How Did Landscape Affect Harriet Tubman? The Outdoors, Slavery, & the Underground Railroad

0:03 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge from the Past. Art across US history. This series is for students like you to use art as images as a starting point to think about the big stories that make up American history. I’m your host Mary, and I’m so excited for today because we have a very special guest with us. Tim Van Cleave is a park ranger at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad

0:27 National Historic Park in Dorchester County, Maryland. Welcome, Tim, and thank you so much for being with us today. Oh, thanks a lot, Mary. It’s a pleasure to be with you. We’re so glad you’re here. Tim and I are going to be looking at images of the landscape of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Harriet Tubman, arguably the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad,

0:47 grew up on the Eastern Shore before escaping to freedom in 1849. She returned to the Eastern Shore in astonishing 13 times in ten years to free family and friends from Bondage. So how can looking at the landscape help us understand her amazing story? Not just her story, but really the story of the Underground Railroad writ large?

1:09 Let’s jump in and see. So, Tim, before we look at our images, I was hoping you could give us just a little bit of context so we can wrap our analysis and what we’re looking at here. So, first of all, who was Harriet Tubman? So Harriet Tubman was born. Actually, her real name is Armamento Ross.

1:31 She was born at 1822, here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, dorchester county. And she spent the early part of her life here. And, of course, beginning in 1850, then she would come back and free

1:52 almost 70 individuals and lead them to freedom up north. And the rest of her life, she would spend up in upstate New York, in Auburn, New York. This picture I have of her here, this is her, a younger Harriet Tubman. So I think at least when I was growing up, I always saw her as an older woman. But when she herself escapes and when

2:14 she’s coming back, she’s much younger, I think, than right. And she lived to be 91 years old. It’s amazing. Yeah. A very long life. Right. So we associate her with the Underground Railroad. So what’s your elevator response if someone asks you, what is the Underground well. She is certainly the most famous person, the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.

2:37 However, the Underground Railroad actually would go farther west. There were routes through the Midwest and even as far out as Iowa. So when we consider the traditional Underground Railroad route but of course,

2:57 Harriet was the most famous person associated with that movement. Okay. And then if someone comes to visit you at the park, what would they expect to see? So we have a museum here and talks about her life growing up here in Dorchester County.

3:18 Her family, the people who she helped escape those folks are documented as well, and a lot of great exhibits just talking about her overall life and her mission and her great accomplishment. Along with that, we are on the Harriet Tubman by way,

3:42 which runs from basically Dorchester County up to Philadelphia and several stops on the byway, about 45 stops have documentation associated with her the Underground Railroad story. So it’s just a great resource. Yeah, I know. We got to look at some of the resources

4:03 from the park and to help understand her story. And I want to start with this great map that you shared of networks to freedom. So you mentioned that the Underground River doesn’t run just north to south, which is what I think I always associated with growing up. But you can also see people are moving. They’re going in all different directions here.

4:23 So it’s really fascinating. So how does this help give us context for Harriet Tubman and sort of the larger story of the Underground Railroad? Well, it puts into context where freedom seekers are moving from and moving to certainly the East Eastern Corridor there you don’t see a lot of the lines, but also you look into the Midwest.

4:50 These folks are coming up through Kentucky, the Ohio River, and even down south in Louisiana, those folks are using what’s called the El Camino Real because they’re going through Texas. And other folks in East Texas are going down to Mexico. And for the mere fact that in the late 1820s, mexico is going to abolish slavery.

5:13 And these folks know that. Okay. On the West Coast. You see, there were enslaved people in the California Gold Rush. People took their slaves out there to work in the goldfield. So they’re obviously trying to get up to Canada north of what’s now Washington State.

5:36 So this is fascinating to me because, again, I think the emphasis for and even the Harriet Tubman by way that you mentioned is going to come. So here we are at the Eastern Shore of Maryland, up to Philadelphia. So our story, we’re really zeroing in here, but this is huge. It’s a huge country, and people are really going everywhere. And I love the international aspect of going to Mexico, to Haiti, right to Jamaica, these British territory.

5:59 Haiti is the sovereign country where there is no slavery. So I think it really helps us understand just how big the story is. It’s not just Harriet Tubman. I think she is really extraordinary, and I love her story, but it’s really quite massive. So if we can go back in. So we’re zooming in back onto the Eastern Shore of Maryland here, and you have Bucktown General Store.

