Harriet Tubman – circa 1821–1913

Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, and escaped to freedom about 1849. Not satisfied with having achieved her own deliverance, she repeatedly risked recapture throughout the 1850s by journeying back into slave territory to lead some 300 other fugitives, including her parents, to liberty. She was a founder of the “Underground Railroad,” the abolitionist network that smuggled thousands of fugitives to freedom before the Civil War. During the war, she risked her life as a spy in Maryland and Virginia.