THE GREAT CHRISTMAS EVE RESCUE TO FREEDOM!

THE GREAT CHRISTMAS EVE RESCUE TO FREEDOM!

On Christmas Eve 1854, Harriet Tubman returned south to her Eastern Shore Maryland home known then and now as Poplar Neck. The nearby town of Choptank, to emancipate her brothers Ben, Henry and Robert from slavery. Tubman had heard rumors that their master was planning to sell the men the day after Christmas; so she sent word to her brothers through Jacob Jackson, a free African American man, to be ready to escape because she was coming to get them.

Christmas was a popular time to escape for freedom seekers. Because many enslaved people had family who lived on other properties with different masters, they often received travel passes to visit. They were not expected to show up again until well after the holiday. 

She wrote in code: “tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step on board." The brothers had travel passes to visit their parents Ben Sr. and Rit Ross. Three others, including Ben’s fiancé, would join the group on their journey North to freedom. 

They traveled more than 100 miles, finally arriving at William Still’s Anti-Slavery office in Philadelphia on Dec. 29, 1854, and then traveled to Canada. 

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Harriett Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad was determined to free her family. She told her biographer, Sarah Bradford, that the jubilation she felt after her own escape was tempered by a bittersweet aspect of homesickness. 

"I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free, but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down [in Maryland] wid de ole folks, and my brudders and sisters."

There are many things about Tubman’s life that remain mysterious today, but the source of her extraordinary devotion to family is not one of them. Later in life, Tubman told a story about her mother from the days when Tubman and her siblings were still young—the family was living below Cambridge, Maryland at the time. 

Rit and Ben Ross, were the parents of Harriet Tubman.

A slave trader from Georgia showed up one day and cut a deal with Rit’s owner, Edward Brodess, to buy a boy named Moses. Moses was Rit’s youngest son, and Tubman’s little brother. Rit grew suspicious about this situation straight away. After catching a glimpse of Brodess counting up some money and then ordering one of his other slaves to go and fetch Moses, she leaped into action. 

Moses all of a sudden went  “missing,” and then stayed that way for perhaps a month. Moses would sleep in the woods one night, with a friend the next, and who knows where on the one after that. A network of family and friends helped Rit get messages to the boy and deliver his meals.

Eventually, however, one of those helpers betrayed the game, telling Brodess where he could find the boy. But even then, Rit managed to stay a step ahead of the white men. When Brodess and that slave trader appeared at the spot where their source had told them they would find Moses, there was no sign of the boy.

The men decided to pay a call at Rit’s cabin in an effort to resolve the situation.

“What do you want?” Rit asked them.

“Mr. Scott wants to come in and light a segar,” Brodess answered.

Rit “ripped out an oath” and then said, “You are after my son; but the first man comes into my house, I will split his head open.”

Brodess eventually backed down and canceled the sale of Moses.

Poplar Neck, is where Ben and Rit lived in a cabin that was most likely a one-room affair built of logs hand-hewn by Ben with a little help from friends. Its little loft would have been accessible by ladder rather than stairs. 

A free man at this point, Ben was working during his Poplar Neck years in the timbering operations of Dr. Anthony C. Thompson, the son of his former owner. Thompson owned some 2,000 acres hereabouts.

It is thought that Harriet Tubman probably stopped here during her own run to freedom in 1849. She likely used her parents’ cabin as a station during at least three other escapes as well. Other slaves made their way north with Ben’s help, too—it’s not know how many.

This whole area was a hotbed of Underground Railroad activity. Another station master, the Free Black Rev. Samuel Green, lived five or so miles away in East New Market. A third station was located just up the road near Preston in the home of a white Quaker family, the Levertons. (That home is still standing along Seaman Road, but it’s privately owned and not accessible to the public.)  

On that Christmas Eve in 1854. Robert Ross Harriet said was the last of her three brothers to arrive at the meeting spot, after somehow managing to tear himself away from his wife and newborn child to join in the escape attempt. Along with Ben and Henry Ross, he was running under a frightful deadline, as all three brothers were slated to go up on the slave auction block the day after Christmas.

Ben Ross and his four adult children made a decision that day to keep Rit in the dark about the escape that was in the works. Years later, they talked about this decision by describing how they were worried that Rit would not be able to keep her emotions in check. They thought she might raise such an all-out ruckus of grief over this unexpected farewell that it would draw unwanted attention to the cabin.  

How long had it been since she last saw her sons? Those sons were enslaved, their whole lives and lived some 25 miles away. Opportunities for family reunions in those circumstances must have been few and far between.

Then there was the matter of that auction looming ahead. Perhaps a local buyer would scoop the brothers up, allowing them to stay in the area. But perhaps not: Years earlier, three of Rit’s daughters had been sold to out-of-state owners and shipped into the Deep South, never to be seen again.  Once on their family's land, Tubman and the brothers hid from their mother in a little outbuilding that served as a corncrib. There, they watched through a crack in the door while their mother prepared the Christmas dinner they would not be sitting down to eat. 

It was said that Ben, Tubman, and the brothers were worried, too, about whether Rit would hold up under questioning once the brothers’ owner alerted local authorities that Robert, Ben, and Henry had gone missing.  After all, Ben was worried about his own ability to deal with those questions. He put on a blindfold that Christmas Eve every time he came near Harriet and the brothers. When it came time for them to start making their way to the next station, he walked blindly with them for a bit, removing the covering from his eyes only after they were all out of sight.

Those investigators did show up asking their questions soon enough. And in response, Ben told them the truth: He hadn’t seen his sons at all around Christmastime. In books and essays about Tubman this story is presented as a triumphant tale. It does have a happy ending, after all—the brothers all made it north to Canada in the end. Ben’s cleverness with that blindfold business is something to celebrate as well.

Rit would get a chance down the road from that Christmas night to enjoy more reunions with her sons. In 1857, with Ben at risk of going to jail on charges that he was helping slaves to escape along the Underground Railroad,  Harriet returned to the Eastern Shore once again and helped her parents find their way north to Canada, where Rit and Ben were reunited with the three brothers who made their way North in that dramatic 1854 Christmas escape into freedom from being enslaved their whole lives.