Jacob Jackson Home Site: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park

Hanna, Jennifer

The 480-acre Jacob Jackson Home Site is located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, near the mouth of Parson’s Creek in Dorchester County. The property is part of the 11,750-acre Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park administered by the National Park Service, which also includes portions of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park administered by the State of Maryland, and privately-owned land. The park memorializes the remarkable legacy of Harriet Tubman through the preservation of the landscape of her youth. Today Harriet Tubman is considered a national hero for her bravery and leadership in the struggle for equal rights for African Americans and women. In Dorchester County, Tubman first experienced the power of collective resistance and learned to read the landscape to facilitate her own escape and that of many others. The site is nationally significant as the farm of Jacob Jackson, a friend and neighbor of Tubman. In 1854, Tubman sent a coded letter to Jackson, who then helped arrange the escape of her three enslaved brothers. At the Jacob Jackson Home Site, brackish muddy marshes, golden with sedges and grass, spread from Taylor’s Island Road at the property's western boundary to thick forests of oak, pine, and sweet gum. Creeks, ditches, and an abandoned canal stretch from the ragged edges of the Little Choptank River deep into the site. In the 1830s and 1840s, free Black farmers, Jacob and Dinah Jackson, lived near to the Tubman and Ross families in the community of White Marsh, a short distance southeast of the 480-acre site. In 1848, Jacob and Dinah bought land near the mouth of Parson’s Creek and moved to what is now known as the Jacob Jackson Home Site. When Jacob received a letter from Tubman asking him to tell her enslaved brothers that she was coming to bring them north to freedom, Jackson was living on his farm and under suspicion of aiding enslaved people. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the community of White Marsh on Peter’s Neck, a half-mile east of Taylor’s Island Road, was isolated from county-thoroughfares. Nevertheless, footpaths and waterways linked the community to the broader landscape, including land of the Jacob Jackson Home Site. Within this community, many of Harriet Tubman's former neighbors, family, and friends, including Jacob and Dinah Jackson, formed a network of resistance to an institutionalized system of slavery and discrimination. In honor of Harriet Tubman's legacy and the achievements of the Underground Railroad, on March 28, 2013, President Barak Obama designated the 480-acre Jacob Jackson Home Site as part the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument. On December 19, 2014, Congress established the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. The park’s boundaries encompassed 11,750 acres, including the 480-acre Jacob Jackson Home Site. The Jacob Jackson Home Site encompasses the Jackson’s farm and land owned by their mid-nineteenth century neighbors, the Tall, Coursey, and Green families, among others. There is currently no public access to the Jacob Jackson Home Site, and thus there are no visitor services on site. However, people may view the property from Taylor’s Island Road (Maryland State Route 16), which forms the park’s western boundary. No built features are located on the landscape of the Jacob Jackson Home Site. The wooden houses, barns, and fences that once defined the site’s long-abandoned fields are gone. Only a sunken road trace filled with brackish water, Martins Lane (later called Vince Green Road), points toward Jacob and Dinah Jackson's farm. No physical evidence of the locations of the Jackson farm buildings has been found yet. The Jacob Jackson Home Site property, however, includes numerous structural remnants identifying the locations of nineteenth-century landowners who were the neighbors.

Jacob Jackson Home Site: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park

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