Saturday's Google Doodle Honors Maryland Conductor on Underground Railroad

If you go to the Google home page today, you will see the search giant is saluting a Maryland native who helped slaves flee the South to find freedom.

Harriett Tubman, the woman credited with leading hundreds of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War, was honored with a Google Doodle Saturday, reports the Baltimore Sun.

The Google search engine periodically uses an artistic interpretation of its logo, known as the Doodle, to honor famous people or commemorate holidays and events, the newspaper says. The Tubman-inspired logo that appeared Saturday features a drawing of Tubman holding a lantern against a night sky, with the letters made to look like tree branches.

Tubman was born a slave in Maryland's Dorchester County around 1820, according to a biography of her done by public television. In 1849, worried that she and other slaves on the plantation were to be sold, Tubman fled on foot, followed the North Star by night, and settled in Philadelphia. She made subsequent trips back to Maryland and escorted her sister and her family, her brother and her parents to the North.