Harriet Tubman
Around 1844, Tubman married a free black man named John Tubman. Little is known about him or their time together. Their marriage was complicated because she was a slave. Since children would have the status of the mother, any children born to Harriet and John would become slaves. By this time, half the black population on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was free. Marriages between free people and enslaved people were not uncommon. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom. Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet when she arrived to Philadelphia. When she returned to Manchester to tell her husband to come with him, he was remarried already.