As Women's History Month draws to a close, visitors to the Cambridge and Bucktown area of Dorchester County can explore the lives of two Eastern Shore women who became legends of American and Maryland history: Harriet Tubman and Annie Oakley.
Tubman's spirit still breathes through the Bucktown Village Store (Bestpitch Ferry Road in Bucktown; call 410-901-9255 for an appointment). Owners Susan and Jay Meredith bought the store in 1997 because Jay's great-great-grandfather and his great-grandfather had owned it.
Then they learned the history attached to it: Tubman, born about 1820, frequented the shop to buy food and other necessities, and an incident there affected her for the rest of her life.
At age 12, she ran into the store to warn a slave that an overseer was approaching. The outraged overseer picked up a 2-pound weight and threw it at the slave. He ducked, but Tubman was hit on the forehead. Her recovery was long, and she suffered the effects of the incident for the rest of her life.
In 1849, Tubman set out for what she believed in, even at risk to her life: freedom. A network of safe houses -- the Underground Railroad -- helped her escape to the North. But she returned again and again to help liberate family and friends; she came back 19 times and helped lead more than 300 slaves into freedom.
"She never talked to the wrong person or knocked on the wrong door. I could just shiver when I read about the things she did," says Evelyn Townsend, president of the Harriet Tubman Museum and Learning Center (424 Race St., 410-228-0401, www.harriet tubmanmuseum.org). "She has been my heroine ever since I was in fourth grade." The museum offers information on Tubman as well as tours (by appointment only).
A couple of blocks from the museum, memories of a very different woman reside -- markswoman Annie Oakley, an Ohio native who built a home here in 1912-1913. She and her husband, sharpshooter Frank Butler, had passed through Cambridge on one of their Wild West tours and thought of the area as a good place to settle.
Mary Handley knows every detail of Oakley's life: her shooting tricks, her dresses, her marriage to Butler, even her relationship with their dog, Dave.
The Dorchester County Library where Handley works organized the Annie Oakley Riverside Jamboree, and she dressed up as Oakley to tell the tales of her life, after which she became an Oakley re-enactor.
