The Site of Harriet Tubman’s First Act of Defiance View 2

Bucktown Store Closeup Site of Harriet Tubman’s First Act of Defiance - Harriet Tubman's Eastern Shore of Maryland

The Site of Harriet Tubman’s First Act of Defiance

When Harriet Tubman was around 15 years old girl, sometime around 1835.  She was sent to the Bucktown store shown here in this photo.  Here she encountered a slave owned by another family, who had left work in the fields without permission. The overseer, angry,  and demanded that Tubman help stop the young man. She refused, and as the slave ran away, the overseer threw a two-pound weight at him. While standing in the the doorway of this store the weight struck Tubman instead.  She said the weight "broke my skull". She later explained her belief that her hair  which "had never been combed and stood out like a bushel basket" saved her life.   While bleeding and unconscious, Tubman was sent back to her owner's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without care for two days. She was sent back into the fields , "with blood and sweat rolling down my face until I couldn't see." Her boss said she was "not worth a sixpence" and returned her to Edward Brodess, who tried unsuccessfully to sell her.  She began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. These episodes were alarming to her family, who were unable to wake her when she fell asleep suddenly and without warning. This condition remained with Tubman  until she underwent an operation on her skull at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital in the late 1890s. She had received no anesthesia for the procedure, and reportedly chose instead to bite down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

 At the time this happen, Bucktown was a busy community with two stores, a shopkeeper’s home, blacksmith,farms, and shipyards on the nearby Transquaking River.

Bucktown Store Closeup Site of Harriet Tubman’s First Act of Defiance - Harriet Tubman’s Eastern Shore of Maryland