“…Minty Ross married John Tubman, a local free black, around 1844. It was at this moment she took the name Harriet, possibly in honor of her mother, or it may have coincided with a spiritual conversion requiring the adoption of a new name. It was a bittersweet moment for a free man such as John Tubman to marry Harriet. He must have loved her deeply, for he forfeited many rights incumbent upon the marriage of a free couple. By the laws of Maryland and other slaveholding states, all children born to John and Harriet would bear Harriet’s slave status. Ownership of their children would fall to Edward Brodess as Harriet’s master. John Tubman lacked any legal or parental rights to his own children. Nor could he share a life with Harriet without the consent of Brodess. Their decision to marry was no doubt made only after careful deliberation. Perhaps they both hoped against great odds, that they could in time purchase Harriet’s freedom from Brodess.”

“On March 15, 1822, Anthony Thompson paid a midwife $2 to assist Harriet “Rit” Green in Childbirth. This could be a fortuitous record of Tubman’s birth… By the time Tubman was born, Rit had already been passed down through several generations of Atthow Pattison’s family under a series of inheritance bequests, like a chest of drawers or a coveted piece of jewelry. Ultimately owned by Edward Brodess as a collateral member of the Pattison family, Rit and her Children became Edward’s personal property when he became an adult in 1822. Eventually Tubman and her siblings were moved from Thompson’s plantation, spending their childhood and early adulthood in and around Bucktown, where Edward Brodess farmed his own small plantation”