Harriet Tubman Timeline

In early 1859, Frances Adeline Seward, wife of abolitionist U.S. Senator William H. Seward, sold Tubman a seven-acre farm in Fleming, New York, for $1,200 (equivalent to $46,400 in 2025). After the war, she retired there and cared for her aging parents.

Image source: Auburn, New York

When a promised appointment to an official military nursing position fell through in July 1865, Tubman decided to return to New York. During a train ride in October 1865, she traveled on a half-fare ticket provided because of her service.

Born enslaved in North Carolina, Nelson Davis had served as a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. Though he was 22 years younger than Tubman, they were married on March 18, 1869, at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874.

Paying off the mortgage on her farm in May 1873 exhausted Tubman's savings. In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay her a $2,000 lump sum for services rendered to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy, but it was defeated in the Senate.

In February 1880, Tubman's wood-framed house burned down, but with the help of her supporters it was quickly replaced with a new brick home.

Tubman's husband Nelson Davis died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 subsequently made Tubman eligible for a pension as his widow.

After documenting her marriage and her husband's service record to the Bureau of Pensions, in 1895 Tubman was granted a monthly widow's pension of $8 plus a lump sum of $500 to cover the five-year delay in approval.

In 1895, Tubman began discussions with AME Zion leaders to create a Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged for 'indigent colored people'. In 1896 she bid $1,215 at auction for a 25-acre adjacent farm. AME Zion took over the property in 1903, and the home opened on June 23, 1908, with Tubman as guest of honor.

Image source: Harriet Tubman National Historical Park

When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first conference in 1896. When it merged into the National Association of Colored Women, she attended that organization's second conference in 1899.

Image source: National Association of Colored Women's Clubs

After Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill in December 1897, Congress approved a compromise in February 1899 of $20 per month ($8 from her widow's pension plus $12 for her service as a nurse), but did not acknowledge her as a scout and spy.

By 1911, Tubman's body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor in Auburn, New York.

Surrounded by friends and family members, Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, at the rest home bearing her name.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman had a vision that the war would lead to the abolition of slavery. In January 1862, she volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

Image source: American Civil War

In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal, gathering intelligence for Union forces.

For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, continuing for months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865. For over three years of service, she received only $200 total.

She worked alongside Colonel James Montgomery and provided him with intelligence that aided in the temporary capture of Jacksonville, Florida, in March 1863.

In July 1863, Tubman worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal before his death in battle.

Image source: Second Battle of Fort Wagner

Instead of writing her own account, Tubman authorized Sarah Hopkins Bradford to combine her personal recollections, journalistic accounts, and letters from friends and supporters to create Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1868. The 132-page volume was published in 1869 and brought Tubman some $1,200 in income.

A final revision of Sarah Hopkins Bradford's biography added an appendix with more stories about Tubman's life in 1901, following the 1886 re-written volume Harriet, the Moses of her People.

The first full biography of Tubman published after Bradford's was Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman (1943). Another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear until Jean Humez's 2003 work, followed by biographies by Kate Clifford Larson and Catherine Clinton in 2004.

In 1944, the United States Maritime Commission launched the SS Harriet Tubman, its first Liberty ship named for a black woman.

Image source: SS Harriet Tubman

In 1978, Tubman became the first African-American woman honored on a U.S. postage stamp; she appeared on a second stamp in 1995.

The first statue of Tubman in the region where she was born was unveiled in Salisbury, Maryland, in 2009.

Since her life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of The Great Adventure, Tubman has been portrayed in productions such as The Good Lord Bird, Timeless, Underground, and A Woman Called Moses. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for portraying her in the 2019 biographical film Harriet.

Image source: Harriet (film)

In 2024, the United States Mint issued three Harriet Tubman commemorative coins; each coin depicts her at a different stage of her life.

On November 11, 2024, Tubman was posthumously commissioned as a one-star general (brigadier general) in the Maryland Army National Guard in recognition of her military service during the Civil War.