Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1820. She and her parents worked as slaves at the Brodas plantation. Harriet was hired out as a laborer by the age of five.
She was routinely beaten by her masters. When she was fifteen years old, Harriet tried to help a runaway slave. Someone oversaw her and hit her in the head with a lead weight, which put her into a coma. It took months for her to recover and for the rest of her life, she suffered from blackouts.
In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. …
