Sitting in her house one day, deep sleep fell upon her, and in a dream or vision she saw a chariot in the air, going south, and empty, but soon it returned, and lying in it, cold and stiff, was rhe body of a young lady of whom Harriet was very fond [Frances Seward], whose home was in Auburn, but who had gone to Washington with her father [William H. Seward], a distinguished officer of the Government there.

The shock roused Harriet from her sleep, and she ran into Auburn, to the house of her minister, crying out: "Oh, Miss Fanny is dead!" and the news had just been received.

Fanny Seward

Harriet Tubman

This dream shows that Tubman's intuition didn't just guide her on the Underground Railroad, evading slavers and informers; it was just as active after the war, informing her of those she cared about. Not that the war really ended. The Seward family had been a station on the Underground Railroad; they paid terribly. When Lincoln was killed, an assassin went after Fanny's family too. Her dad was disfigured for life, her brother gravely injured; her mom died soon after, of shock and stress. Fanny died the next year, at just 22.

SOURCE: Harriet Tubman: the Life and the Life Stories by Jean Humez, p. 258. Primary source: Harriet, the Moses of her People, Sarah Bradford, 1901 ed., pp 147-8

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