♪ ♪ [Julie Schabliztky] Somewhere on this property Harriet Tubman was born, we just don't know exactly where.

What we do know is that we have something exciting on a creek on the former Anthony Thompson property.

We're finding all sorts of interesting artifacts and even a building foundation, and this would be about a mile and a half away from Ben Ross's home, and the actual Anthony Thompson main house was situated right in between the two locations.

♪ ♪ [Bill Jarmon] Ben Ross met his wife when Harriet was a personal slave to Mary Pattison Brodess and when her husband died, Mr. Brodess - she and her two year old son accepted the marriage from Anthony Thompson, and Harriet went to live on the Thompson plantation, and at the Thompson plantation Harriet Greene met Ben Ross and they got married.

And we know the 5th child was Araminta, and that we now know was March 15th, 1822.

♪ ♪ [Julie] We're on the location of the former Anthony Thompson farm he had about 1000 acres and he had at one time up to 40 enslaved African Americans living here helping him both in the woods as well as the farm and in his house.

There were maps that talked about there being dwellings in the vicinity.

And so, we took a look out here and looked at the ground surface, and ended up finding bits of brick on the ground, and that was enough to make us want to do additional archaeology.

So, we went ahead and did a survey out here doing shovel test pits every 25 feet or so and then based on the location of these artifacts in our holes, we ended up doing a ground penetrating radar and magnetometry survey, and what was exciting is that right where we thought there'd be something there was, there was a building that was 30 feet by 20 feet, and right now we're in the middle of digging it.

♪ ♪ [Bill] When the son asked for his property from Anthony Thompson the son was allowed to take his property which was the enslaved mother Harriet Greene Ross with her children.

Ben Ross was owned by Anthony Thompson, so he just couldn't pick up and leave with the family, so they were separated.

They were able to have three more children but they lived separate lives.

But Araminta was considered to be someone that could cause problems and no one would buy her so to speak.

She was sent to live or work with her dad, and we've said between 13 and 15 years of age, and she lived with him until she married her husband who was John Tubman.

So 1842...she marries, 1849...she runs away.

[Julie] A lot of times people think that enslaved people lived right next to their enslaver, next to the big house, or within view.

And that's not really what we're finding here, we're actually finding that Ben Ross for example lived at least a mile away, while this particular place that could be a slave quarter was about a quarter mile away, so these places weren't always right next to the main house that they were spread out and people wonder how that was possible, wouldn't they have run away and not been under their eye?

And the reality was, is that, that slave owners very early on knew to keep people anchored to this place and keep them from being a runaway risk is to shackle them mentally by encouraging them to have a family.

So, if you end up marrying someone here, starting a family and they're here at different farms across the landscape, you're less likely to be a runaway, so it wasn't a big deal to have them live far away from the main house.

♪ ♪ [Julie] All right so gather round this is Sarah and she's going to be in charge of processing all these artifacts and telling you today what they are.

[Sarah] And what we call diagnostic artifacts are artifacts that tell us, you know, sort of when... [Julie] We found the Ben Ross homeplace, so that will go on it and it's also important to reconstruct Harriet's landscape, where were these buildings, what did she grow up, what did she see?

And this is really the land that time forgot.

What's farmland today was farmland back in the 1800s, what's wooded is probably wooded back then, so it's very similar to what she saw, and to be able to put where these buildings were, and reconstruct that for the public I think will be pretty powerful.

[Bill] In my own home town people did not really believe all that they were hearing about the legacy of Harriet Tubman.

Once...they said, "Well yeah, we think this is it, we think this little plot here," and they started doing some digging and finding some things, which showed evidence that people did live there-- yes, because of what they were collecting or finding in the area.

And then, to come up with two other sites, and maybe there's even a fourth, you know, I think it's, it's just fantastic.

It gives further evidence of what life was perhaps like, where Harriet was born.