![]() More is known about her than any other of the Mount Vernon slaves because she was twice interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the mid-1840s. At just twenty-two years old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. John Bowles on his sloop the Nancy, which traveled between Philadelphia and Portsmouth, N.H. Ona’s friends walked the docks of Philadelphia until they found a ship captain who would discreetly bring her to freedom. She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts… She is of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed, about 20 years of age. …a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy hair. Washington placed an ad in The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 23, offering a $10 reward for her return. Then one evening while the Washingtons were eating dinner she slipped out of the house and went into hiding. With the aid of Philadelphia's free black community, Judge escaped to freedom on May 21, 1796, and lived as a fugitive slave in New Hampshire for the rest of her life. As she helped the Washingtons pack, she quietly passed her own possessions to her friends. George Washington’s term in office was nearing an end in May of 1796, and the family began preparing to return to Virginia. Ona plotted her escape. Ona worked as a personal slave to First Lady Martha Washington in the presidential households in New York City and Philadelphia. The Act made it a federal crime to assist an escaped slave or to interfere with his capture and allowed slave-catchers into every U.S. Washington signed into law, "The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793," which passed overwhelmingly by Congress and established the legal mechanism by which a slaveholder could recover his property. The President's House, Philadelphia, where Ona had her own room. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and seven enslaved Africans, including Judge, then 16, to New York City in 1789 to work in his presidential household the others were her half-brother Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee.įollowing the transfer of the national capital to Philadelphia in 1790, Judge was one of nine slaves Washington took to that city to work in the President's House, together with Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Hercules, Richmond, Christopher Sheels, and "Postilion Joe" (Richardson).Īs he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change Washington couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Memorial Plaque that is on the Philadelphia Presidential house that Oney escaped from. When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital, after a brief stay in New York. Ona Judge was afforded more comforts than most slaves, however, she risked it all to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom. George Washington called her ‘a perfect Mistress of the needle.’ Her mother taught her to sew, and it was as a seamstress that she was most valued. ![]() She also did chores for the Washingtons such as churning butter, cooking, candlemaking and washing clothes. As a child, she played with the Washingtons’ granddaughter Nelly. ![]() Oney "Ona" Judge (c.1773-February 25, 1848), known as Oney Judge Staines after marriage, was a mixed-race slave on George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation, in Virginia.
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