Ona begins caring for the Washington’s grandchildren Wash and Nelly-and after being in close quarters not only with the Washingtons’ white servants but with the rapidly-expanding free Black community in Philadelphia, Ona begins to fixate on what freedom would be like.Īfter several months of living in Philadelphia, a member of Washington’s administration informs George and Martha that a Pennsylvania law threatens their power over the handful of enslaved men and women they have brought north with them. At the large Executive Mansion on High Street in Philadelphia, Ona finds herself living in a house stuffed to the gills with members of the Washington family (and administration), white indentured servants, and enslaved Black people alike. While the capital is being constructed, the nation’s new temporary capital will be centered in Philadelphia-a place which, due to its Quaker roots, is even more progressive than New York. The new nation is in flux, and Congress has decided to create a new capital in Virginia.
Ona-and the Washingtons-begin to realize that Northern attitudes toward slavery are changing.Īfter a brief return to Mount Vernon in 1790, the Washingtons move from New York to Philadelphia. In New York, as Ona caters to the nervous, recalcitrant Martha, she encounters for the first time communities of free Black men and women living communally and autonomously. In 1789, as Washington ascends to the presidency, the 16-year-old Ona-now in the personal employ of Martha Washington as a seamstress and handmaiden, charged with outfitting the first lady in finery each day-accompanies the Washingtons northward to New York, the nation’s temporary capital. The daughter of Betty, one of Martha Washington’s “dower slaves,” or human “property” from her first marriage, and a white indentured servant from England named Andrew Judge, Ona was raised primarily by her mother after her father departed alone once his tenure of servitude at Mount Vernon expired. Ona was born in 1773, just days after the death of Martha Washington’s daughter Patsy. Ona escaped to freedom in 1796, absconding from Philadelphia to New Hampshire. In Never Caught, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar tells the story of Ona Maria Judge Staines, who was born into slavery at George and Martha Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation.
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