Q 01/05

What was Harriet Tubman's name at birth?

A) Araminta Ross

B) Rachel Ross

C) Harriet Green

D) Minerva Brodess

Answer · why

A) Araminta Ross

Araminta Ross was Minty to her family. She took her mother's name, Harriet, around the time she married John Tubman, about 1844.

Q 02/05

Legend credits Tubman with leading 300 people to freedom, but about how many do her biographers now count?

A) About 5

B) About 20

C) About 70

D) About 250

Answer · why

C) About 70

About 70, on some 13 trips. The figure of 300 was her first biographer's estimate; Tubman herself told audiences in the late 1850s that she had rescue...

Q 03/05

What biblical nickname did Tubman earn as a conductor on the Underground Railroad?

A) Moses

B) Joshua

C) Deborah

D) Miriam

Answer · why

A) Moses

Moses, after the prophet who led the Hebrews out of Egypt. Eastern Shore slaveholders never realised the rescuer was Minty, the small, injured woman w...

Q 04/05

In which state was Tubman born into slavery?

A) Virginia

B) Delaware

C) Maryland

D) Georgia

Answer · why

C) Maryland

Maryland. Every one of her later rescue missions went back there, where she knew the people and the landscape; none reached the Deep South.

Q 05/05

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

A) A blacksmith's hammer

B) A length of iron chain

C) A cast-iron skillet

D) A two-pound metal weight

Answer · why

D) A two-pound metal weight

A two-pound metal weight, thrown in a village store at an enslaved man who had left work, struck her instead. She lay on the seat of a loom for two da...