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Araminta Ross [Harriet Tubman] was born into slavery in 1819 or 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland. -
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In 1844 at 25, she married John Tubman, a free African American who did not share her dream. Tubman adopted her husband’s last name and her mother’s first name, meaning she was now referred to as Harriet Tubman. She and her husband separated years later when he refused to join her escape. -
Tubman and her two brothers decided to escape the plantation and head to Pennsylvania in 1849 when their owner passed away, and they feared they would be sold. Her brothers became frightened and turned back. -
Tubman was never content with being free unless everyone else was, too. She vowed to return to the plantation and bring her family and friends to freedom. And for the next ten years, she made more than a dozen trips to Maryland to free slaves, according to the National Park Service. -
Tubman purchased her first piece of land in Auburn, New York, from Sen. William H. Seward in 1859. She spent the rest of her life there, the National Park Service says. -
Tubman enlisted into the Union army as a "contraband" nurse in a hospital in Hilton Head, South Carolina. During the Civil War, she served as a spy, scout, nurse, and cook in the US Army. -
Tubman married Nelson Davis, a civil war veteran, in 1869, and the two eventually adopted a baby girl named Gertie. -
In the 1890s, Tubman became more involved in the women’s suffrage movement. She spoke at events and worked with Susan B. Anthony. -
Before she died on March 10, 1913, she gave her home for the elderly to the Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Tubman was buried with military rites in Fort Hill Cemetery, a short drive from her home. A year after her death, Auburn declared a one-day memorial to its anti-slavery hero. -
She will forever be known as an American hero. So much so that former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced a plan to redesign the $20 bill in 2016 and move President Andrew Jackson to the back, making way for Tubman.
But in 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that his decision to delay the introduction of a planned $20 bill was technical, not politically motivated.