Four female relatives of Harriet Ross Tubman visited Annapolis yesterday to mark the state holiday honoring the famed fugitive slave who became a leader on the Underground Railroad.
"This is her day, her one day, to celebrate," said Patricia Ross Hawkins, 43, of Cambridge, near where Tubman was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore. The exact date of her birth is unknown.
Noting that Tubman died in her early 90s in Auburn, N.Y., on March 10, 1913, Hawkins added, "We don't know her birthday, so this is her day." This is the fifth year the state has marked Harriet Tubman Remembrance Day.
Relatives said yesterday that Tubman escaped alone, using her wits, strength and starlight to guide her north from the slave-holding farm where she'd worked the land until she was 25.
When she became a free woman in the North, Tubman described herself as "a stranger in a strange land," not knowing a soul at first, according to a National Park Service study.
In brief remarks made to a State House audience that included African-American history experts and state lawmakers, Hawkins said, "What kept her walking? How did she see the light in the darkness? The answer is love, hope, faith and the courage to keep moving. She was going to either be dead or free."
Peggy Ross of Cambridge, Bernice Ross Carney of Denton and Betty Ross of Easton are granddaughters of David Ross, who was Tubman's brother, they said.
It was not until the 1970s or 1980s that the family tree link to Tubman was clearly established, Hawkins said.
Louis C. Fields of Baltimore, a co-founder of the African-American Tourism Council of Maryland, organized a full day of events including a morning prayer service on Lawyers Mall by the Thurgood Marshall statue and a late afternoon unveiling of a portrait of Tubman in Annapolis City Hall.
Mayor Ellen O. Moyer presided at the unveiling of the brightly colored portrait by District Heights artist Aletha Kuschan.
Tubman was best known for leading other Eastern Shore fugitive slaves - often her own network of friends and kin - to freedom in the 1850s, but during the Civil War she served the Union as a nurse, a spy and a scout.
Fields noted that Tubman would be the first woman to be portrayed on the walls of the City Council meeting room. Along with observing the city occasion and the state holiday, he said, there is an effort to persuade federal lawmakers to make March 10 a national day of recognition for Tubman.
