Harriet Tubman: Maryland to St. Catharines

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Neither the exact year nor the place of her birth is known; recent biographies accept March 1822. Family stories shaped her: when a trader from Georgia came for her youngest brother, her mother hid the boy for a month with help from the community. The pin marks the national park's visitor centre near Cambridge, in the county where her story starts.

Location precision: Neither the sources nor Tubman herself fix her birthplace; the pin marks the park's sites in Dorchester County, not a birth house.

Visitor guidance: Park sites near Cambridge, Maryland; the visitor centre is the place to start.

On 17 September 1849 Tubman and her brothers Ben and Henry fled. She had been hired out to a plantation at Poplar Neck in Caroline County. The brothers lost heart and turned back, forcing her to return with them. In October or November she tried again, alone. The Preston area, with its substantial Quaker community, was probably her first stop. Crossing into Pennsylvania, she recalled, "I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person."

Location precision: Her route is unknown, and Poplar Neck is an area, not a single spot; the pin marks the nearby village of Preston.

From 1851 to 1862 Tubman went back to Maryland about 13 times and brought out some 70 people. In East New Market she stayed with Sam Green, a free Black minister. Bradford's 1869 biography records that Green took in a party she led, and that he was later sent to prison for ten years for owning a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Bradford adds that rewards were posted everywhere, twelve thousand dollars for the woman who "enticed them away".

Location precision: Sources place the stay in the town of East New Market but not at a particular house; the pin marks the town.

Wilmington was the last city before Philadelphia in a slave state, and Quaker Thomas Garrett kept a station at 227 Shipley Street. He gave Tubman money and shoes. Bradford tells how the long Wilmington Bridge was guarded by police when a party arrived. Garrett sent two wagons of bricklayers across, singing and shouting; after dark they came back with fugitives hidden under the seats. Tubman told Bradford two thousand people passed through his hands.

Location precision: The sources give Garrett's address and the bridge but the pin comes from a single map search of the address, so treat it as the area of his station.

Philadelphia was where escapes landed. William Still, a Black abolitionist based here, supported her work, and she passed through his office with fellow travellers several times in the 1850s. She worked in hotels and clubhouses, and at Cape May, and whenever she had saved enough to pay expenses she went back into Maryland to gather the next party.

Location precision: Still's office and the places she worked are not pinned in the sources; the pin marks the city centre.

The last border was the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, the world's first working railway suspension bridge. In Bradford's account one of Tubman's passengers, Joe, grew silent as the train neared it, while the rest sang. Then she called, "Joe, come and look at de Falls!" His feet were the first to touch British soil after the conductor's. The bridge spanned the river from 1855 to 1897; the pin marks its crossing.

Location precision: The original bridge was replaced in 1897; the pin marks the crossing, not the old structure.

In St. Catharines, Tubman worshipped at Salem Chapel, a centre of abolitionist and civil rights activity. She lived in the area from 1851 to 1858 and was the church's most famous member. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act had made even border travel risky for ex-slave preachers, and this was the community that welcomed those who crossed. The chapel became a National Historic Site in 1999, with markers and a bust of Tubman outside.

Visitor guidance: Look for the bust of Tubman and the historical markers outside the chapel.

In 1859 Frances Seward, wife of Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre farm in Fleming, next to Auburn, New York. She moved her parents there from Canada, and the farm became a haven for family and friends. Her last rescue ended at the Auburn home of David and Martha Wright on 28 December 1860. In 1911 she was admitted to the Home for the Aged, and stayed until her death in 1913.

Visitor guidance: Part of Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn and Fleming.