Born on a Maryland plantation around 1822, Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 to become a leading abolitionist and the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad. Known as “the Moses of her People,” she guided thousands of enslaved African Americans to freedom. When the US Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 led to the arrest and kidnapping of runaway slaves and free blacks living in the free states, Tubman extended her route to Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1834, and established her base of operations in nearby St. Catharines.
