Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span, she made 19 trips into the South and lead over 300 slaves to freedom. As she once pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger." Her outstanding bravery and leadership during a time of tremendous struggle for Blacks in slavery made her one of the most well known African American women in history. .
Harriet was born Araminta Rossa, and a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland around 1820. At the age of five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. While she was in her early teens, she suffered an injury that would follow her for the rest of her life. Tubman blocked a doorway to protect another field hand from an angry overseer. The overseer then picked up and threw a two-pound weight at the field hand which, missed and strikes Harriet on the head. She never fully recovered from the blow, and later caused her to have spells in which she would fall into a deep sleep. .
Around 1844 she married a free black named John Tubman and took his last name. She later changed her first name to Harriet, which was her mother"s name. In 1849, in fear that she, along with the other slaves on the plantation, was to be sold, Harriet set on running away. She set out one night on foot and with some assistance from a friendly white woman, Harriet was on her way. She followed the North Star by night, making her way to Pennsylvania. Soon after, she was in Philadelphia, where she found work and saved her money. The following year, she returned to Maryland and escorted her sister and her sister's two children to freedom. She made the dangerous trip back to the South soon after to rescue her brother and two other men. On her third return, she went after her husband, only to find he had taken another wife.
