Who Is (Was) Araminta Ross?

I grew up knowing this woman by another name.  I had no idea that she was born with this name - Araminta Ross.  I knew she was born in Dorchester County, Maryland.  I knew she was born a slave.  I knew she escaped from slavery; was a famous "runaway."  I knew she became one of the most wanted people in the United States before, and during, the Civil War.  But I was taught her name was Harriet Tubman.  Known as "Minty" to her twelve brothers and sisters, and her parents, she was a small child and a small adult, never quite reaching five feet in height.  Her skin was described several times as being the color of a chestnut.  Both of her parents were slaves, and it was known that her mother's mother was brought to Maryland from Africa.  Her maternal grandmother was given the name Modesty.   Her mother, Harriet; and her father was Ben Ross.  Her father was in charge of the timber and forestry on the plantation.  Her mother was a house-servant, and was away from the children all day long.  Minty helped raise her two younger brothers until she was six - and was hired out to work as a nursemaid for a newborn.  If the baby woke up and cried, Minty received a whipping.  She was scarred for life by the time she was seven years old, when she was returned to her owner, with the person who hired her stating she was "no good."
   She spent the next several years both working at her owner's plantation along the Choptank River, and being hired out as a helping hand to other local slave owners.  She began to take an interest in religion, and learned all the gospel songs she heard, plus memorized a great deal of the Bible.  In her mid-teens, she had made a trip to the local village to pick up something for the house.  A young male slave under the orders of an unknown over-seer tried to escape from the village while Minty was standing nearby.  The over-seer threw a two-pound iron weight at the escaping man.  It hit Minty in the head, causing her immediate collapse.  She was identified by other people, and was carried home, unconscious, and laid out upon a loom bench.  She received no care or aid.  When she awakened three days later, she was sent to the fields to hoe weeds.  For the rest of her life, the woman had epileptic seizures, vivid dreams and visions, and fell into a catatonic state from which she could not be awakened - no matter what was tried, including torture.  Her worth as a slave was greatly diminished.
   Around this time, she joined the church and was baptized as Harriet, not Araminta.  Soon, she married a free black man, John Tubman.  However, under current slavery laws, if she had any children, they, too, would be slaves.  Harriet had heard about freedom; she had heard of abolitionists; and her favorite part of the Bible was Exodus, when the Hebrew slaves left Egypt.  She decided that she had a free mind, and that she would be free, or she would die.  The first time she ran away, she took her two younger brothers with her.  After three weeks on the run, the brothers turned themselves in, and Harriet did the same.
   But, by then, she knew of the Underground Railway, run by Quakers (or the Society of Friends) and abolitionists.  She soon ran away again, and found herself a free woman of color in Philadelphia.  Soon after this, however, the Runaway Slave Laws were passed by Congress, and any escaped slave could be returned to their "rightful owner" for a finder's fee.   Harriet Tubman was one of the greatest "conductors" on the Underground Railway.  She made more than 19 trips back into slave states to release her family members and any others who would risk their lives to be free.  There are many books, articles and movies made about the tiny lady that Frederick Douglass called "Moses."
   Now I think I'm a pretty well educated white woman.  But I was raised in the South - schooled in Florida.  I had no idea that Harriet Tubman fought with the Union Army during the Civil War.  I had no idea that she led military troops into battle and freed over 750 slaves in South Carolina.  I had no idea hat the United States had given her a military pension for her service - as a nurse, spy, and leader of troops.  -  I have to admit, to my own chagrin, that I never wondered what happened to Harriet Tubman after the Emancipation Proclamation.  -   Back in 1859, she bought a house in Auburn, New York, and she took her parents there, and nursed them until their deaths.  She, more or less, kept an "open house" for any person of color that was in need.  She was frequently out of money, too.  She gave a part of her land to the AME Zion Church, of which she was a member, with the instructions that  a home for "elderly colored folks" be set up, so they would have a final place to live when their money ran out.  She was very unhappy when the church started charging people $100 to be admitted into care.
   Amazingly, in the 1890s, Harriet approached a brain surgeon at Boston General Hospital and told him she wasn't able to sleep due to the pain and constant "buzzing" in her head.  The surgeon agreed to do surgery, in hopes of relieving her pain, stress and seizures.  Harriet refused an anesthetic (she reportedly "bit a bullet" as she had seen men do during field amputations during the Civil War) - and was awake throughout the procedure.  The doctor shaved her head, and cut the top of her skull off with a surgical saw.  He "lifted the skull" and then replaced it.  Harriet reported that a great deal of pressure was eased, and she felt much better.
   Harriet became a friend of Susan B. Anthony, Emily Howland and other women's rights leaders.  She never ceased to press for a "full freedom" for all people - men or women - white or people of color.
    In 1911 age became so frail she could no longer care for herself, and she entered the retirement home of the AME Zion Church that was on property she had donated.  She died in 1913.  (It is estimated that she was born in 1820 or 1822; no records were kept.)
   She was one hell of a lady!   And I am very proud that the United States Treasury Department has decided to begin using her facial likeness on the front of the US $20 bill - and will relegate slave-owning Andrew Jackson to the backside…..