New Photo Of Young, Post-Civil War Harriet Tubman Unearthed
UPDATE: The album that contained this picture of Harriet Tubman sold this past Thursday for $161,000. The album had an estimated sale price of $20,000 to $30,000 but ended up being sold for $130,000 along with a $31,000 auctioneer fee.
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Just in time for Black History Month, a new photo of a young Harriet Tubman has been unearthed.
According to a report from the Auburnpub the photo was taken in Auburn, New York, where Tubman bought land in 1859 from Senator William H. Seward. The picture shows Tubman seated, wearing a black blouse with an overlapping white collar and a white patterned skirt. The discovery could not be any more timely, considering that same plot of land was recently named the Harriet Tubman National Park.
"What's remarkable about this photograph is that she's so proud and dignified and beautiful. She looks so young," Kate Clifford Larson, a historian an author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, said. "This is the vibrant young Tubman just coming off her work during the Civil War. She's building her life with her family in Auburn."
Larson estimated Tubman's age between 43 and 46 in the new photo. The historian happened to discover the photo in an album of pictures from Emily Howland, a friend of Tubman's and a fellow abolitionist.
The photo will be sold on March 30, through New York City auction house Swann Galleries. Accoridng to the auction house's website, the unearthed picture is a part of a 44 picture collection that is estimated to sell anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000.
Last month the plot of land owned by Tubman finally won the final approval to be called the Harriet Tubman National Park. The park will not only include the site of Tubman's old home but the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that Tubman attended too.
In other Tubman-related news, the iconic abolitionist will be portrayed by actress Aisha Hinds in the second season of Underground, which premieres on March 8. A trailer was released a couple months back, which shows Hinds as an axe-wielding Tubman fighting for freedom.
