Harriet Tubman Promotes Women’s Suffrage

Harriet Ross Tubman (ca. 1820–1913), one of the most daring “conductors” on the Underground Railroad, led more than 300 slaves, including her parents, to freedom before the Civil War. She later served as a Union scout, spy, and nurse. After settling in Auburn, New York, Tubman began actively promoting women’s rights and attended suffrage events organized in nearby Geneva by Elizabeth and Anne Miller, whose scrapbook contains this rare photograph, likely taken in 1911. In order to provide her a more stable income, Tubman’s friends assisted in financing the writing of her biography by local author and teacher Sarah Hopkins Bradford. This copy belonged to and was inscribed by Susan B. Anthony.

“This most wonderful woman-Harriet Tubman-is still alive. I saw her but the other day at the beautiful home of Eliza Wright Osborne, the daughter of Martha C. Wright, in company with Elizabeth Smith Miller, the only daughter of Gerrit Smith, Miss Emily Howland, Rev. Anna H. Shaw and Mrs. Ella Wright Garrison, the daughter of Martha C. Wright and the wife of Wm. Lloyd Garrison Jr. All of us were visiting at Mrs. Osbornes, a real love feast of the few that are left, and here came Harriet Tubman! Susan B. Anthony 17 Madison street, Rochester, N.Y. Jan. 1, 1903.”