Category

Tubman Travels

DestinationsTubman TravelsWay Back Machine

SITES & STOPS: The Historic Pine Street Corridor in Cambridge, Maryland

    When working on Tubman Travels, my Secrets of the Eastern Shore guide to the sites and stories associated with the Underground Railroad era on the Delmarva Peninsula, I also kept a bunch of notes on other African American stories in Delaware and on the Eastern Shore. Eventually, I put those together into a PDF document that’s available as a free download to everyone…
August 16, 2018
From the BooksTubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Sailing a Steamboat South to Freedom

This story of the Tilly escape is a free excerpt from the Secrets of the Eastern Shore guidebook, Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva.  More information about the book, including where to buy it in stores and online, is available here. BIG PICTURE: Tricks of the Trade Back during the Ottoman Empire, a German military commander named Helmuth von Moltke came up with…
July 16, 2018
Tubman Travels

TUBMAN TRAVELS: How the Other ‘Moses’ Kept the Dogs of Slavery at Bay

The story of Moses Viney that follows is excerpted from Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva, a book by Secrets of the Eastern Shore that tells stories of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and many other men and women whose journeys in slavery and out of bondage went through the Eastern Shore and Delaware. Moses Viney had a pretty fun go of it for…
March 27, 2018
DestinationsTubman TravelsWay Back Machine

The Oldest Black Community in the Whole Country May Be Right Here on the Eastern Shore

    For many years, historians gave the title of oldest black community in the country to a neighborhood in New Orleans called Tremé, which dates its African American story back to 1812. But thanks to an extraordinary research and revitalization project in Talbot County, Maryland, it’s now apparent that a neighborhood on the Eastern Shore has Tremé beat by more than two decades. The…
February 7, 2018
Tubman Travels

The Book: Tubman Travels–32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva

The inspiring, true-life stories of the Underground Railroad come alive for our times in Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva. Join award-winning writer Jim Duffy as he wanders the backroads and small towns of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Delaware in search of sites and scenes that will put modern-day travelers in touch with stories from the lives of men and women who set out…
September 11, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: The Price of Freedom

    The most popular route from Dorchester County into Delaware along the Underground Railroad ran through Samuel Green’s old stomping grounds of East New Market. Today, Faith Community United Methodist Church is tucked off to the east of the highway there, behind the tracks that give that Railroad Avenue its name. The church dates its history to 1844, when it was known as Colored People’s…
August 20, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Young Frederick Douglass in the Fight of His Life

    Standing in downtown St. Michaels today, with its tourist-friendly bevy of upscale shops and interesting eateries, it’s not easy to imagine the sort of place this town was when Frederick Douglass arrived in the early 1830s. Still known as Fred Bailey then, he was at this point a city boy through and through. He was horrified to find himself stuck in a rural…
July 28, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Love Comes in a Box

    This story of Lear Green's escape from slavery is a free preview from Chapter 27 of Tubman Tales: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delamarva, which will be published in September 2017. Before 1829, boats bound for Philadelphia from the Chesapeake Bay had to take the roundabout route, sailing down to the mouth of the Bay and then circling back up along the Atlantic Coast,…
July 27, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TALES: Young Fred Bailey Gets His First Taste of Freedom

    My latest writing project is something I'm calling "Tubman Tales," though it focuses on more than just Harriet Tubman. Case in point: This chapter is about the life of a young slave in Talbot County named Fred Bailey, who is better known in the history books as the famous anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass. Running Free at Holme Hill Young Fred Bailey got his first…
February 8, 2017