No evidence has survived to suggest that Harriet Tubman's work as an underground railroad conductor of fugitive slaves included a route through Massachusetts. Very probably she knew former fugitives who had settled in Boston and other Massachusetts cities and towns – she certainly had contacts in the New Bedford community, for example. Better documented in the surviving records are her activities among white abolitionists, who provided many kinds of support for her activities in the years immediately prior to the Civil War, as well as during the war. In her long life after the war, she maintained close friendships with many of these political allies and their families, and continued to visit Boston periodically both for fund-raising and political activities.

Her visits to the Boston area may have begun as early as 1854 (Brown, 1874), but the surviving documentation only begins in late May of 1859, when she arrived for a conference with the fiery anti-slavery crusader John Brown. She had known Brown for just over a year, having met with him in Canada in April 1858, to assist him in recruiting fighters for the ill-fated attack at Harpers Ferry. (Whatever role she contemplated playing in Brown's planned slave uprising, her own final participation was limited to consultation and recruitment of Canadian former fugitives – she was not available in the final weeks before the attack, and was not at Harpers Ferry, though she was named in several of the letters confiscated from the farmhouse after the attack had failed.) When John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, Tubman was again in Boston, visiting at the home of Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney. Cheney was one of those prominent reform-minded intellectuals and antislavery activists whom Tubman met when she first arrived in Boston in the spring of 1859.

During May and early June 1859, Tubman's whereabouts and activities were enthusiastically reported in letters by Franklin Sanborn, one of Brown's Secret Six co-conspirators – the group supplying Brown with money and arms (five of whom were from the Boston area). Sanborn, editor of the Boston anti-slavery newspaper The Commonwealth and Concord schoolmaster, and later to become Tubman's first biographer, seems to have been her first Boston-area contact. Most likely she brought him a letter of introduction from the wealthy New York state abolitionist Gerrit Smith, another of John Brown's Secret Six.

We know at least one Boston address where she stayed during her several months in Boston that summer: 168 Cambridge Street, on Beacon Hill, probably a boarding-house run by a free black family. Among her black friends and associates in the Boston area she later numbered John S. Rock, who became the first black lawyer admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in 1865, and Lewis Hayden, an ex-fugitive who sheltered other fugitives in his Boston home. At one time or another she stayed at the houses of both these men. Records of her activities within the free black community of Boston during these visits have not (as yet) surfaced. Very likely she made an early visit to the offices of The Liberator and/or the home of its uncompromising anti-slavery editor William Lloyd Garrison, where she would have met black and white abolitionist activists alike.

Sanborn and other prominent Boston allies and associates, many of them white, arranged for her to speak about her life in various venues, in part to assist her in fund-raising for a mortgage owed on a house for her family back in Auburn, New York. For example, a reception was sponsored by Sanborn's friend, Ednah Dow Cheney (later to become Tubman's second biographer), at the home of a Mrs. Bartoll on Chestnut Street. At least one of Tubman's meetings with John Brown in Boston that spring took place at the home of Wendell and Ann Phillips. She was also invited to speak at Thomas W. Higginson's church in Worcester, west of Boston, and to address the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Association at its Fourth of July meeting in Framingham (also west of Boston). Later in the summer, on August 1, she attended the New England Colored Citizen's Convention at the Tremont Temple, where she spoke out against the African colonization movement.

