Madison-Preparing for Freedom-Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway - Madison, MD - Underground Railroad Sites on Waymarking.com

Madison-Preparing for Freedom

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway

Harriet Tubman spent her formative years in and around Madison, once called Tobaccostick. As a young woman, she worked for Joseph Stewart in his home and fields, until she joined her father Ben Ross in Stewart’s lumber harvesting operation. Tubman was a strong and independent worker with a network of useful contacts among the lumbermen, dockworkers, and watermen who frequented Madison.
Free and enslaved black mariners were part of an extensive, secret network of communication, helping connect far-flung black communities and separated families to one another and sometimes helping freedom seekers escape. These associates were vital to Tubman’s success on the Underground Railroad.
With help from Tubman and her connections, Winnebar Johnson fled from here in June 1854, settling with other Eastern Shore escapees in the whaling community of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Later the same year, Jacob Jackson, who lived nearby, carried a coded message from Tubman to her brothers telling them to prepare to run away at Christmas.
(Inscription below the photo at the top)
Lawrence, Jacob (1917-2000) ARS, NY-The Life of Harriet Tubman, #7, 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 17 7/8” x 12” Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA. Image credit: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

Address: 4814 Madison Canning House Road Madison, MD USA 21648 Open to the public?: Public Name of organization who placed the marker: Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway Web site: Not listed Site Details: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   10/28/2021 Don.Morfe visited it