![]() ![]() ![]() Custis died intestate (without a will), so his widow received a “dower share” – the lifetime use of one third of his Estate, which included at least 85 enslaved Africans, Martha had control over these “dower” slaves, but did not have the legal power to sell or free them. 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.īetty had been among the 285 African slaves held by Martha Washington’s first husband, Daniel Parke Custis (1711–1757). With the aid of Philadelphia’s free black community, Judge escaped to freedom in 1796 and lived as a fugitive slave in New Hampshire for the rest of her life. Beginning in 1789, she worked as a personal slave to First Lady Martha Washington in the presidential households in New York City and Philadelphia. Oney “Ona” Judge (c.1773-February 25, 1848), known as Oney Judge Staines after marriage, was a mixed-race slave on George Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, in Virginia. ![]() “But decades before them, Ona Judge did this. 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. “We have the famous fugitives, like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass,” Ms. Now her story - and the challenge it offers to the notion that Washington somehow transcended the seamy reality of slaveholding - is having its fullest airing yet. That liberation did not 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 would live quietly in New Hampshire for another 50 years. It’s always 1799 at Mount Vernon, where more than a million visitors annually see the property as it was just before Washington’s death, when his will famously freed all 123 of his slaves. She died, still free, on February 25, 1848. She lived, married, and had several children as a free woman in New Hampshire. Judge, hiring head-hunters and issuing runaway slave advertisements like the one submitted on May 23, which offered a $10 reward for her return. The Washingtons tried several times to apprehend Ms. She had befriended many slaves in Philadelphia and they helped her to send her belongings to New Hampshire before her escape. Judge made her escape from Philadelphia on a ship destined for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the night of May 21, 1796, while the Washingtons were packing to return to Mt. Distressed that she would be doomed to slavery even after Martha Washington died, Ms. Judge to the new couple as a gift in her will. When her eldest granddaughter, Eliza Custis, married, Martha Washington promised to leave Ms. However, to avoid enforcement of the law and emancipation of their slaves, the Washingtons regularly sent their slaves out of state to restart the six-month residency requirement. Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 guaranteed slaves of non-residents freedom after living in Pennsylvania for six months, and this provision would have applied to Ms. Judge traveled with the family to states with varying slave ownership rules, including Pennsylvania. As George Washington gained political clout, Ms. Judge was a dower slave given to Martha Washington by her father and had been held as part of the Washington estate since she was ten years old. ” Known to the Washingtons as “Oney,” Ms. She is of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed, about 20 years of age. In the ad, she is described as “a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair. Judge had successfully escaped slavery two days earlier, fleeing Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and settling in freedom in New Hampshire. Ad Offers Reward for Return of Runaway Slave to President George Washington On May 23, 1796, a newspaper ad was submitted for publication that sought the return of Ona “Oney” Judge, an enslaved black woman who had “absconded from the household of the President of the United States,” George Washington. ![]()
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