Harriet Turban: The Most Famous Conductor Of The Trackless Train

3 Pages 863 Words

Harriet Tubman, the most active “Greatest Conductor” of “The Trackless Train” (Mallory, Maria), and perhaps one of the best known African-Americans during the Civil War. Many African Americans knew her as “Moses of her people” (Cave, Janet 71); “Moses being the biblical figure who led Jews from Egypt” (Scruggs, Otey) where as Tubman helped approximately 300 enslaved African (“Tubman, Harriet.” The New) travel north, reaching and crossing over the Mason-Dixon Line. This is the line that divided the free states from the slave states (Mallory, Maria).
Born into slavery in 1820, Harriet Tubman, daughter of Benjamin Ross and Harriet Green, was one of eleven children (Marszalek, John 5: 2342). She was a third generation slave, “her ancestors of Ashanti decent, had been brought to the United States from what is now Central Ghana in Africa in 1725” (Mallory, Maria).
Harriet was born on a plantation in a rural community named Bucktown, which was located on the eastern coast of Maryland in Dorchester County, by Cambridge. Her master, Edward Brodas, gave her the name Araminta Ross; however disliking the name Araminta, she quickly took up her mother’s name and became known as Harriet Ross (Marszalek, John 5: 2342).
Harriet never acquired any schooling and started working as a maid as well as a baby-sitter at the young age of five. Once when Harriet was baby-sitting, she dosed off and the crying baby had awakened the mistress. The woman pummeled the young Harriett severely about the face and neck for not tending to the baby’s needs, and fired young Harriett (Marszalek, John 5: 2342). When Harriet was six she was hired out to a new master that taught her how to trap Muskrats and weave (Marszalek, John 5: 2342). On one occasion he caught her stealing a sugar cube from his table and she had to run away to avoid punishment. When she returned tired and hungry after several days’ absents she was given no mercy and beaten...