The New Tubman NHP 

Unit is 13th with cultural significance established by Obama

The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park was established Tuesday, Jan. 10, in Auburn, New York, becoming the 414th unit of the National Park System.

Twenty-three National Park Service units have been created or modified during the administration of President Barack Obama. Of those, 13 are, like the Tubman NHP, of cultural significance to marginalized communities.

The new park commemorates the work of the Underground Railroad conductor during her later years in life, when she was an active proponent of women’s suffrage and other causes. The park is located at the site where Tubman lived and worshiped in Auburn, New York, caring for family members and other formerly enslaved people seeking safe haven in the North.

The historic Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church, a modest, two-story, frame structure constructed in 1891 is directly associated with Harriet Tubman, her family, many of her supporters and the African American community of the time. The two-story Rectory is adjacent to the Church and both structures are located across the street from the For Hill Cemetery, the location of Tubman’s grave.

The historic church and rectory and other structures within the boundary of Harriet Tubman National Historical Park are largely intact from the time Harriet Tubman lived and worked in Auburn. They provide a strong physical basis for telling the story of Tubman’s years following the Civil War when she was active in the women’s suffrage movement, in the AME Zion Church and in the establishment of a home for elderly, indigent African Americans.

A sister site, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Cambridge, Maryland, was created as a national monument by Presidential proclamation in March 2013. Congress designated it as a national historical park in December 2014 in the same legislation that created the Auburn unit.

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