Sarah H. Bradford

Of all the names associated with the Underground Railroad, perhaps none is better known than Harriet Tubman, the fearless "conductor" who led over three hundred runaways to freedom. Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, she was christened Araminta Ross, and worked both as a field hand and house servant. In her early teens she suffered a serious head injury when a two-pound weight that an overseer intended for another slave struck the slight Tubman instead. She recovered, but was prone her entire life to seizures that would produce brief comas. At around the age of fourteen, she married a free black man named John Tubman, but when she made her escape five years later, she was alone, on foot, guided by the North Star, and helped along her way to Pennsylvania by a benevolent...