Dr. Julie M. Schablitsky Finds Harriet Tubman’s Lost Maryland Home

A 1808 coin found in fall 2020 by Julie Schablitsky, an archaeologist with the Maryland State Highway Administration. The coin was one of the first clues that the site of Tubman's former home was nearby. (Julie Schablitsky)

Archeologist Dr. Julie M. Schablitsky, Adjunct Professor in the Department and chief of the Cultural Resources Division at the Maryland Department of Transportation, has found what archeologists believe to be Harriet Tubman's lost Maryland Home. The story is featured in the Washington Post "Harriet Tubman’s lost Maryland home found, archaeologists say."

"Archaeologist Julie Schablitsky found the coin with her metal detector along an old, abandoned road in an isolated area of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She dug it out of the ground and scraped off the mud.
She hadn’t been finding much as she and her team probed the swampy terrain of Dorchester County last fall searching for the lost site where the famous Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman lived with her family in the early 1800s.
She’d been frustrated that there had been no hint that she was anywhere near the home of Tubman’s father, Ben Ross. But as she cleaned the coin, the profile of a woman with flowing hair, and wearing a cap that said, “Liberty,” emerged. At the bottom was the date: 1808.
Tuesday morning state and federal officials announced that Schablitsky, guided in part by the coin, believes she has found the site where Tubman lived with her parents and several siblings during her formative teenage years before she escaped enslavement."

Published on Wed, 04/21/2021 - 11:30