Harriet Tubman
As a child, Tubman also worked at the home of a planter named James Cook. She had to check muskrat traps in nearby marshes. She did that work even after she got measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess. Her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. Tubman spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness. She compared herself to "the boy on the Swanee River" (referring to Stephen Foster's song "Old Folks at Home"). When she was older and stronger, she did field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.