Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting - March 9, 2017
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.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
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 petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
March Meeting
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.