Harriet Tubman's father had a cabin and ten acres on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. But the exact location of the cabin, where Tubman herself lived between the ages of 17 and 22, had been lost. The cabin is no more, and the area was privately owned, barred to archaeologists who wanted to search for the site. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service purchased 2600 acres in 2020, opening the area to exploration.
Last fall, Julie Schablitsky, chief archaeologist at the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration, was running a metal detector over an abandoned road in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge when she found a coin minted in 1808, the year of the Tubman parents’ wedding. Nearby, Schablitsky unearthed ceramic fragments dated to between the 1820s and 1840s. At that point, the archaeologist tells the Times, she knew that she had found the location of Tubman’s one-time home.
“She would’ve spent time here as a child, but also she would’ve come back and been living here with her father in her teenage years, working alongside him,” says Schablitsky in a statement. “This was the opportunity she had to learn about how to navigate and survive in the wetlands and the woods. We believe this experience was able to benefit her when she began to move people to freedom.”
The site is now being thoroughly excavated, and just in time, since it is expected to be underwater by 2100. Read about the discovery and what it could mean at Smithsonian.