Stewart's Canal - Waterways and Watermen

A stop on Harriet Tubman, a free self-guided tour.

Where Route 16 crosses Parsons Creek you pass over part of a seven-mile canal cut through the marsh by hand. Enslaved and free Black laborers dug it over roughly two decades, from about 1810 to 1832, so the Stewart family, Anthony Thompson and their neighbors could float timber and crops to ships at Madison Bay. The work was exhausting and sometimes deadly.

As a young woman Tubman worked in this landscape, cutting and hauling timber alongside her father. She learned the woods, the tides and the people of the water. Black sailors and dockworkers here carried goods, and news, to Baltimore, Philadelphia and beyond, and she came to know that hidden network.

It paid off. In December 1854, living free in Philadelphia, Tubman heard that three of her brothers were about to be sold. She had a carefully worded letter sent to Jacob Jackson, a free Black man in Madison who lived just south of this canal, telling him she was coming. His home site is now protected within the national historical park.

There is no parking at the canal; slow down and look from the road.

Getting here: Return to Route 16 and continue west toward Taylors Island, about 3 miles; the canal meets the road at the Parsons Creek bridge.

Did you know?: Tubman's 1869 biography says her letter to Jacob Jackson was written in religious language about being ready to board the good old ship of Zion; white officials who opened it could not make sense of it, but Jackson could.

Photo op: Only if you can pull fully off the road safely: the long straight cut through the marsh shows how much earth was moved by hand.

Nearby: None at the canal. Nearest restrooms are at the Tubman visitor center, the next stop.

More on Wikipedia: Taylors Island, Maryland · Madison, Maryland · Harriet Tubman

Stewart's Canal - Waterways and Watermen

Stops on this tour