6:22 So what’s the connection here? When she was a young girl, she was sent to run an errand at the Bucktown Village store here. And there was a little bit of chaos there because there was another enslaved individual who was trying to get away and a two pound weight was thrown,

6:44 and it just happened to hit Harriet Tubman in the head. It would not, of course, knock her out cold, and for the rest of her life, she would have seizures because of this unfortunate incident. So this played a big role in her young life. And again, just to suffer from seizures

7:07 your whole life and to still do what she’s doing, move that far and come back and bring others that far is really extraordinary. And then this picture of the Jacob Jackson site. So we have to ask, who is Jacob Jackson? How does his story connect to her? Yeah, so Jacob Jackson was a free black man here, and he knew the Ross family, Harriet

7:29 Tubman’s family, so they were pretty close. Their farms were not that far away. He, of course, had a farm here. He timbered. Like a lot of folks in this area, they use the timber industry. And he’s going to help her in the 1854 Christmas escape of her brothers.

7:55 Okay, so Harriet Tubman’s in Philadelphia. She has somebody write a letter in code to Jacob Jackson, and then he informs her brothers that, hey, she’s coming back down to get you. So the actual escape took place in Caroline county, which is just north of us here.

8:18 He played an important role and a very well known man in the free black community here in Dorchester County. I think that story is really striking to me for a couple of reasons. So, first of all, you have freed African Americans alongside enslaved African Americans on the eastern.

8:39 So I think slavery is very different in different places. So this isn’t a huge, like, deep. This isn’t a large sugar cotton plantation in Louisiana. So you would have free blacks and enslaved the business literally working alongside each other. That’s very interesting. And so it makes sense if he has his

9:00 freedom, to help those that he knows to get their own. So I think it’s also, again, we don’t typically know Jacob Jackson’s name. I hadn’t met him before speaking with you, but he is an important piece of that story. They couldn’t have gotten away without his intervening. Exactly. An interesting, larger story of there’s usually a name we remember and latch on to, like Harriet Tubman,

9:22 but there’s all these other people who play a small role. Right. There’s a lot of players that help her out. I think in that same vein, you have Stewart’s canal, which is an important part of the story. So maybe you could explain what we’re looking at here and how it connects to Harriet Tubman. Right. So when these folks, whether it was the Ross or even

9:44 Harry Tubman, she had an ox team, and she would timber as well. Jacob Jackson, they’re going to use Stewart’s canal to get that timber out of the interior of Dorchester county because they’re going to send it up to the Baltimore shipyard. And the ship need timber. That’s what they’re building with the timber.

10:07 The canal is going to be built from about 1810 to about 1830 with enslaved labor, also free black labor. And it is hand dug, but it’s going to open up these marsh ways and these small local creeks into the bigger bays and allow us to get the timber out.

10:32 And this is again, so the landscape here and you get a real sense for just the vastness of just saying, oh, I came from the eastern shore to Philadelphia, but even to just cross this area right here seems like a really big undertaking. And it’s marshy, so I’m sure it’s buggy. Yeah, sure can be very flat.

10:58 When we were chatting before, you also mentioned that sailors coming on these canals or moving the timber would also be a great source of information. So if Harriet Tubman needs to know, like, what’s coming when or who’s moving where, people playing a role, lots of people playing roles in this freedom. Those folks that they refer to historically as blackjack African American sailors are kind

11:21 of flying the waterways up and down the chest. They’re talking to these folks, they’re sharing information back and forth about, don’t go over here, or you might try this route, or, hey, we’ll have this boat here at a certain time. So, yeah, there is a very

11:45 deep network of information going on to help get these folks north to freedom. Yeah. And again, I think that’s so powerful because it’s all sorts of people making or doing very small things. When they add up, it’s literally someone’s life that’s at stake.

12:06 And again, there’s so much of the story, but if you were just driving by, looking at this landscape, you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t know, right, stop. And you just start to think about it and ask these questions. This whole amazing story sort of unfolds before you. So we started by asking, what the landscape? What these images from the park can help

12:26 us learn about Harriet Tubman and learn about the underground railroad. And we learned a little bit about her life, her extraordinary bravery, and also the actions of the men and women in that area that were working either to secure their own freedom or to help others along the way. But we just hit the tip of the iceberg. There’s really so much more to say.

12:46 So we are going to toss it back out to you guys. What do you want to know? What do you want to learn more about? What questions do you have? We’d love to hear from you. You can leave us a question in the comments below, like and subscribe to our channel if you learned something because we definitely want you coming back for more. Tim, thank you so much for your time.

13:06 Make sure you guys, if you’re ever on your way to Ocean City or any of the beaches along the eastern Shore, be sure to stop at the Harriet Tubman underground railroad National Historic Park it’s a mouthful. In the Eastern Turmere, Maryland. So thank you guys. We’ll be back again soon with more images and more stories about US history.

13:27 Until then, take care.