She then helped her family find freedom
Upon reaching the city of Philadelphia, Tubman was safe and free. However, she was not content. As she wrote later: “I was a stranger in a strange land,” she said later. “[M]y father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were [in Maryland]. But I was free, and they should be free.” She found work as a domestic servant in the city, saving as much money as she could. Within a year, she had enough money to begin her work: she was about to become a ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railroad.
In December of 1850, Tubman received word that her niece, Kessiah and Kessiah’s two young children were due to be sold. She made a plan to rescue them. Tubman crossed back over into the South. Her brother-in-law hid her in Baltimore until the day of the slave auction. On the day of the sale, Kessiah’s husband, a freeman, made the winning bid. But instead of paying, he waited until the auctioneer went for lunch then they all made a break for it. Under cover of darkness, they sailed on a canoe to Baltimore. Here, they met up with Tubman and she led them to Philadelphia and to freedom.
Boosted by the success of her first mission, Tubman returned to Maryland the following spring. This time, she rescued her youngest brother, Moses, and two other men. Then, in the fall of 1851, Tubman vowed to return for her husband, John. She even saved up enough money to buy a new suit for him to wear while heading north. However, once she arrived in Maryland, she learned he had married another woman. So instead, Tubman agreed to take some other slaves – all strangers to her – with her across the Mason-Dixon Line.