Of what illness did Tubman die in March 1913?

She was buried with semi-military honours at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

In 1978 Tubman became the first African-American woman to appear on what?

A Liberty ship, the SS Harriet Tubman, had already been launched in 1944.

Plans announced in 2016 would have put Tubman's portrait on which US banknote?

Andrew Jackson would have moved to the back; the Treasury said in 2026 the change was no longer planned.

To what rank was Tubman posthumously commissioned in Maryland's National Guard in 2024?

The one-star commission recognised her Civil War military service.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Tubman in the 2019 film Harriet?

Tubman had first been dramatised on TV in 1963, and later in Underground and The Good Lord Bird.

What was the name of the baby girl Tubman and Nelson Davis adopted in 1874?

The couple had married at Auburn's Central Presbyterian Church in 1869.

In which Auburn, New York cemetery was Tubman buried with semi-military honours in 1913?

Just before dying she quoted the Gospel of John: 'I go away to prepare a place for you.'

Tubman's maternal grandmother, who arrived in America on a slave ship, was named what?

As a child Tubman was told she seemed like an Ashanti person, though nothing confirms that lineage.