name”, Araminta. Now she would be called Harriet. Yet she always insisted that the Lord addressed her by the name “Araminta.” In 1844, Harriet received permission from her master to marry John Tubman, a free black man. For the next five years Harriet lived in a state of semi-slavery: she remained legally a slave, but her master allowed her to live with her husband. Since Harriet was still a slave she knew there was a chance that she could be sold and her marriage split apart. Harriet dreamed of traveling north. There, she would be free and not have to worry about her marriage being split up by the slave trade. But John did not want her to go north. He said he was fine where he was and that there was no reason for moving north. He told her that if she ran off, he would tell her master. She did not believe him until she saw his face and then she knew he meant it. The death of her master in 1847, followed by the death of his young son and heir in 1849, made Tubman’s status uncertain. Amid rumors that the family's slaves would be sold to settle the estate, Tubman fled to the North and found freedom. But when there, in Philadelphia, she grew terribly lonely. She worked for the year and saved her money, determined to bring “her people” to freedom, as well. In 1850 Harriet helped her first slaves escape: her sister and her sisters two children. That same year Harriet was made an official “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. This meant that she knew all the routes to free territory and she had to take an oath of silence so the secret of the Underground Railroad would be kept secret. In 1851 she rescued her brother James and other friends. She also tried, on this trip, to get her husband John to come with her, but he had remarried since she left and did not want to leave. Tubman made eleven trips from Maryland to Canada from 1852-1857. During the ten years she worked as a c...
