Harriet Tubman's Real Name: Araminta Ross

Quick answer: Harriet Tubman's documented birth name is Araminta Ross. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that form and says she later adopted her mother's first name, Harriet. The National Park Service says she was named Araminta by her parents, Ben and Harriet (Rit) Ross, and took the name Harriet when she married (Encyclopaedia Britannica; National Park Service).

Real name and early life

Sources do not agree on her exact birth year. Britannica gives about 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland; the National Park Service gives March 1822 in the same county, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She was born into slavery. Both sources record a severe childhood head injury after she refused to help an overseer punish another enslaved person and was struck by a thrown weight. Britannica places the incident at about age 12 and says she later suffered seizures; the Park Service places it at about age 13. About 1844 she married John Tubman, a free Black man, and took the name Harriet.

Career highlights

In 1849, after rumors that she was about to be sold, she escaped to Philadelphia, Britannica says, leaving her husband, who refused to go. Over the next decade she returned to Maryland on some 13 journeys and led about 70 people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, a figure both sources give; the Park Service adds that she also gave instructions to about 70 more who escaped independently. During the Civil War she served the United States Army as a spy, scout, nurse, and cook. On June 1, 1863, the Park Service records, she joined a raid along the Combahee River, with Colonel James Montgomery and the 2nd South Carolina Infantry, that rescued more than 700 enslaved people. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, married Union veteran Nelson Davis in 1869, and later supported women's suffrage. Britannica notes that in 2024 Maryland posthumously awarded her the rank of brigadier general for that wartime service.

Death

Britannica and the National Park Service both record that she died on March 10, 1913, in Auburn, New York. The Park Service says she died at the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery. Some later listings give a death year of 1912; that date conflicts with the 1913 record in these sources.

Name notes for searchers

Araminta Ross is the documented birth name; she was also called Minty. After her 1844 marriage she was known as Harriet Tubman, and later as Harriet Tubman Davis. Searchers looking for the Underground Railroad conductor sometimes called Moses are usually aiming at the same person.