Manasquan Meets Harriet Tubman

On a cold Saturday evening Manasquan Meeting was transported back into the second half of the nineteenth century when the abolitionist and one of the leading conductors of the underground railroad, Harriet Tubman, arrived to tell her story. Time was indeed relative as a simple woman laid out the facts of her life and explained the journey that had been hers and how she had become the woman she was and done the things she had done. Sitting, listening to her story, everyone present sat as they might have in the same space over a century and a half ago; with much the same feelings. As Quakers we could draw some pride and solace from parts of Mrs. Tubman's narrative but in the end the truth of her testimony spanned all that time with the same pointed realities which unfortunately are hard to escape from evn today..

After Mrs.Tubman had finished her story and left Lorraine Stone came back into the Meeting and answered the many questions the gathered people had.

Lorraine Stone came to Manasquan through the auspices of Kathy Heim and the Peace and Social Concerns Committee. Her wonderful portrayal left all with a deep appreciation of the opportunity they had experienced in hearing her testimony.

Lorraine Stone can be reached 732-492-32199 or stonelorraine1@gmail.com

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger."
Harriet Tubman was born a slave in  Dorchester County, Maryland around 1820. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. Always ready to stand up for someone else, the teen-aged Tubman blocked a doorway to protect another field hand from an angry overseer. The overseer threw a two-pound weight at the field hand which fell short, striking Tubman on the head. She never fully recovered from the blow, leaving her vunerable to 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 was born Araminta Ross; she later changed her first name to Harriet to honor her mother.) In 1849, in fear that she and the other slaves on the plantation were to be sold, Tubman resolved to run away. With some assistance from a friendly white woman, Tubman set out on foot. She followed the North Star by night, making her way to Pennsylvania and soon after to 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. Undeterred, she found other slaves seeking freedom and escorted them to the North.

Tubman returned to the South again and again. She devised clever techniques that helped make her "forays" successful, including using the master's horse and buggy for the first leg of the journey; leaving on a Saturday night, since runaway notices couldn't be placed in newspapers until Monday morning; turning about and heading south if she encountered possible slave hunters; and carrying a drug to quiet a baby if its crying might put the fugitives in danger. Tubman even carried a gun which she used to threaten the fugitives if they became too tired or decided to turn back, telling them, "You'll be free or die."

By 1856, Tubman's capture would have brought a $40,000 reward from the South. [$947,000 in 2008 dollars.] On one occasion, she overheard some men reading her wanted poster, which stated that she was illiterate. She promptly pulled out a book and feigned reading it. The ploy was enough to fool the men.

Tubman had made the perilous trip to slave country 19 times by 1860, including one especially challenging journey in which she rescued her 70-year-old parents. Frederick Douglass said, "Excepting John Brown -- of sacred memory -- I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman]."
John Brown, who conferred with "General Tubman" about his plans to raid Harpers Ferry, said that she was "one of the bravest persons on this continent."

Becoming friends with the leading abolitionists of the day, Tubman took part in antislavery meetings. On the way to such a meeting in Boston in 1860, she helped a fugitive slave who had been captured in Tory, New York.
During the Civil War Harriet Tubman worked for the Union as a cook, a nurse, and even a spy. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she would spend the rest of her long life. She died in 1913.

Courtesy Jeff Heim, Point Pleasant (NJ) Historical Society 2007