The March 2017 meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on Thursday, March 9, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
The following is the Treasurer's report for the month of February:
Do you have a family member that
is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership
in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful
gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected],
about a gift membership.
On March 9, 2017, a program titled
Harriet Tubman was presented by The History Chix,
a group of three ladies: Nancy Alexander, Cathy Bagby, and Mary
Westerhold, who have a love of history and give lectures when
asked.
Slavery began in this country in the 1600s. Slaves began running
away from their masters on day one. More slaves were lost by the
South during the American Revolution than during the Civil War.
The British promised the slaves their freedom. When the slaves
realized they picked the wrong side to back, some of them went
to Canada, some made it to England, and some went back to their
masters.
The term "Underground Railroad" began in the early 1830s.
It was not a railroad; it was any way that people had to get the
runaway slaves to safety hidden compartments under the wagon seat,
a special room in a house behind the fireplace, any way they could
hide the runaway slaves was considered part of the Underground
Railroad.
Harriet Tubman's parents were Ben Ross and Harriet "Rit"
Greene. Harriet was born in late February or early March of 1822,
the fifth of nine children. Her given name was Ariminta Ross;
she was known as "Minty." She was five feet tall and
never learned to read or write it was against the law to educate
blacks. The plantation where she was born was in Dorchester County
in Eastern Maryland. When Harriet was one or two years old, her
mother's master decided to move his family, and, of course, the
slaves went with him. The way her master made money with his slaves
was to hire them out to different masters.
When Harriet was five or six years old, she was hired out for
the first time. She went to the Cook family, who neglected her
and abused her greatly. She was supposed to take care of the muskrat
traps that were set in the water; this was a tough job for an
adult, let alone a child. She caught the measles, but still was
made to go out and work the muskrat traps. She hated the Cooks
so much she kept running away.
She was then hired out to Miss Susan, whose idea of how make the
slaves work was to whip them she slept with a whip under her pillow.
Harriet was supposed to take care of the baby. If the baby cried
during the night, Harriet was whipped. One time, her master hit
her so hard it broke some ribs and lacerated internal organs.
She was sent back to her mother to heal. These injuries pained
her all of her life.
When she was a teenager, she went to town to buy supplies. The
shawl she wore over her head may have saved her life. An overseer
caught up with a runaway slave at the store and told Harriet to
help hold him down. The slave got away and started to run; the
overseer grabbed a two-pound weight and threw it. The weight hit
Harriet in the head and fractured her skull, pushing part of her
skull against her brain. They carried her back to the house, where
she lay on a wooden bench unconscious for two days without a doctor's
care. As soon as she got back on her feet, she was sent back out
to work in the fields. She was working with blood and sweat running
down her face so bad she could hardly see.
All of her life, she suffered side effects from this head injury.
She had seizures where she would fall asleep in mid-sentence,
only to wake up a few minutes later and complete the sentence.
She had prophetic dreams, visions, hallucinations, and out-of-body
experiences. She said she was flying over the fields, rivers,
and mountains, looking down on them as if she were a bird. She
saw colored auras and heard disembodied voices. She would go into
dream-like trances while appearing to be awake. Today, doctors
think she suffered from TLE Trans Lobe Epilepsy. She believed
all her life that an all-powerful being was protecting her and
giving her instructions.
Eventually, she recovered enough to be hired out again. She worked
in the house and the fields and could do as much work as a man.
At age 22, she married John Tubman, a free black, and changed
her name to Harriet, probably because of her mother. They never
had children. In the 1840s, Harriet paid her master a fee that
entitled her to choose to whom she wanted to be hired out. She
saved her money and bought a pair of steers. She hired herself
out to plow fields and haul timber as a member of a timber gang.
While working with the timber gang in eastern Maryland, she learned
the secrets of the Underground Railroad. She met a lot of people
who would later help her.
In March of 1849, her master died and his widow started selling
property and slaves to pay his debts. A few months after her master's
death, Harriet and two of her brothers took off. The brothers
got tired and did not want to run anymore. They went back and
Harriet went with them. A month later, she took off on her own.
She travelled by night, following the North Star, and had help
from both blacks and whites. She made her way to Philadelphia,
which, at the time, was full of abolitionists, runaway slaves,
and free blacks. She said, "When I found I had crossed that
line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There
was such a glory over everything, I felt like I was in Heaven."
