![]() ![]() “A friend of Nelly Custis, the Washingtons’ granddaughter, spots Judge in Portsmouth and word soon reaches the Washingtons. “Within a few months, her cover was blown,” Dunbar says. But she also was conspicuous when she arrived in Portsmouth, where perhaps only three percent of the population was of African descent, according to Dunbar. Having accompanied the famous Washingtons for several years, Judge was easily recognized in major cities such as New York and Philadelphia. ![]() Property lost liberty foundĪn ad that ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette, announcing a $10 reward for her return, described Judge as “a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair.” The Washingtons place an ad in the Pennsylvania Gazette for the return of escaped slave Ona Judge. Judge landed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, eager to begin a new life. Free black friends hid her and found passage for her on a ship sailing north. One evening in late May 1796, as the Washingtons were having dinner, Judge took her first footsteps to freedom. After all, if you were going to escape, especially from the household of one so famous as the president of the United States, you would need shoes.” “What’s really interesting, looking at his ledgers, is the number of times Ona Judge was given money to buy shoes,” Dunbar says. We know this, points out University of Delaware historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar, because George Washington was a fastidious record keeper. However, as day-to-day life progressed in Philadelphia, and Washington’s second term as president neared an end, Judge frequently would need new shoes. Referred to as “Oney” by the Washingtons, Judge helped her mistress to dress and to powder her hair, accompanied her on social calls, ran errands, did needlework (she was a fine seamstress like her mother) and tended to other tasks in the bustling household of America’s first president. Judge served Lady Washington as a “body slave,” a term denoting a maid and personal attendant. The slaves at the President’s House were moved out of state before this residency requirement was met and then brought back in, even after the practice was outlawed in 1788. This Pennsylvania law made it possible for slaves of non-resident slaveholders to obtain their freedom after residing in the state for six months. ![]() capital moved to Philadelphia, and the Washingtons took up residence in the President’s House, a mansion at 6th and Market Streets.Īlthough Pennsylvania had passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780, the first government to outlaw slavery in the Western Hemisphere, the Washingtons transferred their house slaves from New York to work in this mansion, which would serve as the official seat of government until the Federal City was completed in the District of Columbia. Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States on the balcony of the Federal Building in New York City on April 30, 1789. Rather than the Mansion House and farms of Mount Vernon, where more than 300 slaves, including her mother, Betty, worked, Judge would soon be surrounded by the precious liberty that George Washington had led the American colonists in fighting for, and the Founding Fathers had set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. What thoughts raced through Ona Judge’s mind, as the 15-year-old slave jostled to and fro on the carriage ride from Mount Vernon, Virginia, to New York City? Judge was one of seven slaves that George and Martha Washington were bringing to New York to help run the first presidential residence. Erica Armstrong Dunbar uncovers fascinating details of Judge’s life, and sheds light on the Washingtons’ views on slavery, in a forthcoming book. In 1796, Ona Judge, Martha Washington’s “body slave,” fled the household of the first president of the United States, bringing a young nation’s views about slavery into sharper focus. Nanoscale "fool's gold" fuels ociean's iron supply at hydrothermal vents."Wonder material" may hold key to fast, inexpensive genetic sequencing.No small worry: the ethics of nanotechnology. ![]()
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