Among her other white Boston-area anti-slavery political associates and social acquaintances were the families of three other members of the Secret Six, George L. Stearns and Mary Stearns, Samuel G. Howe and Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas W. Higginson and Mary Thacher Higginson. She also solicited a letter of reference from Maria Weston Chapman, a leader in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a strong supporter of Garrison, to Sarah Rotch Arnold. Arnold was an anti-slavery friend in New Bedford, married to James Arnold, "a great friend of runaway slaves, whom he aided with money and in other ways" (Bullard, 1947, 410). Chapman's letter indicates that Tubman might be "the suitable person to undertake to bring off the children of Charles, about whom I had so fruitless a correspondence with the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee & others" and also reveals that the seaport city of New Bedford is a place "where many of her proteges are hiding." (Chapman, letter to Arnold, 1859). Tubman also became acquainted with the anti-slavery writer and editor Lydia Maria Child (of Medford). Child was later to report Tubman's critical opinions of Lincoln's compromising posture toward the Confederacy in the early days of the war, in a letter to John Greenleaf Whittier: "God's ahead of Master Lincoln. God will not let Master Lincoln beat the South till he doe the right thing." (Child, letter to John Greenleaf Whittier, January 21 1862).

Tubman's most celebrated days in the Boston area were those she spent at the invitation of Franklin Sanborn in Transcendalist literary circles in Concord, beginning in the spring of 1859. Sanborn wrote on several occasions about her visits to his cultured and prominent anti-slavery friends there, including Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott and family. When he wrote an obituary notice, however, he seemed to feel that her association with these literary luminaries had been much exaggerated in later biographies. "I took her to Emerson's house," he wrote, "but she was never a guest there for more than a day at a time." He took pains to point out that although "she visited me at Concord, in all, four or five times, . . .her whole stay in Concord, in 30 years, could not have exceeded a fortnight." (Sanborn, "Concerning Harriet Tubman and Fugitive Slaves," Springfield [Massachusetts] Republican, March 19, 1913.)

During the 1859 Concord visit she stayed at the home of Ann Whiting, a neighbor of Sanborn's, and made an effort, with Whiting's help, to learn to read-unfortunately never completing this task of acquiring literacy. Sanborn also reported that she visited with "the Brookses and Mrs. Horace Mann" during her time in Concord. She spoke at a meeting in the vestry of a Concord church in early June, one of several occasions on which Louisa May Alcott may have heard her stories. Alcott, an ardent writer of anti-slavery stories inspired by her family's involvement in the movement in these years, may also have used Tubman as the model for a character in the novel Work, published in 1873.

Tubman also spent much of the summer of the following year, 1860, in the Boston area. She again visited Sanborn in June, and in July attended the New England Anti-Slavery Society meetings held in the Melodeon Hall. There she gave a speech at an associated Drawing Room Convention of feminist anti-slavery activists. According to The Liberator's report on this event, "A colored woman of the name of Moses, who, herself a fugitive, has eight times returned to the Slave states for the purpose of rescuing others from bondage, and who has met with extraordinary success in her efforts, was then introduced. She told the story of her adventures in a modest but quaint and amusing style, which won much applause" ("Woman's Rights Meetings," July 6 1860). She also spent some time fund-raising for her next planned trip into Maryland, asking Wendell Phillips for financial support in a letter written in August.

By late October 1861, in the first year of the war, Tubman again visited Sanborn, bringing useful information about how the war's early days were affecting those still in slavery: "she represents the number escaping from Maryland and Virginia as unusually great. Emancipation would check this exodus," Sanborn wrote in a letter in early November. Perhaps one reason for her presence in the Boston area at this time was a meeting of African American leaders opposed to the emigration movement promoted by "misguided colored men and white men" trying to "induce free colored persons, resident in the United States and in the Canadas, to emigrate to Hayti under the mistaken policy of bettering their condition" (McPherson, 1965, 85). (She had already spoken out against African colonization at the New England Colored Citizens Convention in Boston, August 1 1859). While in town, she may also have attended the thirtieth anniversary convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held on January 23, 1862. (It was likely during this visit that Lydia Maria Child heard her critical comments on Lincoln's failure to emancipate the slaves early in the war.) But the main reason for her visit was very probably a summons for a private discussion of possible war service from the abolitionist governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew. (Sanborn later remembered that she had been brought to meet Andrew by George and Mary Stearns and Ednah Cheney.)

