Finding Traces of Harriet Tubman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Of the many feats Harriet Tubman accomplished, none awe me more as an historian than the estimated 13 trips she made to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Each time, she stole family and friends from enslavement much in the way Tubman first secreted herself away to freedom in 1849. Born on the Eastern Shore, Tubman grew into a fearless conductor along the perilous routes of the Underground Railroad, guiding enslaved people on journeys that extended hundreds of miles to the north, ending on the free soil of Pennsylvania, New York and Canada.

This year commemorates the 200th anniversary of her birth and tributes to Tubman abound, including those set in the landscape of her native Dorchester County. I headed to the Eastern Shore to learn how people there remember this Black American freedom fighter, only to discover that the rising waters of climate change are washing away the memories of Tubman that are embedded in the coastal marshland she knew so well.

During each rescue, precious human cargo in tow, Tubman waded into marshes of tall grass and maneuvered through forests dense with pine and oak. Moving under cover of night, Tubman was guided by the constant stars. Angela Crenshaw, a Maryland State Park Ranger, described her as “the ultimate outdoors woman,” someone who made the region’s terrain her ally as she defied slave patrols and a system that held Black Americans as mere chattel.

The historian in me knows that Tubman’s time here is long past. She escaped to free soil in Pennsylvania more than a century and a half ago, only returning to the Eastern Shore for the rescues of enslaved people. Still, like a visit to an old family homestead, I hoped that returning to Tubman’s land might allow me to better understand how her past can inform our present.

The Black freedom fighter

Until her death in 1913, Tubman committed to securing America’s best ideals — freedom, dignity, equality — in the face of its worst sins, including slavery and racism. While no precise record of Tubman’s birth survives, historians and the National Park Service say that she was born Araminta Ross, likely in March 1822. When she was not yet 30, she launched her career as a conductor of loved ones, freedom seekers, along treacherous routes. Her reputation for heroism in challenging slavery was already well-established when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Legally still enslaved, Tubman risked capture by joining the Union’s front lines to defeat Confederate rebels and win…