However, there was no one to welcome her. Her home, after all,
was down in Maryland. Her family and friends were there, but she
was free and they should be. This is when she started planning
to go back and get them.
She worked as a maid and a cook in hotels and private homes and
hoarded her money. In the next eight years, she returned to eastern
Maryland approximately thirteen times to bring out family and
friends; she personally brought out about seventy slaves. She
also gave instructions about how to get out to about fifty more
slaves. In 1859, Sarah Bradford wrote a biography of Harriet Tubman
and really exaggerated these numbers her book said Harriet freed
300 slaves.
In December of 1850, she learned that her niece and her niece's
two children were going to be sold at an auction in Baltimore.
She and a friend went to the auction. Harriet's friend made the
high bid of $590 for the woman and her two children. After the
auction was over, the auctioneer went to get his money from the
highest bidder, but no one was there. Immediately after the gavel
came down on the sale, Harriet, her friend, her niece and the
niece's two children had walked to the nearest safe house and
disappeared.
In 1851, Harriet went back to see her husband she had not seen
him for two years. When she got there, she found he had remarried.
She was devastated but decided, "If my husband can do without
me, I can do without him." Instead of bringing back her husband,
she brought back a group of slaves to Philadelphia. Also in 1851,
she went back and freed eleven slaves and took them to the home
of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was born a slave, ran
away to freedom, and became one of the leading abolitionists.
He became very good friends with Abraham Lincoln and was probably
the first black to walk in the front door of the White House.
After they got away from Douglass' property, they made their way
to St. Catherines in Canada where Harriet took her freed slaves.
Harriet always liked to leave on a Saturday evening and liked
to travel in the winter because the nights were longer. She never
went to a plantation; she would have a rendezvous point several
miles from the plantation and a specified meeting time. Anyone
not there on time would probably be left behind. They travelled
by night. Harriet always carried a gun, not for protection, but
for encouragement. One time, on the way north, one slave said
he was too tired to go on. Harriet knew the slave catchers were
following; she pulled out her gun, pointed it at the complaining
slave and said, "Go on, or you die!" He went on.
Years later, Harriet said, "I was a conductor on the Underground
Railroad for eight years. I never ran my train off the tracks
and I never lost one."
The events of the morning of June 2, 1863, would forever change
the lives of the masters and their slaves living along the Combahee
River in South Carolina. Harriet Tubman and her troops of the
Second South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, along with the support
of the 3rd Rhode Island Infantry, made their way up the river
to free the enslaved Gulla people and to destroy the stately plantations
where they toiled. Colonel James Montgomery diligently trained
these former slaves to become self-confident, fearless Federal
troops. Tubman and her network of spies and scouts gathered the
vital information of the position of the Southern troops, the
early morning regimen of the slaves, the complicated nature of
the Combahee, a tidal River, whose bed was always shifting and
changing, in addition to information about the bombs that had
been buried in the river to ensnare any Northern troops.
Tubman had worked months gathering information and then passing
it on to General Hunter and Colonel Montgomery. She stood at the
front of the lead vessel of the three gunboat steamers as they
slowly and quietly moved along. When they reached their intended
destination, the whistle was blown to alert the slaves to drop
everything and to run for their lives for the river. Pandemonium
broke out. Women came running with hot pots of rice on their heads
and children hanging onto their necks and waists. Some were carrying
what little they owned in blankets, along with pigs and chickens.
The people were screaming; the pigs were squealing; the chickens
were squawking; the owners were shouting at their fleeing slaves
telling them that the Yankees were going to sell them to Cuba
to work in the tobacco fields.
Once they reached the riverbank, the people were so afraid that
they were going to be left behind. Tubman came out and sang a
familiar spiritual to calm them until they could safely get onboard.
Over 700 people were saved that day, and no soldiers were hurt.
Tubman worked the next twenty years to receive a pension to compensate
her for all her hard work. She remarried and adopted a child.
She took care of her parents and family members. Tubman opened
her home to homeless, indigent people, both black and white. She
also went on to give talks in support of women's suffrage.
In her final years, Tubman became a patient in her own home for
elderly, indigent people. She died at the age of 90-91 on March
10, 1913.
This presentation was well received and provoked many questions.