Kate Larson on Essential Underground Railroad Figures

The three characters I would teach – given very limited time – would be, of course, Harriet Tubman, William Still, and Thomas Garrett. These three people were incredible forces on the UGRR as individuals and as accomplices and colleagues. Harriet Tubman tapped into Thomas Garrett’s and William Still’s extensive and sophisticated UGRR network that encompassed not only Garrett’s home state of Delaware, but Tubman’s Maryland stomping ground, as well as Virginia and North Carolina. Garrett is credited with aiding in the escape of approximately 2700 fugitives over a forty year period to the Civil War. Tubman, 70 or so friends and family from the Eastern Shore of Maryland between 1850 and 1860; and William Still, as Secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee during the 1850s, assisted at least 2000 runaways. Their powerful networks of agents, conductors, and station masters extended all the way from slave territory to Pennsylvania, New York, New England and Canada. There are so many personal stories you can share with your students that involve these three historical figures and the people they helped and interacted with. They also represent a core of an important theme of the UGRR movement – biracial cooperation and mutual support. So discover Thomas Garrett, a Wilmington, DE Quaker, William Still, a free born African American business man and notoriously underrated UGRR in Philadelphia, and of course, Harriet Tubman, formerly enslaved woman whose love of her family and friends moved her to conduct dangerous missions back into slave territory to bring away her loved ones, and who used her great intelligence and skills to perfect and utilize this UGRR network to her great advantage.