Harriet tubman facts wikipedia

Her admirers called her “Moses” or “General Tubman,” but she was born Araminta Ross.

It’s unclear exactly when the woman who would be known as Harriet Tubman was born, with dates ranging from to Historians do know that she was one of nine children born to Harriet “Rit” and Ben Ross, enslaved people owned by two different families on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

With her parents separated, Tubman’s mother struggled to keep her family together, and three of Tubman’s sisters were sold to other plantation owners.

Tubman’s owners, the Brodess family, “loaned” her out to work for others while she was still a child, under what were often miserable, dangerous conditions.  

READ MORE: Enslaved Couples Faced Wrenching Separations, or Even Choosing Family Over Freedom

Sometime around , she married John Tubman, a free Black man.

Though Tubman remained enslaved, mixed marriages were not uncommon in the region, which had a large percentage of formerly enslaved people who h