Federal forces liberated the South Carolina Sea Islands in December 1861, and shortly thereafter seventeen Bostonians, including Ednah Cheney, formed the Boston Educational Commission (later renamed the New England Freedmen's Aid Society) as a fund-raising and oversight agency for northern charitable and educational efforts among the newly freed population in the Port Royal area. An initial group of missionary teachers was sent from Boston on March 3, and two months later, Harriet Tubman was dispatched to the Union army's headquarters in the town of Beaufort, as well. Ostensibly on a humanitarian mission to work among the freedpeople, she had very likely also been asked to use this assignment as a "cover story" to conceal her secret mission as a spy for the Union forces, at Governor Andrew's request. Cheney helped Tubman prepare financially for the assignment (she had requested that "her old parents should be kept from want" while she was in the south).

Stationed in Beaufort for two years, Tubman played a triple support role as "spy, scout and nurse." She became even more famous in abolitionist networks as a "general" when, in June 1863, she successfully organized and helped lead the Combahee River Raid of Union gunboats on Confederate plantations – an attack that destroyed Confederate property and freed 800 slaves in the process. (Her celebrity in Massachusetts was undoubtedly enhanced when Franklin Sanborn put together the first biographical sketch of her exploits and published it in his anti-slavery newspaper, The Commonwealth, a week after the raid was first reported.)

During her war service, she met two of her white Boston political associates who were also serving the Union cause and putting into practice their abolitionist belief in the capability of the black soldier: Thomas W. Higginson (now a colonel with the newly trained black regiment, the First South Carolina Volunteers) and one of the sons of William Lloyd Garrison (a lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment). She was one of the nurses who comforted the survivors of the Massachusetts 54th Colored Regiment after its heroic and costly assault on Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor – the action in which Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (for whom Tubman may possibly have cooked during his short time in Camp Saxton) was killed, along with many of the soldiers.

She finally took a leave of absence from the Union service in the summer of 1864. Though she returned home to Auburn for a period, her financial needs and those of her dependent family members were pressing and she had made very little money in her unofficial army service. She was back in Boston in August, staying at the home of John Rock while funds were solicited on her behalf through The Commonwealth. In the spring of 1865, she returned south intending to continue practical education work among the Sea Islands freed people. Ednah Cheney apparently stretched the rules of the New England Freedmen's Aid Association teachers committee to enable her to offer Tubman a small stipend as a "teacher" – "Harriet Tubman, whose earnest labors for her race are well known, is employed at a small salary to go among her own people and aid in their practical education” (Freedmen's Record, April 1865). (As it turned out, Tubman wound up volunteering as a nurse in hospitals in the Washington D.C. area until the end of the war, and seems not to have made it back to Beaufort at all.) Cheney's important biographical feature story on Tubman was also published at this time, in the March 1865 issue of the Freedmen's Record, again adding to her celebrity in Boston and Massachusetts anti-slavery and women's charitable networks.

In the postwar years, Tubman lived in Auburn, New York, with her extended family, and took on a variety of projects to support displaced and destitute freed-people's economic relief and education, including a series of fund-raising fairs in Auburn. Later she worked to create a nursing home for the elderly and indigent – succeeding after years of persistent work in opening The Harriet Tubman Home in 1908. Much of this span of nearly fifty years from the war's end until her death in 1913 is not well documented, so it is possible that she made dozens of unrecorded visits to Boston or other Massachusetts towns, to visit old friends and political allies and attend events, such as anti-slavery network reunions, anniversary celebrations, and funerals.

We do know that she kept in touch with the Garrison family. William Lloyd Garrison II had married a daughter in the family of Martha Coffin Wright (Lucretia Mott's sister), and this second generation Garrison family visited Tubman whenever they came to Auburn. When in Boston, Tubman could call upon them, as well as Franklin Sanborn and Ednah Cheney for various kinds of aid. Sanborn contributed a testimonial letter to the first edition of the book-length biography by Sarah Bradford in 1868, for example, and he reviewed the book favorably when it was printed. He helped Bradford distribute the book, in its several editions, through his Boston connections – seeing that she had a publicity photograph taken when she visited Boston to promote the book as well.

