Harriet Tubman's home for others in Auburn

Long before there was a formal Home, Harriet Tubman was taking elderly and ill people into her household outside Auburn. The seven-acre farm she bought from William H. Seward in 1859 became a family home in the early 1860s and a place where others could find care.

The National Park Service's 2008 study places that household within Auburn's established Black community, including an area known as New Guinea. Relatives and friends had connections reaching back to Maryland and Canada. Tubman's work for freedom and women's suffrage continued alongside the daily needs of sick, elderly, and disabled people.

Keeping the household going took work. According to the NPS study, Tubman and her second husband, Nelson Davis, ran the farm in the 1870s and 1880s. She also worked as a domestic. The study describes her as living close to poverty, in part because she supported an extended household that included relatives, orphaned children, and people who were sick, disabled, or without homes.

As Tubman grew older, she tried to give that care a more permanent home. In 1896, she borrowed money to buy an adjoining 25 acres with houses, barns, and other outbuildings. The NPS study and the National Historic Landmark nomination describe the purchase as an effort to establish a lasting home for Black elders. It also left her with a larger financial burden.

The nomination says she spent the next seven years caring for people and trying to secure the institution's future. In 1903, she deeded the 25-acre property to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, with an arrangement for the church to continue operating the Home. The NPS records describe the church as assuming or paying a $1,575 mortgage.

A Board of Trustees and a Board of Lady Managers took on the debt and organization. Church leaders and supporters raised money to renovate and equip the buildings. The Home formally opened in 1908.

The NPS study sets this work alongside other Black efforts to establish community educational and social services as white institutions increasingly denied African Americans access. Tubman's Home belonged to that wider history of communities providing care for themselves.

The work extended beyond the frame house most often associated with the institution. The study identifies John Brown Hall, a brick building farther back on the property, as another place where Tubman cared for ill relatives and friends. It no longer survives above ground, but its recorded use helps explain how care was spread across the property.

In 1911, declining health led Tubman to enter the Home herself. She died there on March 10, 1913, according to the National Historic Landmark nomination. The institution she had worked to establish was able to care for her in her last years.

There is more to learn about the people who lived and worked there. The farm, household, boards, and mortgage all offer routes into that history, especially the lives of residents and caregivers whose experiences receive less attention than Tubman's.

About this account

The NPS sources draw on deeds, financial records, church history, local newspapers, interviews, biographies, and other material. Those underlying records have not all been independently inspected for this account. The story follows the inspected NPS sources and leaves the fuller resident, caregiver, household, and farm-labor histories open for further research.

Source note

The 1896 land purchase, 1903 transfer, board structure, 1908 opening, Tubman's 1911 entry, and her 1913 death appear on pages 12-13 of the National Park Service's National Historic Landmark nomination. Auburn's Black community context, the seven-acre farm and household, financial pressure, 25-acre purchase, A.M.E. Zion arrangement, wider Black social-service movement, and John Brown Hall appear on printed pages 2-22 through 2-24 and 2-36 through 2-38 of the NPS Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study, Chapter 2. This article uses original synthesis and paraphrase only and excludes NPS pages, photographs, maps, embedded quotations, current visitor information, and uninspected private records.