Today’s Route 50 crosses the DelMarVa Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia). This includes a part of Maryland that was quite familiar to Harriet Tubman, one of the most remarkable women in American history.
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery near Cambridge, Maryland in 1822, but in 1849 she freed herself by escaping to Philadelphia. Shortly after, an advertisement offering $100 for her return was placed in a Cambridge newspaper. We know this because copies of the ad still exist today.
She returned to Maryland frequently, but not as an enslaved person. Instead, on thirteen separate occasions she led members of her family and other enslaved people to freedom. She took her charges through the night in secret, using the resources of the Underground Railroad. She preferred to take those dangerous trips in the winter, when nights were longer and concealment easier. She often began them on Friday evenings, knowing the local newspapers wouldn’t report the escape until Monday. Her identity as the person leading these escapes was not known at the time, but as stories of her successes circulated she became known as “Moses,” for leading her people to freedom.
Her summary of that time: “I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the U.S. Army in various capacities, including as the leader of scouting patrols in the Confederate state of South Carolina. On one memorable occasion, she became the first woman to lead an armed assault in the Civil War, guiding troops on an expedition to the Combahee Ferry. That raid freed more than seven hundred enslaved men, women, and children.
But after the war, she struggled to receive a pension such as those awarded to male soldiers, and her activism, including in the campaign for women’s suffrage, kept her impoverished. Supporters had to raise money to help her.
Harriet Tubman died in 1913, at a home for aging African-Americans in Auburn, New York. Years before, she had helped to found that home.
In the photo below, Route 50 crosses southern Maryland between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. This section of the highway is dedicated to Harriet Tubman.
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The photo of Harriet Tubman at the top of this page is in the public domain. The photo of Route 50 was taken by the author.