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  • Harriet Ross Tubman Timeline
  • Kate Clifford Larson (bio)

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Harriet Tubman circa 1886. Author’s collection.

[End Page 9]

1785–1790: Harriet Tubman’s parents, Ben Ross and Harriet “Rit” Green, are probably born during this period in Dorchester County, Maryland. Both are enslaved, but by different masters. Anthony Thompson enslaves Ross; Atthow Pattison enslaves Green.

1797: Atthow Pattison dies and leaves Rit to his granddaughter, Mary Pattison.

1803: Widow Mary Pattison Brodess marries widower Anthony Thompson of Madison, bringing her young son, Edward Brodess, with her. Ben and Rit are now together on the same plantation.

1808: Ben and Rit’s first child, Linah, is born. Over the next twenty-four years, they have eight more children: Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Araminta “Minty,” Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

1810: Mary Pattison Brodess Thompson dies, leaving young Edward under the guardianship of his stepfather, Anthony Thompson.

1822: Araminta “Minty” Ross, later known as Harriet Tubman, is probably born in February or early March on the Thompson plantation, where her parents are both enslaved.


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Anthony Thompson’s $2 payment to a midwife for services to Rit on March 15, 1822.

This coincides with Tubman’s likely birth date. Maryland State Archives.

1823–1824: Edward Brodess moves to his own inherited property near Bucktown, Maryland. He marries Eliza Ann Keene in March 1824. Over the next few years, Brodess brings Rit and the Ross children to live on his farm, tearing them away from their father and the social world they knew ten miles away in Madison. [End Page 10]

1828–1835: Young Minty is frequently hired out by Brodess to various nearby farmers, some of whom are cruel and negligent. She bears the scars of their whippings for the rest of her life.

1831: Nat Turner’s Rebellion in August sends shockwaves throughout the South. Restrictions on free and enslaved African Americans intensify.

1834–1836: Araminta is nearly killed after being struck on the head by an iron weight thrown by an angry overseer, at the Bucktown crossroads. She suffers from seizures and debilitating headaches from this head injury for the rest of her life.

1836–1842: Araminta is hired out to John T. Stewart of Madison, bringing her closer to her father. She works as a domestic, a fieldhand, a dock-worker, and lumberjack. Her work assignments and closeness to her father provide her the skills she would later need working on the Underground Railroad.

1840: Ben Ross is given his freedom through a provision in Anthony Thompson’s will. Rit, Minty, and some of her siblings are able to live with Ben in his home in Madison.

1844: Araminta marries freeman John Tubman. She takes the name Harriet. Edward Brodess, for payment of a yearly fee, allows her to keep some of her earnings when she hires herself out to area farmers. By this time he has sold three of Harriet’s sisters: Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph, tearing the family apart forever.

1847–1849: Harriet Tubman hires herself out to Dr. Anthony C. Thompson, Anthony Thompson’s son, in nearby Caroline County, Maryland.

1849: Edward Brodess dies in March, leaving his widow Eliza burdened with debt and six of their eight children dependent upon her. Harriet Tubman runs away twice in the fall of 1849 after hearing she might be sold to pay Brodess’s debts. She successfully reaches freedom in Philadelphia on her second try. Eliza Brodess posts a $100 reward for Tubman’s return. [End Page 11]


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Runaway reward advertisement for Tubman (Minty and her two brothers). The three siblings returned shortly after this ad was posted because they were confused about which way to go and fearful of being caught. Tubman fled again, alone, shortly thereafter. Cambridge Democrat newspaper, October 3, 1849. Courtesy Bucktown Village Foundation, Bucktown, Maryland.

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1850: The Fugitive Slave Act is passed. Tubman conducts her first rescue mission by helping her niece, Kessiah Jolley Bowley, and Kessiah’s two children, James Alfred and baby Araminta, escape.

1851–1852: Tubman helps several other individuals escape enslavement on the Eastern Shore...

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