Harriet Tubman Museum Will Open In New Jersey

According to officials in Cape May County, NJ, a local church will be converted into a Harriet Tubman museum.

SNJToday reports that, “Over the weekend, developers signed an agreement with the Macedonia Baptist Church in Cape May to renovate the church’s old parsonage and turn it into a museum honoring the abolitionist.”

This former pastor, Rev. Robert Davis,’s house will pay tribute to the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman whose efforts to free enslaved black people in the south dubbed her the “Moses of Her People.”

Harriet Tubman was widely known for escaping slavery and returning several times to help others escape the brutality of slavery. She “also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War,” and “is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military.”

At the age of five:

“Tubman’s owners rented her out to neighbors as a domestic servant. Early signs of her resistance to slavery and its abuses came at age twelve when she intervened to keep her master from beating an enslaved man who tried to escape. She was hit in the head with a two-pound weight, leaving her with a lifetime of severe headaches and narcolepsy.”

She lived in Cape May during the 1850’s and worked as a cook in order to earn money to help runaways bondsmen. This helped her return to the South over 19 times.

The museum will be dedicated to Rev. Robert Davis who passed away in 2015 and was known for “his collection of historic slavery items that he would take to various schools to talk about the slave issues.”

They hope to complete the project in 2020 which is the same year in which “federal officials plan to release the new $20 bill featuring Tubman’s face on the front.”