History uncovered: Harriet Tubman’s father’s home discovered in Maryland

History is being discovered in Maryland. This time the home of the father noted Black abolitionist Harriet Tubman has been found.

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Archaeologists are finding artifacts that date back to the early and mid-1800s on the property where Ben Ross had lived. Tubman was born in the 1820s as Araminta Ross. They also found the Ross family home, NBC News reported.

The land had been acquired last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County, Maryland, NBC News reported.

Ross received the land in the 1840s after a slave owner declared in his will that Ross should be freed five years after his death and be granted the 10 acres.

Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford said historians think that Ross harvested the property’s trees and sold the wood that was eventually used by free Black sailors to make ships in Baltimore.

“Harriet Tubman worked alongside her father as a teenager. And historians believe that Tubman learned to navigate the land and the waterways she would later traverse to lead enslaved people to freedom,” Ross said Tuesday.

The State Highway Administration Chief Archaeologist Julie Schablitsky said that her crews first dug 1,000 holes then used a metal detector, first finding a knife sheath and a shotgun shell.

She finally found a 50-cent coin dated 1808, The Washington Post reported. That’s the same year Ross married, NBC News reported.

The coin was found about half a mile from where the cabin would eventually be discovered.

Then the teams started uncovering broken ceramics, but time and money ran out so the project came to a halt.

They started digging again in March and found clues that the property did indeed belong to the Ross family.

So far they’ve found bricks, 19th-century pottery, a button, a drawer pull and a pipe stem, the Post reported.

Historic records indicated that it was the likely location of the home.

“We looked at those artifacts closer and confirmed that these artifacts do date to the time period when he was living there,” Schablitsky said, according to NBC News. “With the artifacts, the archaeology, the evidence of a building and just the location — knowing he worked in the timbered wetlands — those multiple lines of evidence told us unequivocally that this is the home of Ben Ross.”

Schablitsky is also keeping the Tubman family descendants informed of what the archaeologists are finding.

“It means so much to the family to be able to see all of this,” Tina Wyatt, Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, said, according to NBC News.

In all, from around 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 13 trips home, rescuing 70 people from slavery, including her parents and several brothers, the Post reported.

Cox Media Group