F4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022
likely another.) On a winter’s af-
ternoon, the basement kitchen
glowed warmly from the hearth,
and the thick stone walls muffled
the street noise. In the silence, I
could imagine hearing the clatter-
ing dishes, scraping chairs and
murmurs of travelers as they rest-
ed before continuing onward,
through the darkness and into the
light of freedom.
The day after my lunch at Cafe
108, I waited outside the Hilton
Garden Inn for a driving tour of
Auburn. Judith, Tubman’s descen-
dant, was behind the wheel, and
Celeste, the visiting craft brewer,
and her friend were in the back
seat, grazing on fruit from the
hotel’s buffet. Judith started at
Fort Hill Cemetery, where Tub-
man and several family members
are buried, including her hus-
band, Nelson Davis, and her
brother William. A Norway
spruce towered over the gravesite,
its shaggy foliage providing pro-
tective cover.
“My grandmother and great-
uncle planted it as a grave marker
for their parents, adjoining Tub-
man’s grave,” said Judith, refer-
ring to Tubman’s grandniece and
grandnephew.
Visitors had left gifts for Tub-
man: a wreath with a red bow, a
bouquet of purple flowers, a green
candle and a black felt hat en-
crusted with snow. Celeste re-
turned to the car with a pine cone,
a flavor component she has incor-
porated in her beer. Judith, a stew-
ard of her ancestors’ tree, asked
Celeste whether she had found the
cone or plucked it from a branch.
Celeste assured her that she had
retrieved it from the ground.
Judith revved the car and head-
ed to Holland Stadium, which was
named after Auburn native Je-
rome Heartwell Holland, the first
Black person to play football at
Cornell University (among other
firsts), and the Booker T. Washing-
ton Community Center, which
was established in 1927 for Black
paring to leave, two sightseeing
buses drove into the lot and un-
loaded a stream of passengers.
Carter’s dynamic voice rose above
the din. I inched closer to listen,
never tiring of hearing about the
woman who was born enslaved
and died an agent of freedom.
If You Go
WHERE TO STAY
Springside Inn
6141 W. Lake Rd., Auburn, N.Y.
315-252-7 247
springsideinn.com
The inn near Owasco Lake offers
seven country-luxe rooms, plus the
Oak & Vine gastropub. The lodge,
which occupies the site of a former
boys’ school, was most likely a stop
on the Underground Railroad. Ask
the owners, Sean and Beth
Lattimore, to show you the bulging
binder filled with articles and
scholarly materials about Harriet
Tubman and Auburn. Rooms start
at $135 a night, including
breakfast.
WHERE TO EAT
Cafe 108
108 Genesee St.
315-252-2233
cafe108.org
This breakfast and lunch spot is
part of the Auburn Public Theater,
with proceeds going to the nonprofit
performing arts venue. The cafe is
also a community gathering place
that hosts special events. Breakfast
starts at $5; lunchtime sandwiches
and wraps start at $11. For a lighter
meal, grab a smoothie, homemade
baked good or specialty coffee.
WHAT TO DO
Seward House Museum
33 South St.
315-252-1283
sewardhouse.org
The museum, the former gilded
home of abolitionists, runs guided
tours on the hour, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
Tuesday through Saturday. From
June through September, the house
is open Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Entry costs $14 per adult, with a
discounted rate for seniors and
Cayuga County residents, among
other select groups. Children under
6 are free. Admission includes two
exhibits: one about Harriet Tubman
and the Sewards, and the other
about voting rights.
Harriet Tubman Home
180 South St.
315-252-2081
harriettubmanhome.com
Tubman’s property includes a
visitor center, her residence and the
Tubman Home for Aged and
Indigent Negroes. Two tours are
offered by reservation Tuesday
through Saturday, at 10 a.m. and 1
p.m. On open days, visitors are
welcome to explore the grounds
independently until 3 p.m. The tour
costs $5; cash is preferred. The
times and price are subject to
change.
FROM TOP: A statue of
Harriet Tubman on the
plaza of the New York
State Equal Rights
Heritage Center in
Auburn, N.Y.; Tubman’s
two-story brick
residence still stands on
her original farmland,
seven acres that she
purchased from the
Seward family in 1859;
Tubman, who died of
pneumonia in 1913, is
buried in Fort Hill
Cemetery, not far from
her property.
man’s time in Auburn, where she
was an active member of the com-
munity and in the equal rights
movement that flourished up-
state. Here, you can see where
Tubman attended church, partici-
pated in a town hall meeting
about garbage collection, cared
for elderly Black people and, final-
ly, after a tireless life, rested.
“This is the part of her story
that tells the real Harriet Tub-
man,” said the Rev. Paul Gordon
Carter, manager of the Harriet
Tubman Home, which is part of
the National Park Service’s histor-
ical site. “In Maryland, they talk
more of her enslaved life. Here we
try to enlighten people about her
free life.”
This year, Auburn is honoring
the bicentennial of Tubman’s
birth with special events, such as
exhibits and lectures. Program-
ming started in February, during
Black History Month; ramped up
in March, her birth month and
Women’s History Month; and will
continue through summer. The
National Park Service has also
planned celebrations at both of its
Tubman parks — Auburn’s and
the Harriet Tubman Under-
ground Railroad National Histor-
ical Park on Maryland’s Eastern
Shore. The festivities will run
through September, or Interna-
tional Underground Railroad
Month, which Maryland Gov. Lar-
ry Hogan (R) declared in 2019.
“There’s no one braver than
Harriet Tubman,” said Celeste Be-
atty, founder of Harlem Brewing
Company and a presenter at Brave
Brews, a festival of female craft
brewers held the first weekend of
March in Auburn. “These are hal-
lowed, holy grounds.”
