After a five-day journey, Judge disembarked in that coastal city, where she would begin her new life. Members of the free black community helped her get aboard a ship commanded by Captain John Bowles, who sailed frequently between Philadelphia, New York and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On May 21, 1796, she slipped out of the mansion while the president and first lady were eating their supper. So, as the household prepared for the Washingtons’ return to Mount Vernon for the summer, Judge made plans for her escape. As Dunbar writes, “Martha Washington’s decision to turn Judge over to Eliza was a reminder to Judge and everyone enslaved at the Executive Mansion that they had absolutely no control over their lives, no matter how loyally they served.” In the spring of 1796, when she was 22 years old, Judge learned that Martha Washington planned to give her away as a wedding gift to her famously temperamental granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis. WATCH: The three-episode mini-series Washington on HISTORY Vault Such interactions undoubtedly fueled her thinking about slavery, the changing laws regarding the institution and the possibilities of freedom. Over more than five years in Philadelphia-traveling in and out every six months-she met and became acquainted with members of the city’s free black community and former enslaved workers who had gained their freedom under the gradual abolition law. To evade a gradual abolition law that took effect in Pennsylvania in 1780, the Washingtons made sure to transport their enslaved workers in and out of the state every six months to avoid them establishing legal residency.Īs the first lady’s bodyservant, Judge helped dress her mistress for special events, traveled with her on social calls and ran errands for her. In fact, as Erica Armstrong Dunbar writes in her book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Oney would have been in the minority as a enslaved woman in Philadelphia fewer than 100 slaves lived within city limits in 1796. With an active and growing free black community of some 6,000 people, Philadelphia had become the nation’s leading hotbed of abolitionism. READ MORE: 11 Little-Known Facts About George Washington Late the following year, when the federal capital moved to Philadelphia, the presidential household moved with it. When Washington headed to New York City in 1789 for his inauguration as president, Oney was one of only a handful of enslaved people the couple took with them. Like her mother, she became a talented and highly valued seamstress, and was later promoted to become Martha Washington’s personal maid. Ona, more commonly known as Oney, moved into the mansion house when she was just 9 years old. As children born to enslaved women were considered property of the slaveholder, according to Virginia law, his daughter remained in bondage. After fulfilling his four-year work contract at Mount Vernon, Andrew Judge moved off the plantation to start his own farm. Her mother, Betty, was a “dower slave,” part of the estate of Martha’s first husband her father, Andrew Judge, was a white indentured servant who had recently arrived in America from Leeds, England. When he married the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis in 1759, she brought more than 80 enslaved workers along with her, bringing the total number of enslaved men, women and children at Mount Vernon to more than 150 by the time the Revolutionary War began. He would acquire many more in the years to come, whether through the death of other family members or by purchasing them directly. When he was just 11 years old, George Washington inherited 10 slaves from his father’s estate.
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