♪ ♪ ERNESTINE WYATT: I could imagine her walking along that property.

She was out here in this swamp.

I love going out there.

It's so peaceful to me.

Knowing that it's pretty much unchanged from when she was there allows me to feel like: ok, I'm seeing exactly what she saw I'm walking where she walked, I'm hearing what she heard, and I'm imagining what it must have been like for her, and for others.

For some place where such horrible things took place, it's so peaceful.

JULIE SCHABLITZKY: The historical documents gave us a general search area last fall to look, so we dug over a thousand shovel test pits, which are these 1 1/2 foot diameter holes where we look for the presence and absence of artifacts.

And we knew we'd have Ben Ross's cabin if we could find artifacts from that early first half of the nineteenth century or so.

So we excavated over a thousand of these holes hoping that we'd come up with some artifacts, but unfortunately we were coming up with nothing.

But then at the very end of that project in the fall we found a site that could be the location, but we needed to excavate more because we had to find evidence of there being a building there.

So we wanted to return back in the spring to focus on this one location that was basically our only hope.

ERNESTINE: He helped out on the underground railroad, himself, so they wanted to be the last to be taken to New York, to Auburn.

My grandmother always called her Aunt Harriet.

The street my mother grew up on, Chapman Avenue, that's right up the hill and down the street from Aunt Harriet's property.

I think that we're blessed that we know where we come from.

So many of us in my culture, we don't.

The way the family treated it is that, this is what Aunt Harriet did, she did something to help other people.

That's how we looked at it, that she was a family member that just did these things and helped other people.

That's the thread that runs through my family line going to Aunt Harriet.

JULIE: Once we find the area we want to excavate and focus on we do these 5 foot by 5 foot units to give us a larger window into what we're finding.

So, now we're in the marshland, far in, and we're discovering things that are giving me a lot of hope.

Bricks and nails, personal artifacts, and of course domestic artifacts, think broken dishes, medicine bottles, things from the 19th century.

ERNESTINE: She kept us up to date you know via text, and took pictures, so I could visualize where they were and what different things look like which was amazing to me.

I'm saying wow, that's what he used?

That's what was in his home?

It was just really exciting.

JULIE: The more artifacts that we have, the tighter we can get our occupation of that site.

So if we go back to the lab, wash our artifacts, analyze them, and date them based on decorative patterns and vessel form, we can tell you whether we're looking at a site from the early 19th century or the late 19th century, and right now it looks like we have a broad range of artifact dates.

For Ben Ross we want to have someone who's been living there since 1820's, 1830's, 1840's, time period.

So if we have that date range we're going to be golden.

JULIE: Ben was there in the 1830's and 1840's, so we looked at the artifacts closer, and confirmed that these artifacts do date to the time period he was living there.

So with that, with the artifacts, the archaeology, the evidence of a building, and just a location knowing he worked in in the timber wetlands, those multiple lines of evidence tell us unequivocally that this is the home of Ben Ross.

[clapping] JULIE: I think so often we focus on Harriet Tubman the woman, but we forget to realize that she was trained and guided by other people in her life, including her father.

He taught her how to live off the animals that were here, how to read the stars, and I think that's a very important part of why she was so successful.

ERNESTINE: She spent an awful lot of time with him and he was responsible for her really understanding the landscape.

It was that that really helped her to be able to gain her freedom.

I think archaeologists, you know, I think they get a sense of things, where something might be, and they just keep pushing the boundary.

Hopefully she'll keep digging and going further and find even more, that that won't be the end of it, because I'm sure there's much more.