In 1856, Harriet Tubman planned to bring a young woman named Tilly out of enslavement in Baltimore and on to Canada to join her awaiting fiancé. In Philadelphia, Harriet Tubman boarded a steamboat, and traveled through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal on her way to Baltimore. The steamboat captain provided Tubman with a certificate that allowed her to travel as a free resident of Philadelphia. She located Tilly in Baltimore and boarded a southbound bay steamer with her, rather than one bound for Philadelphia. Tilly lacked the papers needed to travel. The southward faint avoided suspicion long enough to allow Harriet time to convince this steamboat captain, who knew the other captain, to give Tilly papers to allow her to travel into the north. Harriet and Tilly departed the steamboat at Seaford, Delaware, traveled to Wilmington, and Thomas Garrett arranged for Tilly’s trip to Canada. Seaford’s Gateway Park, where Harriet Tubman and Tilly began their escape through Delaware, is a designated National Park Service Network to Freedom site.[1]
[1] Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero [New York: Ballantine Books, 2004], 131-132. Laron cited Garrett to Higham, October 24, 1856, in James McGowan, Station Master on the Underground Railroad (Moylan, Pa.: The Whimie Press, 1977), 129-131.