#Ona judge death full
#Ona judge death free

Judge’s story, Dunbar said, explodes any notion of ‘‘privileged’’ house slaves or of the benevolence of the Washingtons, whose far from passive role in perpetuating slavery - and in doling out sometimes brutal punishment to the rebellious - is described in detail.ĭunbar describes how the Washingtons quietly maneuvered around Pennsylvania’s 1780 gradual abolition law, rotating their slaves in and out of the state every six months.

In two interviews published in abolitionist newspapers shortly before her death in 1848, Judge testified to the desire for freedom that drove her to run away from the Washington household, where she had ‘‘never received the least moral or mental instruction,’’ she said.

#Ona judge death free

And free blacks are the ones who helped her catch a sailing ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she married, had three children and lived on the edge of poverty, laboring in households far less exalted than the Washingtons’. When Washington became president, Judge followed the first couple to New York and then Philadelphia, home to a growing free black community.įree blacks, Dunbar writes, aided Judge’s escape in the midst of a presidential dinner, after she had learned that she was to be given to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eliza. At age 9, she was brought to live in the mansion house, eventually becoming Martha Washington’s personal maid. In the meticulous ledgers of Mount Vernon, we first see Ona Maria Judge, who was born about 1773 to an enslaved mother and a father who was a white indentured servant. ‘‘It’s saying, ‘Whatever I might think about slavery in the abstract, I should be able to do what I want with my property,’’’ she said ‘‘Many people want to see him as perfect in some way.’’īut his determined pursuit of Judge, she said, as much as his will freeing his slaves, reflects the basic mindset of slave owners. ‘‘(Washington is) a much more mythic figure than Jefferson,’’ said Annette Gordon-Reed, author of ‘‘The Hemingses of Monticello’’ and a Harvard University professor. ‘‘But decades before them, Ona Judge did this. ‘‘We have the famous fugitives, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass,’’ Dunbar, a professor of black studies and history at the University of Delaware, said in an interview in Mount Vernon’s 18th-century-style food court. 7 by 37 Ink, flips the perspective, focusing on what freedom meant to the people he kept in bondage. Most scholars who have written about Judge’s escape have used it as a lens onto Washington’s evolving ideas about slavery. She is also the subject of a book, ‘‘Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,’’ by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Judge is among the 19 enslaved people highlighted in ‘‘Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon,’’ the first major exhibit here dedicated to the topic. Now her story - and the challenge it offers to the notion that Washington somehow transcended the seamy reality of slave holding - is having its fullest airing yet. The liberation didn't apply to Ona Judge, one of 153 slaves held by Martha Washington.īut Judge, it turned out, evaded the Washingtons’ dogged (and sometimes illegal) efforts to recapture her, and lived quietly in New Hampshire for 50 more years. It's always 1799 at Mount Vernon, where more than 1 million visitors annually see the property as it was just before Washington’s death, when his will famously freed all 123 of his slaves. ‘‘It was this world that made her a slave.’’ ‘‘Ona was born free, like everybody,’’ she said.

Judge’s escape from the presidential residence in Philadelphia in 1796 had been ‘‘a great embarrassment to General and Lady Washington,’’ the woman said, before offering her own view of the matter.

#Ona judge death full

So when a visitor recently asked an African-American re-enactor in a full skirt and head scarf whether she knew Ona Judge, the woman didn’t miss a beat. The costumed characters at George Washington’s gracious estate are accustomed to handling all manner of awkward queries, whether about 18th-century privies or the first president’s teeth.