History

2022

March 2022

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Visit https://www.census.gov/history every month for the latest Census History Home Page!

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U.S. Census Bureau History: Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman was born approximately 200 years ago this month. Born a
slave, she escaped north in 1849. Soon after, she began helping others
escape slavery using a secret network known as the Underground Railroad.

During the Civil War, Tubman cooked, nursed, and spied for the Union
Army. In 1863, she even led a Black infantry unit into battle wearing
a favorite green dress! After the war, she cared for her aging parents
and fought for women's suffrage.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Escaped slave, abolitionist, Union Army cook, nurse, spy, and Underground Railroad conductor, Harriet Tubman was born approximately 200 years ago this month, between 1820 and 1822. Following her escape from slavery in 1849 and the end of the American Civil War in 1865, Tubman made more than a dozen trips into southern slave-owning states to lead slaves to freedom by a system of escape routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Tubman's exploits earned her the nickname "Moses" (after the biblical Moses who led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt) and worldwide recognition as one of the most prominent African American women in the United States. More than 100 years since her death, Tubman continues to inspire all people struggling for equality and civil rights.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Dorchester County, MD, in March ca. 1822. Named "Araminta Ross" at birth, she was hired out as a nursemaid when she was a young child. She married a free Black man named John Tubman about 1844, changing her name to Harriet Tubman soon after. Although not uncommon for slaves to marry free Blacks at that time in Maryland, her relationship was jeopardized when her owner—Anthony Thompson—died in 1849. Facing the possibility of being sold as part of Thompson's estate, Tubman decided to escape from slavery. Her first attempt in September 1849 failed, but a second attempt later that year was successful thanks to the assistance of the network of escape routes, safe houses, and guides known as the Underground Railroad. Traveling from home to home (called "stations") at night to avoid detection, she later recalled that upon reaching the free state of Pennsylvania, "I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Although she was free, she did not forget the enslaved family and friends she left behind. Over the next 10 years, Tubman made more than a dozen trips back to Maryland to rescue hundreds of slaves, including more than 70 family and friends. During the American Civil War, she cooked, scouted, and spied for the Union Army. She nursed African American soldiers in South Carolina in 1862. In June 1863, she helped lead the 2nd South Carolina Infantry—composed largely of emancipated slaves—in a raid against plantations along South Carolina's Combahee River.

Following the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Tubman returned to her home in Auburn, NY, where she cared for her aging parents. Despite frequent financial troubles, Tubman freely gave her time, money, and property to assist friends and the causes she loved, including the Women's Suffrage, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church, and establishment of the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes. During her lifetime of supporting abolition and civil and women's rights, Tubman developed friendships with some of the nation's leading politicians, writers, and activists, including Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Booker T. Washington.

Frail and penniless, Tubman moved into the Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes bearing her name in 1911, and died there from pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Condolences poured into the Auburn, NY, post office and dignitaries from around the world honored Tubman's life and legacy. New York Governor and U.S. Senator William Seward wrote of Tubman , "I have known her long, and a nobler, higher spirit, or a truer, seldom dwells in the human form." AME Bishop J.C. Roberts of Binghamton, NY, eulogized that, "the world was to be thankful that God has spared Tubman to the world for as long as he had."

More than a century after her death, Harriet Tubman remains one of the most recognized and beloved people in American history. An inspiration to the Woman's Suffrage and Civil Rights Movements of the 20th century, Tubman continues to inspire activists around the world. Her memory is kept alive today by museums , books, a scenic motor byway, theatrical productions, a national historical park, movies, and even a proposed redesign of the U.S. $20 bill that would feature Tubman's likeness.

You can learn more about the life and times of Harriet Tubman using data and records collected by the U.S. Census Bureau's censuses and surveys. For example:

