Visiting Harriet Tubman's final home and resting place in Auburn, NY - Entrepreneur Generations

On a cross-New York trip (from Cooperstown to Niagara Falls) earlier this summer, I was surprised to learn that Harriet Tubman was buried in the small town of Auburn, NY. I associate her more with the eastern shore of Maryland, but Ms. Tubman spent the last 50 years of her life in this small upstate New York town, which is located near one of the Finger Lakes, Owosco Lake. On our trip from Cooperstown to Niagara Falls, we drove on Route 20, and were able to spend some time exploring Auburn before continuing on to Geneva, where we spent the night.

After she ran the Underground Railroad and led hundreds of slaves from captivity, as well as being an integral part of the Union Army in leading soldiers into battle and saving hundreds more slaves, Tubman did not live a quiet life. She continued to fight for the rights of freed slaves and was forceful in the women's suffrage movement. She had to fight to receive veteran's compensation from the government, and often was financially struggling. When she was around 50, in 1869, she also married a Civil Veteran, Nelson Davis, who was 22 years younger than her, and the two of them lived in Auburn until his death of TB in 1888. 

In 1908, she founded the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, and, in 1910, at the age of 90, she herself was admitted there, where she lived until her death in 1913.

We visited the Home for the Aged (currently only open by appointment, though there was a museum on the premises we didn't have time to go into) and Harriet's gravesite at Fort Hill Cemetery in town.

Early this year, with the rise in popularity of Harriet Tubman due to her being placed on the $20 bill, the National Park Service announced that the Harriet Tubman home (which we did not visit), along with the Home for the Aged and Harriet Tubman's old church would all be part of a new Harriet Tubman National Park in Auburn. This National Park, as well as a national park in Cambridge, MD, on Maryland's Eastern Shore (my blog entry about visiting these sites here) will be the first national parks named after a woman in U.S. history.

Harriet Tubman's grave is located underneath a huge evergreen tree towards the back of Fort Hill Cemetery. Her unadorned headstone is engraved with her married name, Harried Tubman Davis.

Besides American flags and many trinkets, someone had left a t-shirt from the Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School in Philadelphia.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, June 2016

The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged was designated a national historic landmark in 1975.

The shade was peaceful but it made for some tough photography.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2aVaU4S Visiting Harriet Tubman's final home and resting place in Auburn, NY - Entrepreneur Generations

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