Brodess Farm - A Childhood Hired Out

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

Pull into the small roadside pull-off and look down the lane. Near the house at its end stood the home of Edward Brodess, who held Tubman, her mother and her siblings as property. Nothing of his house or the cabins survives, and the land is private, so stay at the marker.

Around 1823 or 1824 Brodess moved Rit and her children here from Thompson's land. His farm was small and his family large, so he made money by hiring the people he enslaved out to other farmers. Minty was sent away as a small child, to check muskrat traps in icy water and to tend a white family's baby through the night, sometimes in households where she was whipped. The separations wounded the whole family, and Brodess sold three of her sisters away.

Tubman later said he was not needlessly cruel by the standards of slaveholders, though her brothers remembered him far more harshly. When Brodess died in March 1849, his widow faced debts and the family faced sale. That fall, Minty ran.

Getting here: Continue east on Key Wallace Drive and follow the byway signs toward Bucktown, about 8 miles, to the marker and pull-off on Greenbrier Road.

Did you know?: Tubman's mother, Rit, once hid her youngest son, Moses, for about a month and warned off the men who came for him, and the planned sale to a Georgia buyer fell through.

Photo op: From the pull-off, frame the long farm lane between the fields; keep your feet on the shoulder.

Nearby: None here. The Bucktown store, the next stop, has parking but limited hours inside.

More on Wikipedia: Bucktown, Maryland · Harriet Tubman's family

Brodess Farm - A Childhood Hired Out

Stops on this tour