Harriet Tubman grew up in the rural plantation region of Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where she was born into slavery around 1822.

Quick Scoop: Where She Grew Up

  • Tubman (born Araminta “Minty” Ross) was born in Dorchester County, Maryland, on the farm of Anthony Thompson at Peter’s Neck, where her father Ben Ross lived and worked.
  • As a small child she was later moved with her mother and siblings to the Brodess farm near Bucktown, Maryland, where she spent much of her early life enslaved.
  • This whole area—farms, marshland, and woods near today’s Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge—formed the landscape she grew up in and later used as she learned to navigate the outdoors.

A Bit More Context

  • Being raised on these Maryland farms meant long days of field labor, timber work, and hired-out jobs from a very young age.
  • Those harsh early years in Dorchester County shaped her skills in reading the land, moving at night, and surviving outdoors—abilities she later used to guide enslaved people to freedom.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.