Harriet Tubman

A road trip to Dorchester County, Maryland, offers an in-depth look at Harriet Tubman's life. Stop in Cambridge for brunch and craft beer.

The visitor center is part of “Tubman Country” and is 7 miles from where her family was enslaved. For more stories like this, [subscribe](https://northernvirginiamag.secure.darwin.cx/I**WEBN) to Northern Virginia Magazine. [Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge](https://www.fws.gov/refuge/blackwater), the visitor center opens to a shadowy hallway made of reclaimed barnwood at the southern end of the building, with bright windows at the north end. There’s a wrenching slave auction at the Dorchester County Courthouse, where three of Tubman’s sisters were sold. Tubman traversed this landscape when she led 13 expeditions on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses and operatives who worked to emancipate enslaved people from the American South. We see her as a young child, who never learned to read or write, caring for her infant brother.