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50 free Harriet Tubman trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Harriet Tubman trivia quiz covers a life that reads like several: an enslaved girl called Minty on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a head injury that gave her lifelong visions, an escape to Philadelphia in 1849, thirteen return trips that freed some 70 people without losing one, a friendship with John Brown, service as a Union nurse, scout and spy who guided the Combahee River Raid, decades of poverty and activism in Auburn, New York, and a posthumous commission as a brigadier general in 2024. The easy questions cover the nickname 'Moses', the Underground Railroad and the Civil War. The medium ones ask about her family, her methods, her husbands, her farm and the raid that freed more than 750 people. The hard ones dig into the runaway advertisement, the reward myth, the gold-coin swindle, her pension fight, the brain surgery she endured biting a bullet, and the books and films about her. It suits a Black History Month lesson, a women's history round or anyone who wants to know the real person behind the icon. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
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Q 01What was Harriet Tubman's name at birth?
Araminta Ross
She was called 'Minty' as a child and adopted her mother's name, Harriet, around the time of her first marriage.
Q 02Roughly how many enslaved people did Tubman personally guide to freedom over some 13 missions?
About 70
She also gave instructions to 50 or 60 more who escaped on their own.
Q 03What biblical nickname was Tubman given for leading people out of slavery?
Moses
Like the prophet who led the Hebrews from Egypt, she brought her people out of bondage.
Q 04In which state was Tubman born into slavery?
Maryland
Her home was Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore, where by the 1840s half the black population was free.
Q 05What did an overseer throw that struck young Tubman's head and caused her lifelong seizures?
A two-pound metal weight
He was aiming at another enslaved man; she lay untreated on a loom seat for two days.
Q 06Which year do modern biographers, following Kate Larson, accept as most likely for Tubman's birth?
1822
Tubman herself said 1825, her death certificate says 1815 and her gravestone says 1820.
Q 07How many children did Tubman's parents, Rit and Ben Ross, have according to court records?
Nine
Several of her sisters were sold away and separated from the family forever.
Q 08What was Tubman's job when, aged five or six, she was hired out to a woman called 'Miss Susan'?
Nursemaid to a baby
She was whipped whenever the baby cried, once five times before breakfast.
Q 09As a child working for planter James Cook, what did Tubman have to check in the marshes even while sick with measles?
Muskrat traps
She became so ill that Cook sent her back and her mother nursed her to health.
Q 10What was the status of John Tubman, whom Harriet married around 1844?
A free black man
Any children they had would still have been enslaved because status followed the mother.
Q 11On what date did Tubman first escape from slavery, along with her brothers Ben and Henry?
September 17, 1849
Her brothers had second thoughts and turned back, forcing her to return; she left again alone weeks later.
Q 12What reward did Eliza Brodess offer in the Cambridge Democrat for each of the three runaways?
Up to $100
The popular legend of a $40,000 bounty on Tubman is a figure invented in an 1867 pension letter.
Q 13To which city did Tubman escape in 1849?
Philadelphia
The journey of nearly 90 miles on foot could take anything from several days to several weeks.
Q 21How did Tubman avoid recognition when she spotted a former enslaver on a train?
She pretended to read a newspaper
Everyone knew she was illiterate, so the man ignored the 'reading' woman.
Q 22Which Wilmington Quaker regularly arranged Tubman's onward transport from Delaware into Pennsylvania?
Thomas Garrett
He said he never met anyone 'who had more confidence in the voice of God'.
Q 23Which spiritual did Tubman sing with altered words to signal whether it was safe to proceed?
Go Down Moses
Q 14What did Tubman say she looked at to see if she was 'the same person' after crossing into Pennsylvania?
Her hands
She recalled the sun coming 'like gold through the trees' and feeling as if she were in Heaven.
Q 15Which 1850 federal law forced officials in free states to help catch escapees?
Fugitive Slave Act
After it passed, she began guiding people all the way to Canada.
Q 16Tubman's first rescue mission, in December 1850, saved her niece Kessiah, who was rescued from where?
A slave auction
Kessiah's free husband made the winning bid, then spirited the family away while the auctioneer went to lunch.
Q 17What did Tubman discover when she returned to the Eastern Shore in 1851 to fetch her husband John?
He had married another woman
He refused to leave, so she gathered other people who wanted to escape and led them north instead.
Q 18Which famous abolitionist likely sheltered Tubman's group of 11 escapees in 1851?
Frederick Douglass
He later wrote to her: 'I have wrought in the day – you in the night.'
Q 19On which day of the week did Tubman like to start escapes, and why?
Saturday, because runaway notices would not print until Monday
She also preferred winter, when long nights and cold weather kept people indoors.
Q 20What did Tubman carry as a disguise when she found herself walking toward a former enslaver?
Two live chickens
She yanked the strings on the birds' legs so their flapping let her avoid eye contact.
She also carried a revolver and told anyone wanting to turn back, 'Go on or die.'
Q 24Tubman said she never did what, in eight years as an Underground Railroad conductor?
Lost a passenger
'I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,' she told an audience.
Q 25To which Canadian town did Tubman lead her elderly parents in 1857?
St. Catharines
A community of formerly enslaved people, including relatives, had gathered there.
Q 26Which abolitionist called Tubman 'General Tubman' while recruiting for his raid on Harpers Ferry?
John Brown
She helped him plan and raise funds; when the raid took place in October 1859 she was in New York City.
Q 27Whose wife sold Tubman a seven-acre farm near Auburn, New York, in 1859?
Senator William H. Seward
Auburn was a hotbed of antislavery activism, and the farm became a haven for her family and boarders.
Q 28Why did Tubman's last rescue mission, in 1860, fail to free her sister Rachel's children?
She could not pay a $30 bribe
Rachel had already died; Tubman still led another group, the Ennalls family, north on that trip.
Q 29In which South Carolina district did Tubman start working with freed refugees for the Union in 1862?
Port Royal
She served as a nurse there, making remedies from local plants and selling pies and root beer to support herself.
Q 30Tubman guided how many steamboats of black soldiers up the Combahee River in the 1863 raid?
Three
They steered past mines to burn plantations, and more than 750 enslaved people were carried away to freedom.