Browse Items (12 total)

  • Collection: Archival Documents related to Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman's Likely Birth Record

A document showing that Anthony Thompson paid $2 to a midwife for Rit, Tubman's mother, on March 15, 1822. This date coincides with Tubman’s likely birth date.

Go Down Moses, Let My People Go!

1917 arrangement of the spiritual, "Go down, Moses, Let my people go!"

[Verse 1]
When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go

[Chorus]
Go down, Moses
'Way down in Egypt's…

Portrait of John Brown

Photograph showing three-quarter length portrait of John Brown with beard, facing slight to the right.

H.R. 4982, A bill granting a pension to Harriet Tubman Davis, late a nurse in the United States Army

Congress received many letters of support for Tubman's pension claim. In 1899, Congress passed, and President William McKinley signed, H.R. 4982. The bill authorized an increase of Tubman's pension to twenty dollars per month for her service as a…

General Affidavit of Harriet Tubman Davis regarding payment for services rendered during the Civil War

Although Tubman received a pension as the widow of Union Army veteran Nelson Davis who had served as a private in the Eight United States Colored Infantry, she did not receive a pension for her own work for the Union Army. Tubman petitioned Congress…

Title Page from Sarah H. Bradford’s Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman

In 1869 Sarah H. Bradford, a noted a children’s book author, published Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. The bookused to raise money when Tubman was denied a pension from the government for her services to the Union Army during the Civil War.

William Still’s “Journal C,” with notes on Harriet Tubman’s arrival in Philadelphia with her three brothers and others on December 29, 1854

William Still an African American abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia, kept an extensive log, ”Journal C of Station No. 2 of the Underground Railroad,” which provides important details about how Philadelphia's…

Runaway Reward Advertisement for Harriet Tubman (Minty and her two brothers), Cambridge Democrat newspaper, October 3, 1849

In 1849, shortly after Tubman and her brothers fled North, Eliza Brodess posted a $100 reward for their return in the Cambridge Democrat newspaper. Scared of capture and unsure of where to go, Tubman turned back shortly after this ad was posted.…

Anthony Thompson's List of Slaves

Anthony Thompson's List of slaves. Ben Ross, Tubman’s father is first name on the list.

2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment raid on rice plantation, Combahee, South Carolina, and escaped slave named Gordon

Top illustration shows slaves escaping to a Union ship as buildings burn in the distance. Three bottom illustrations show an escaped slave in tattered clothing upon his crossing of Union lines, welts from being whipped upon his back, and in uniform…