For the past 20 years local, regional, and national
historians and researchers have been investigating the history of the Harriet
Tubman and the Underground Railroad on the Eastern Shore. In
January 2001, John Creighton, a local researcher and expert on Harriet Tubman,
started a discussion group concentrating on Harriet Tubman and the Underground
Railroad through genealogical and primary document research. These
discussion groups focused on Tubman’s life experiences, where she lived, who
she led north, and other Underground Railroad and local stories. This
effort helped to locate new sources of historical information, and fostered
sharing this history with the local community and across the country.
Over the years more local Underground Railroad heroes have come to light. While
this has been going on in Cambridge,
nationally recognized historians around the country and on the Eastern
Shore have been undertaking their own research – sometimes
confirming, sometimes challenging the local research.
One of the narratives that has been told in Dorchester
County is that Harriet Ross Tubman
was born and lived in Bucktown. Another story told in the county is that
she was born near the town of Madison.
The new research confirms the latter, and although she may not have been born
in Bucktown, her “owner” – Mr. Edward Brodess – lived there, and she spent
portions of her childhood there. As a teenager, she was hired out by Brodess to
masters in the Madison area near
where her father lived. These complicated narratives continue to create
some controversy among long time residents of Dorchester
County.
With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850,
enslavers were emboldened to chase or hire others to find and capture their
“property”. This made the operations of the Underground Railroad more
important, but also more dangerous. The Eastern Shore is
significant for its history of the Underground Railroad and as the location
from which Harriet Tubman fled in 1849 and then returned to help and inspire
others to escape to freedom. But there are many more stories about countless
other heroes, too, including the Rev. Samuel Green, the Dover Eight, Sarah
Young, William Garrison, William Still, local and regional Quakers, their
friends and allies, and so many other known and unknown individuals, black and
white, slave and free that need to be explored and told. Harriet Tubman
had an amazing ability to connect with people who could assist her – protecting
her and her followers on the treks north, those who raised money, those who
built the support system and those who were the abolitionist advocates who
worked to change laws, often at great risk. Those stories need to be
told, too.
In the meantime there has been new recognition
regarding the Dorchester and Caroline
County landscapes where Harriet
Tubman and others grew up, worked and were willing to risk their lives to
escape to freedom. In 2000 the National Park Service (NPS) began plans to
investigate way to memorialize Harriet Tubman in Bucktown and in Auburn,
NY, where she settled in freedom the last
fifty years of her life. Through the assistance of the State of Maryland, and
local and national advocates, NPS expanded their planning efforts to include
thousands of acres of landscapes in Dorchester and Caroline counties to include
not only the site of her birth but also all the sites associated with her
enslavement, and her rescue missions along the Underground Railroad.
Legislation to establish the dual parks, unique to the Park Service, is now
awaiting votes in Congress. The State of Maryland,
in conjunction with the Department of Natural Resources, NPS, and local and
state level tourism offices are creating the Harriet
Tubman Underground
Railroad State Park
and Visitor Center
at Blackwater. This Center, expected opening in 2013, and the region’s newly
established 125-mile Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway All-American
Road will be the jewels of the Maryland’s Harriet Tubman Celebrations in March
2013.
Project Description: The
conference is a two-day symposium on Harriet Tubman and the Underground
Railroad
with opportunities for local tours of sites associated with Tubman and the
Underground Railroad on The intention of
the conference is to bring together professionals and individual researchers
who have undertaken study regarding Harriet Tubman and the many other people
who risked their lives to provide slaves an opportunity to escape this region,
and place them into a larger context of national importance. It is intended to
draw interested leaders in the history field and local residents to participate
in presentations and workshops that will encourage discussion and potentially
new research. There has been a slowly growing interest of local families to
begin to research their family origins - be they in slavery or other roles.
Many people come to Dorchester County
to explore their roots and learn more about the history of the region that
played such a significant role in the development of the United
States -- especially in the Eastern
corridor. Over the years, a growing number of artists – music, dance, drama,
visual- have invested their talents to tell these of slavery and freedom.
