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Finding Freedom
The Call of Freedom:
Dorchester County occupies a central place in the story of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of "stations" and "conductors" that sheltered and shepherded hundreds of enslaved African Americans to freedom in the mid-1800s. The famed Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman grew up here in Bucktown.
An Act of Defiance:
Young Harriet Tubman made her first stand against the injustice of slavery at the Bucktown village store. While on an errand with a plantation cook, she encountered a white overseer disciplining a slave. The overseer ordered Tubman to help tie the slave down> She refused -- an astonishing display of defiance for any slave, much less a girl of about age 13. The young man broke free, and the overseer picked up a two-pound weight and hurled it at him. Instead, he hit Tubman on the head with a blow that nearly killed her. Many historians believe this injury was linked to the frequent seizures Tubman experienced as an adult. These episodes were accompanied by vivid dreams that the deeply religious Tubman regarded as messages from God.
A Flight of the Dover Eight:
In 1857, Thomas Elliot, Denwood Hughes, and Henry Predo fled from a nearby farm then owned by Pritchett Meredith. The three joined five others in making the way north to freedom, but the group was betrayed by their conductor and led straight to the jail in Dover, Delaware. Still, the "Dover Eight" managed to make a dramatic escape through the sheriff's private living quarters and out a window. All eight found their way to freedom in Canada. There, Elliott and Hughes became supporters of anti-slavery activist John Brown. |