Today was another trip to grandma’s house. First though, we said good-bye to Thomas and Kristen. Kristen was driven by my parents to ROC early this morning, and Thomas was headed back home in his car. My family left between those two departures to go to Harriet Tubman’s home in Auburn before meeting up with my parents and grandma in another part of Auburn.
As we drove to Auburn, we went through Waterloo, birthplace of Memorial Day, then through Seneca Falls, where women’s suffrage movement began in 1848 (with Stanton, Mott & Wright; Susan B. Anthony came a bit later… from Rochester). Mott was also big in the anti-slavery movement and convinced Harriet Tubman to move to Auburn at the start of the Civil War… and we were headed to her house now!
The movie/tour was very informational about Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I did not realize that the Underground Railroad was this far north, but its various start points were along the Southern Pennsylvania border (the Mason-Dixon Line) and continued west along the Ohio and Missouri rivers. The “promise land” was not “The North” as I had assumed, but Canada, and so the trail was not from the South to freedom in the North, but began when one got into Pennsylvania/Ohio/Indiana, Illinois and ended when one got to Canada. Tubman was making her trips back and forth between Philadelphia to the other side of Niagara Falls for the most part. She also didn’t escape from the Deep South, but from a plantation in Maryland. The reason she had to sneak through Pennsylvania and New York was because there were huge bounties for anyone helping slaves escape to Canada, and the folks in Pennsylvania and New York would gladly take the reward. At the start of the Civil War, Tubman moved to Auburn… and then she worked for the Union as a scout, but didn’t get paid. It wasn’t until word got out after the war that she was broke that folks took up a collection. Eventually, she did get a pension. She lived to 93; quite old for those days.
Speaking of 93, we then went to have lunch with my grandma, who is 93, and then we took her back to her house, where the kids and I explored her basement and garage. The garage/cellar once held all these “wonders” (junk that my grandpa collected, and wonderful wood projects that he had made), but my uncle Stu was quite thorough in getting rid of everything. The bottom floor was now mostly bare; only the smell of must and oil remained (my grandfather was a mechanic, and his detached A-frame garage used to be a gas station – the tanks are still underground!). Still, there were a few “trinkets” left to keep our attention for a while: an old manual drill press, a metal lathe, some of his dioramas, and license plates my family had sent him over the years from all over the world.
The drive home was fun. My kids continued to control the stereo because we had plugged my iPod into it and they had the iPod in the back. Most of the music was unfamiliar to them, but occasionally, they found a song they knew from Rock Band.
It is simply impossible to show in pictures how beautiful the countryside is. I tried to take pictures of it, but failed to show its majesty.
