Harriet Tubman, the prominent abolitionist and political activist, often found refuge at the home of a Montgomery County Quaker family while helping escaped slaves reach safety, writes Scott Mingus for the York Daily Record.
Tubman herself escaped slavery with her two brothers in Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1849. While the men turned back, she walked almost 90 miles to make it to Pennsylvania and freedom.
But while she enjoyed her newfound freedom, often calling it heavenly, she soon grew dissatisfied.
“I was a stranger in a strange land,” she would say.
Most of all, she was missing her family and was determined to help them escape the South and join her in Pennsylvania. So she took jobs in Philadelphia as a domestic and cook to save up money for trips back to Maryland.
On her long and dangerous journeys back, she often paused at the spacious home of James and Lucretia Mott, Quakers who lived along the Old York Road in Cheltenham Township.
Before the Civil War started, she made 13 trips altogether and managed to rescue around 70 people, many of whom were her kin.
Read more about Harriet Tubman at the York Daily Record by clicking here.
