The True Story Of Harriet Tubman's Only Child

Gertie Davis came into an extended and somewhat unconventional household when she was adopted by Harriet Tubman and Nelson Davis (per "Bound for the Promised Land"). Tubman was by then middle-aged and lived on a 7-acre farm in Auburn, New York that she had purchased in 1859 from William H. Seward, future secretary of state to Abraham Lincoln. She took in boarders (Nelson was one, before they married) and ran a brickmaking business on the farm. Accounts of Tubman's marriage to Nelson, who was more than 20 years younger than her, varied. Some described it in happier terms, while others said that Tubman's many duties and interests didn't leave her with much time or devotion to her home life. 

At the time Gertie was brought into this household, Tubman was still caring for her mother, Rit, though she died only six years after Gertie's adoption. There were four non-relative boarders on the farm, and a number of Tubman's friends and family lived nearby in Auburn. Their next-door neighbor was Tubman's brother John. It was with one of these families that Tubman, Nelson, and Gertie lodged after their farmhouse burnt down some time between 1882 and 1884 (it was later rebuilt in brick).

After growing up among this extended family, Gertie married a man named Watson, though little else about her adult life can be confirmed. She may have accompanied Tubman to a suffragette meeting in her early 20s, but even this account doesn't name the attendant young lady, and it may have been Tubman's great-grandniece instead.

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