• Harriet Tubman was born in Dorchester County, MD, in March ca. 1822. Eight years later, the 1830 Census found that Dorchester County, MD, had a population of 18,686, including 13,685 free and 5,001 enslaved inhabitants. One year after Tubman's escape from slavery, the 1850 Census recorded 10,747 White, 3,848 "Free Colored", and 4,282 slave inhabitants. The county's total population following the Civil War was 19,458 in 1870. Today, Dorchester County is home to 32,531 people.
• The 1860 Census—the last to include slaves—found that the total United States population was 31,443,321, including 3,953,760 slaves. States with the greatest number of slaves included Virginia (490,865) and Georgia (462,198). Harriet Tubman's home state of Maryland reported 87,189 enslaved inhabitants in 1860. Ten years later, the 1870 Census—the first census without a slave count—found that the total U.S. population was 38,558,371. In 2020, the United States was home to 331,449,281 people, including 41,104,200 reporting they are Black or African American alone. Another 5.8 million people identified as Black or African American in combination with another race group, such as White or American Indian and Alaska Native. Combined, the Black or African American alone or in combination population accounted for 14.2 percent of the nation's total population in the 2020 Census.
• During the American Civil War, Harriet Tubman worked for the Union Army as a cook, nurse, scout, and spy. On June 1–2, 1863, she led 150 African American soldiers of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry in the Raid on Combahee Ferry in Beaufort and Colleton Counties, SC. The raid freed more than 700 slaves and proved that Harriet Tubman and the African American soldiers joining the Union Army were a formidable fighting force. After the raid, Tubman reported that her only regret was that the green dress she wore during the raid was torn by the overjoyed slaves who gathered to thank her for their freedom.
• Like Harriet Tubman, prominent abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. Thanks to the assistance of the Underground Railroad, Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 by disguising himself as a sailor and taking a train from Baltimore, MD, to Philadelphia, PA. After moving to New Bedford, MA, members of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society urged Douglass to pursue a lecturing and writing career. Fame followed publication of the first of three autobiographies in 1845, and the founding of his anti-slavery newspaper, North Star, in 1847. During the Civil War, Douglass was a proponent of emancipation and African American enlistment in the Union Army. He served as U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Minister to Haiti after the war, and died following a meeting of the National Council of Women on February 20, 1895. Today, Douglass' Washington, DC, home is a national historic site.
• Harriet Tubman's husband John was shot and killed during an argument in 1867. She married her second husband Nelson Davis—a former slave from North Carolina and Union Army veteran—on March 18, 1869. The couple adopted a daughter they named Gertie Davis in 1874, and voluntarily noted she was their "Ad[opted] Daughter" in 1880. The 2000 Census was the first to specifically ask if children in the household were biological, stepchildren, or adopted as a category of relationship to the head of household. Following the 2010 Census, the publication Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2010 reported that 2,072,312 people of all ages reported being adopted.
• Harriet Tubman purchased a farm in Auburn, NY, in 1859, and retired there after the Civil War. She was active in the Women's Suffrage Movement until her death at the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes—built with money she raised and on land she donated near her home—on March 10, 1913. Between 1860 and 1910, the population of Auburn, NY, grew from 10,986 to 34,668. In addition to being home to 26,866 people, Auburn, NY, is also home to the Harriet Tubman National Historic Park.
• When Harriet Tubman died on March 13, 1913, family believed she was 91 or 92 years of age. Three years earlier, the 1910 Census found that of the 91,972,268 people living in the United States, only 33,473 were aged 90 to 94 years, and 7,391 were aged 95 to 99. More recently, American Community Survey data showed that of the nation's 328,239,523 inhabitants in 2019, 6,358,229 were aged 85 years and over.
• Although Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States as of January 1, 1863, nationwide implementation of that executive order depended on the Union Army successfully winning the American Civil War. You can learn more about the Civil War using census data and records at our webpages dedicated to the battles of Fort Sumter, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Appomattox Court House.

Artist James Michael Newell sketched Underground Railroad in 1940 as he prepared to paint a mural at the Dolgeville, NY, Post Office. Newell's finished mural depicts Dolgeville's
history as an important stop for fugitive slaves escaping the South.

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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This Month in Census History

On March 6, 1902, an act of Congress established the permanent Census Bureau within the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The agency moved to the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and to its current home within the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1913.

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Mapping Slavery

Seven years after Superintendent of the Census J.D.B. DeBow published the Census Office's first map as part of the 1854 Statistical View of the United States, the agency produced its first population density map to raise money for sick and wounded Union soldiers from the American Civil War.

Created by Census Office geographers and cartographers in 1861, the map depicts the distribution of slaves in the southern United States using 1860 Census data. The map proved to be such an important document that artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter included it in his famous 1864 painting, "First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln."

As a result of the slave distribution map's popularity, the Census Office began regularly publishing population density maps following the 1870 Census. Superintendent of the Census Francis Amasa Walker featured many of these and other maps in the Statistical Atlases of the United States that the Census Office began publishing in 1874.

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau produces hundreds of maps and data visualizations every year using the statistical information collected from the demographic and economic censuses and surveys it administers. Data users can also create their own custom maps using online tools and the publicly available data at the Census Bureau's website.

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The Underground Railroad helped more than 100,000 slaves escape to freedom using a network of "conductors" and "station masters" who led slaves out of the South; provided food, clothing, and shelter; paid for transportation to northern cities; and helped the former slaves begin new lives.

In addition to Harriet Tubman, hundreds of abolitionists aided fleeing slaves, including Philadelphia, PA, undertaker Henrietta Duterte, who hid escaping slaves in coffins and used funeral processions to help fleeing slaves escape the city.

Wilmington, DE, "station master" Thomas Garrett, helped more than 2,500 slaves. He was financially ruined by fines imposed after he was found guilty of violating the Fugitive Slave Act for assisting Samuel and Emeline Hawkins and their children escape slavery in 1845.

Philadelphia, PA, businessman William Still helped hundreds of slaves escape and resettle in the northern states and Canada. In 1872, Still published The Underground Railroad Records based on the detailed notes he kept about each person who passed through his "station."

Other Underground Railroad conductors and station masters included: Levi Coffin, who led more than 3,000 slaves to freedom through Ohio and Indiana; formerly enslaved business leaders John P. Parker, and Lewis and Harriet Hayden, and Isaac Hopper, who helped 3,300 find freedom from his stations in Philadelphia, PA, and New York City, NY.

Photo courtesy of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Visit https://www.census.gov/history every month for the latest Census History Home Page!