The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park is at 4068 Golden Hill Road Church Creek, Maryland 21622 is a relatively new site jointly run by the State of Maryland Park Service and the National Park Service. It is open from Wednesday till Sunday each week. The site is free to visit. You can call the park at 410-221-2290. The park and the museum are free.
I went down to “look for Harriet Tubman” a quarter of a century ago and found little in this part of Maryland other than a couple of historical signs and the village store where Tubman suffered her injury when a slave master hit her in the head with a weight. Now there are three modern buildings that house the visitors center. Unlike many other National Park visitors centers, this is more than just a place to check-in with the Rangers and use the restrooms. The new center provides an excellent museum devoted to the life and work of Harriet Tubman.
President Obama created the park on March 25, 2013. The following year President Obama created the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York where she lived for much of her life after escaping slavery..
If you visit, try to set a aside two hours for the visitors center and surrounding garden. If you have extra time, you may want to travel to where Tubman was enslaved and to the general store where she suffered permanent injuries, as well as to the Underground Railroad sites in nearby Cambridge, Maryland.
The entrance is well-done for this size of park. There is plenty of nearby parking next to the visitors center. There is also additional parking just a few minutes walk away.
Below is one of the three “barns” in which the the visitors center is housed.
The entrance is attractive and modern. When you go inside, on the right is a gift shop and restrooms.
There are several outdoor panels explaining Tubman’s life, the Underground railroad, and the native foliage.
While the park is devoted to Tubman, there are a number of panels devoted to lesser known people on the Underground Railroad.
At the entrance to the museum is a quote from Tubman. Now of course, Harriet Tubman was illiterate, so the quotes from her were transcribed. Throughout the museum, Tubman’s words tell us about her life, slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. We get to hear her description of a life that was often not known to many white people at the time in her own words.
Inside the entrance there is a greeting area where you can talk to the State of Maryland rangers. On the right is a gift shop with many books and souvenir as well as learning tools for children, To the left is a small movie theater where the movie does a good job of retelling Tubman’s life in Maryland.
There is also a panel showing you a slave sale at the Courthouse in Cambridge, Maryland, just a ten minute drive north. The exhibit shows a family being separated for commercial prospects.
The exhibits give the visitor insights into the terrible life of a slave.
The exhibits also give instruction in how the slaves ate, the kinds of work they did, and the social structure of their communities.
The quotes on the exhibits also tell you of the psychological torture that slaves went through as they realized that their own desires and needs were often put aside by their owners.
The museum uses life-sized statues of Tubman showing her life and small bronze models of where she lived and the kinds of work that she was put to.
Below is one of the life-size bronze statues in the museum. This one shows Tubman as a baby.
The next exhibit shows the family life for Harriet, her parents, and her sibling. The exhibit tells us that though her father was free, all the nine children were enslaved because her mother was enslaved. This meant that the family could be broken up at any time for the profit of her white owners.
The next exhibit shows Tubman and other enslaved African Americans at work in the swamps harvesting wood.
Below is a life-sized statue of Tubman hauling wood through the swamps in Maryland.
Tubman was not just concerned with having no freedom, she was also worried that she might be sold off from her family or that a beloved sister or brother might be sold off.
The detail in the statue was very impressive.
Tubman talks about the psychological crippling of the slave.
This panel tells about the physical abuse Tubman suffered and the prohibition on the law’s intervention to protect her.
The next exhibit shows Tubman hunting for muskrats in the swamp. Slave owners often did not provide enough food for their slaves and so self-help remedies has to be found to keep Black families nourished.
A small bronze diorama shows Tubman scrounging for food.
I was impressed by how the diorama place you in the situation.
From the age of six onward, Tubman had to live apart from her family to bring profits to her owners.
There is a second small theater where other people’s reflection on Tubman are offered, like Thomas Garrett characterization of Tubman’s religious life.
Next is Tubman’s escape from slavery when she was nineteen. Below is an ad for her capture.
Here is the full panel on her escape.
She is shown escaping through the back country and then crossing a gate into freedom.
As Tubman says, when she crossed that line, she felt she was in heaven.
After Tubman made it to freedom in Philadelphia, she began to plot a trip back into Maryland to rescue her family.
Her dedication to emancipating African Americans expanded dramatically during the Civil War when she went down to the Sea Islands of the Carolina Coast and participated is a large raid that freed 750 enslaved African Americans, Below, she is shown on a boat helping Black refugees to board. Many became United States Colored Troops.
There is also a display looking at African Americans from Dorchester who drew inspiration from Tubman’s account of the Underground Railroad and escaped on their own. If you visit the page on Cambridge, you can learn more about one of these passages to freedom.
There is a reconstruction of Dr. Thompson’s corn crib where Tubman, her brothers and some friends hid out on their way North.
There are several panels that look at where African Americans came from before escaping on the Underground Railroad. Children encounter the Underground Railroad in books at school and they often think that anyone could escape to the North. Of course most people on the Underground Railroad came from states bordering on the North. Escapees were much more likely to come from Maryland than from South Carolina or Alabama.
There is also an “honor roll” of slaves who escaped with Tubman. There are approximately seventy people who were accompanied by Tubman while making their escape. Of course, others were inspired by her example, or were rescued by her during the Civil War.
There are also busts and paintings of other people who worked for Abolition like Frederick Douglass.
This is a great site for you to visit and it is a good place to take your kids to. While there are no buildings from Tubman’s time her, the history inside the museum is much better than you would get at most other National Park visitors centers.
Sources:
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman by Sarah Bradford
Harriet, The Moses of Her People by Sarah Bradford
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton
Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson
COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black
Note: All color photos of buildings in this post were taken by Patrick Young except as noted.