Cheney contributed gifts of money and clothing when Tubman was raising funds for her "home for old colored women" and simultaneously collecting "clothes for the destitute colored children" for churches in Auburn in the 1890's. Tubman also asked Cheney's assistance in getting "Mr. Sanborn and some of those Anti-Slavery friends" to raise fifty dollars toward purchasing the plates for the Bradford biography at that time. "Miss Cheney has done very well by me and I do not wish to ask for money," Tubman's amanuensis wrote on her behalf, "[but] if through her influence I can get the friends to help me I shall be ever thankful." (Harriet Tubman, dictated letter to Ednah Cheney, April 9 1894)

During the last two decades of her life, Tubman experienced a renewal of celebrity – thanks in part to the efforts of women's suffrage clubs – and in particular black women's clubs – to lionize her as a heroic foremother. For example, she appeared at the Founding Convention of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) in Washington D.C. in July 1896, and on the platform of New York State Suffrage Association meetings, where she was introduced by Susan B. Anthony, in November of the same year. The Massachusetts women's organizations were not far behind in their recognition. In 1897 Ednah Cheney organized a reception for her in Boston, sponsored by the Massachusetts Women's Suffrage Association, to publicize the release of the 1897 reprint of the second edition of the Bradford biography. Always living on the margins, she found it a challenge to get to Boston for the reception – "she had sold a calf to get here from where she lives in New York State," according to a journal entry of one of the Boston suffragists (Helen Tufts Bailie, April 6, 1897). Also attending this reception for Tubman in Boston was Frances E. Watkins Harper, the African-American abolitionist, suffragist, and writer who had been affiliated for many years with the (Boston based) American Woman Suffrage Association headed by Lucy Stone. Harper's most recent organizational work had been as the superintendent of the colored division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), from 1883 through 1890 – work that had led to the formation of many black WCTU branch organizations, possibly including one based in Boston that later named itself in Harriet Tubman's honor.

If Tubman also received recognition from, or spoke before, the Boston-based Women's Era Club (the African American local affiliate of the NACWC) – as seems highly likely – the documentation has yet to surface. (The leaders of this organization would certainly have been present at the formation of the National in Washington the year before.) But we do know that eight years after this reception, Tubman returned to Boston, for the last time for which we have a record. According to a newspaper account, a reception was given "by the Harriet Tubman's Christian Temperance Union at Parker Memorial Hall to Mrs. Harriet Tubman, colored, one of the oldest living ex-slaves. . . .Mrs. Tubman has come to be regarded as one of the great benefactors of her race. . . .An interesting concert was given, and the funds received went to the aid of the Harriet Tubman Women's Temperance Union of this city. Before the concert Mrs. Tubman received the congratulations of some of the very people whom she had helped to escape years ago. None of them seemed to bear the burden of time more lightly than this remarkable old woman" ("Harriet Tubman at the Hub," Auburn [N.Y.] Daily Advertiser, May 30, 1905).

That is the end of the story for now, but more records are almost certain to be found in the future. I invite diligent and adventurous researchers who may read these notes to join in the quest to unearth the materials needed to tell the full story of her activities and influence in Boston, Massachusetts, and New England.

– Jean Humez, Women's Studies Program,
University of Massachusetts/Boston, June 2005

Secondary Works Cited:

Brown, William Wells. The Rising Son: or the Antecedents and Advancements of the Colored Race. Boston: A. G. Brown, 1874.

Bullard, John M. The Rotches. New Bedford, MA: 1947.

McPherson, James M. The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.

More detail on primary sources such as letters and period newspaper stories may be found in Humez, Jean M. Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Larson, Kate Clifford. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of An American Hero. NY: Ballantine, 2004.