T
ubman is not literally on
every corner, but close. On
the walk from Cafe 108, the
Auburn Public Theater’s eatery, to
the New York State Equal Rights
Heritage Center, I passed a mural
of the abolitionist on the Genesee
Center building and a bronze stat-
ue dripping in icicles in the heri-
tage center’s plaza. Inside the for-
mer site of the Women’s Educa-
tional and Industrial Union, Tub-
man appears in a gallery of
illustrious New Yorkers who dedi-
cated their lives to abolishing slav-
ery or fighting for women’s or
human rights. She occupies a spot
in the top row, alongside AIDS
activist Larry Kramer, Eleanor
Roosevelt and Emily Howland, a
suffragist friend of Tubman’s who
lived in the neighboring hamlet
that is now the Sherwood Equal
Rights Historic District.
“Harriet stayed at Emily’s on
occasion, and they attended
events together,” said Larry Bell, a
historian at Opendore, a museum
in Sherwood. “Emily owned an
album with a picture of a young
Harriet Tubman.” (The Smithso-
nian Institution’s National Mu-
seum of African American History
and Culture acquired the album.)
For the bicentennial, the equal
rights center decorated its win-
dows with hundreds of birthday
cards made by schoolchildren
from around the country. “Dear
Harriet, It’s your 200th birthday.
Thank you for being a spy and a
leader. You are the best!” one well-
wisher wrote in pencil.
A few paces from the center is
the Seward House Museum, the
grand home of the family who sold
Tubman the first parcel of land
she had ever owned. Without
their generous offer, Canada
might have been the host of this
bicentennial party. On a tour of
the house, my guide, Linda Guinn,
led me to the parlor, which was
dressed to impress with gold-
painted chairs and portraits of the
main cast of characters: Elijah
Miller, the wealthy judge whose
marriage agreement for his
daughter stipulated that the cou-
ple must move into his home;
William Seward, the politician
son-in-law; and Frances, the
daughter, wife and fervid aboli-
tionist.
The tour of the 30-plus-room
Italianate mansion mainly cen-
ters on family life, career (as Abra-
ham Lincoln’s secretary of state,
Seward was targeted in the plot to
assassinate the president and sev-
eral top bureaucrats) and interior
design (all of the furnishings are
original, with the exception of a
few rugs). However, an exhibit
called “Forged in Freedom: The
Bond of the Seward-Tubman Fam-
ilies” delves into the friends’ rela-
tionship and their shared mission
to end slavery.
“Harriet Tubman passed
through here quite a bit,” Linda
said, alluding to Tubman’s multi-
ple trips on the Underground
Railroad. “They supported her
with food and funding, and raised
her niece while she was in the Civil
War.”
T
he Seward House was a way
station on the route to Cana-
da, one of several safe ha-
vens in Cayuga County. (My lodg-
ing, the Springside Inn, was most
TUBMAN FROM F1
residents who were not welcome
at the town’s YMCA. At the
Thompson Memorial AME Zion
Church, which the National Park
Service is restoring to its earlier
glory, Judith curbed the car so we
could take a closer peek at the
church that counted Tubman
among its congregation and offici-
ated her funeral. The wood struc-
ture looked precarious, as if a
wind gust could blow it down like
a matchstick house.
A few miles away in Skaneate-
les, Judith pointed out the Fuller
House, which had sheltered pas-
sengers on the Underground Rail-
road. For our final stop, we
popped into the Willard Memori-
al Chapel. The 19th-century
church does not have a Tubman
connection, but we made an ex-
ception for the world’s only intact
chapel designed by Louis C. Tiffa-
ny and his father’s company. Apol-
ogizing profusely, we left in the
middle of the guide’s talk; I had a 1
p.m. reservation at the Harriet
Tubman Home, and Celeste was
kicking off the one-mile craft
brewery walk. Judith dropped me
off, then booked it to the starting
line of the beer crawl.
T
he Tubman Home is a col-
lection of buildings owned
and operated by the AME
Zion Church and the National
Park Service. Tubman, who had
purchased 25 acres in addition to
the original seven, had deeded her
property to the church when she
fell behind on payments. The Na-
tional Park Service entered the
picture in 2017, when it unveiled
the 32-acre Harriet Tubman Na-
tional Historical Park.
Carter, who was wearing a mi-
crophone and a gray sweatshirt
dominated by an image of Tub-
man, gathered our group in the
visitor center. We stood facing a
long timeline of her life and
benchmark events that led to the
abolition of slavery. The reverend
was an animated speaker who
sprinkled new details into a famil-
iar story. For example, during the
Civil War, he told us that, in addi-
tion to Tubman’s roles as spy,
scout, nurse and cook, she was
also an entrepreneur who sold pie
and root beer to Union soldiers.
“Only 1 out of 1,000 people
know that answer,” he said, after
polling our group about Tubman’s
wartime efforts. Not one of us
guessed the last one.
Tubman’s two-story brick resi-
dence still stands on her original
farmland. However, the Home for
Aged and Indigent Negroes was
rebuilt in the early 1950s, and the
infirmary was destroyed by fire in
- After Carter concluded his
talk — “And that, my friends, is the
story of Harriet Tubman Davis” —
we could briefly step inside the
entrance to the nursing home.
(For health reasons, we could not
linger indoors, and because of one
bad seed who tried to sell images
of the building, we could not snap
photos of the interior.) Her resi-
dence is slated for renovation, but
I walked around its exterior, wish-
ing bricks could talk.
Following the tour, I consid-
ered catching up with the brewery
crawlers. However, as I was pre-
‘No one braver’: Honoring Tubman in Upstate New York
PHOTOS BY ANDREA SACHS/ THE WASHINGTON POST
