The Escape of Ona Judge

Near this corner in Philadelphia stood the President's House, where George Washington lived during his two terms. Among those forced to work there was Ona Judge, born around seventeen seventy-three, who had been enslaved by Martha Washington since childhood. On May twenty-first, seventeen ninety-six, Judge slipped away from the household with help from Philadelphia's free Black community and made her way to New Hampshire.

Washington tried repeatedly to have her returned, pressuring federal officials to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. They refused. Judge lived free in New Hampshire until her death in eighteen forty-eight, more than half a century after her escape.

Her story resisted the comfortable mythology around the founding era and has only recently been restored to the historical record it always deserved.