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It's not apocryphal, it was just exaggerated by her biographer. Tubman was widely known in abolitionist circles in the 1850s and there is documentary evidence suggesting that she was involved in the Underground Railroad. That is beyond reasonable dispute. The scope and volume of her work is where the variance is between popular accounts and the accepted historical record. Tubman was interviewed for a Boston newspaper in 1863 and described nine rescue missions between 1850 and 1860 during which she helped about 70 people escape slavery. All of these trips were to the same part of Eastern Maryland where she was born, and all were family or other people she knew. Bradford later claimed 19 trips, and a magazine article estimated that she must have rescued at least 300, and thus we end up with 300 people over 19 trips, even if Tubman herself never made such a claim. Bradford did speak to Tubman, but she admits that Tubman had no recollection of some of the trips she (Bradford) was claiming and said that instead she got the information from unidentified "friends". Her activities during the war and afterward are well-documented.
You can choose not to believe Tubman, which is your prerogative, but keep in mind that the kind of first-hand account we get from her is par for the course in history. Having read her accounts, there's no reason to believe they are any more or less reliable than any other documentary evidence we have from the period. Certainly, corroboration of details would be desirable, but keep in mind that she was engaging in secret activity that had dire consequences if discovered. If we aren't willing to believe firsthand accounts without corroboration, then our evidence that the Underground Railroad existed at all is based on a rather shaky foundation. And this has implications for a lot of other things as well. We don't torch entire fields of history just because we're skeptical that people won't lie.
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