Tubman: “Raised like a neglected weed”⁶

Canal work and connections

By Laura Brannan Posted in Exhibits on August 16, 2021 0 Comments 4 min read

The Tobacco Stick Plantation community significantly impacted Tubman, as she reunited with her father Ben Ross here and married an enslaved man named John Tubman around 1844, which is when she took the name Harriet.⁷

At this point, Tubman hired herself and her team of oxen out to plow fields and haul timber for the Stewart Canal development, which connected her to Black watermen and mariners. They transported timber from the Eastern Shore to Baltimore, but more importantly, communicated information back and forth about other enslaved communities and, undoubtedly, stories about runaways. Here is where Tubman made points of contact that expanded her social network, which helped her cultivate friendships that would be useful when she traversed the Underground Railroad, a network of people who helped enslaved people travel northward, in secret, to emancipation.

Tubman’s work on the canal and connections with the Black watermen and mariners demonstrate how enslaved work provided Tubman with not just physical skills and knowledge about the physical environment, but also knowledge about cultural, social, and political events and ideas.

For example, Tubman organized for enslaved people to leave on Saturday nights because the newspapers were not printed on Sundays so a runaway ad could not be taken out until Monday providing a further cover for runaways. She also started a few rescue missions by meeting in cemeteries, as those were the most deserted places in the evening.⁸

Forest development in the antebellum era was typically an exclusively male world, so Tubman had to navigate discreetly gathering information away from the eyes of the overseer and also the fact that she was one of the only women present.⁹ Being one of the few women working for the canal company must have shown Tubman how the natural and built environment was gendered, and that her identity as an African American enslaved woman caused others to view her differently than an African American man or white woman.

Of course, like all enslaved people searching for freedom, she also faced barriers from the environment such as icy and harsh winters, lack of foot protection, thorny thickets of grass, etc.¹⁰

Harriet Tubman faced a huge number of pressures, obstacles, and traumatic experiences from the inhumane ways of slavery and the physical environment. But she drew upon the skills she built up during slavery, which included the physical landscape and natural environment, in order to help others escape from slavery.

She later inspired John Brown and eventually helped him plan Harper’s Ferry in 1859, served as a spy and nurse for the Union side during the Civil War, and led a raid across the Combahee River that freed hundreds of enslaved people.

Tubman achieved a number of extraordinary things by using, adapting, manipulating, and traversing her natural surroundings. She was an expert rescuer in part because she was an expert naturalist.