1808

 

Coin found at site of Tubman's family's cabin.

THE FOLLOWING comes from an article in Smithsonian magazine, about slaves escaping into Spanish territory:

 

Rescuing some children – not others. 

In January 1808 a Black man recorded as “Rechar,” presumably Richard, arrived at Trinidad de Salcedo, a small Spanish outpost near present-day Madisonville, Texas. He told his story to the authorities. His family had been split up by enslavers and scattered all over southern Louisiana. Having made his own escape from a plantation in Opelousas, he managed to find and rescue his wife and three of their seven children. He tried, and failed, to rescue the other four, then led his reduced family across more than 100 miles of swampy wilderness and crossed the Sabine River into freedom. (Their fate in Spanish territory is unknown.)

 

Even though slavery existed in New Spain, American runaways were usually granted asylum by the Spanish authorities, because the American form of slavery was regarded as far more brutal and dehumanizing. In New Spain, for example, slaves were subjects of the Spanish crown, not property, and it was illegal to separate husbands and wives or to impose excessive punishments. Rechar declared that “the harshness of American laws” as well as keeping his family together were the reasons for his escape.

 

* 

THE PARENTS of Harriet Tubman, Ben Ross and Harriet Green, are married; but the location of their cabin, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, remains unknown for two hundred years. Harriet is known to have lived there between the ages of 17 and 22, or from 1839 to 1844. Historians were excited to find evidence narrowing down the site in 2021. That included ceramic shards and a coin from 1808. 

We do know that Ben Ross was granted ten acres of land, five years after his master, Anthony Thompson, died in 1836. 

Tubman’s father cut and sold timber to make money and was himself a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Harriet came to know some of the black mariners who hauled the timber to Baltimore. They taught her how to read the stars and where safe places might be found and dangerous spots avoided. 

The story in The New York Times indicates that Harriet would later make thirteen separate trips South and rescue at least 70 enslaved individuals.