Ona Judge Staines: She Challenged George Washington and Won Her Freedom      

Oney, as she was known to George and Martha Washington, was one of nine enslaved African Americans who served in the President’s House in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1796. Judge was the only slave who escaped from the Philadelphia Executive Mansion, although Hercules, the president’s famed chef, made an even more daring escape on Feb. 22, 1797, the president’s 65th birthday, from the Washington plantation at Mount Vernon, Va. There is no record of Hercules after his escape, but a fairly strong paper trail enables us to piece together the fate of Ona Judge, in part because of the Washingtons’ strenuous, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to reclaim her.

A Taste of Freedom in Philadelphia

Ona Maria Judge was born around 1774 at Mount Vernon. Her mother, Betty, was recognized as the finest seamstress on the plantation and was a “dower slave,” technically still owned by the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband, Daniel Peake Custis. Ona’s father was an English indentured servant who had worked at Mount Vernon.

Since a slave’s status followed the mother’s line, Ona was born enslaved, as was her older half brother, Austin, who had a different father and would later serve Washington as a stable hand at the Philadelphia President’s House. From an early age, Ona would have performed whatever domestic labors were required of her at Mount Vernon. By the age of 10, she began attending Martha Washington. Her main work involved sewing and making clothes; Gen. Washington praised her as a “perfect mistress of the needle.”

George Washington was elected the first president of the United States in 1789, and in 1790, when the capital moved to Philadelphia, Ona traveled with the family to their official residence. She served as the main personal attendant to the first lady, and her tasks would have included dressing and powdering her mistress, accompanying her to official receptions and other public and social duties, and being ready, at all times, to meet Martha Washington’s needs. It was important to the first family, too, that Ona was herself always seen to be impeccably well-groomed and clothed in public.

Ona, Austin and Hercules were allowed to attend a circus, the theater and other public events on their own. They also interacted with Philadelphia’s increasingly assertive free black community, which had grown from only 240 in 1780 to 1,849 in 1790 and would exceed 6,000 by 1800. She had arrived in Philadelphia just as the Free African Society and the first independent black churches were being established, and it is likely that she was inspired by the example of Absalom Jones, Richard Allen and other African-American founders. In addition, white refugees from the Haitian revolution were given refuge in the city after 1793, many of them bringing their slaves.  By 1796, over 450 Haitians had claimed their freedom under a Pennsylvania state law that enabled them to do so after a full six months’ residency.   

Ona Judge Plots Her Escape

The Washington slaves knew that the president had taken precautions to prevent them from taking advantage of this law. His plan was to send them back to Virginia before they completed six months’ residence, then return them to the Philadelphia for another period of service. Washington informed his secretary about this scheme, stating his “wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them [the slaves] and the Public.” One historian has suggested this was “perhaps the only documented incident of George Washington telling a lie.” The primary reason for this subterfuge was financial: Ona and all but two of the Mount Vernon slaves in Philadelphia were Custis dower slaves. If they gained their freedom under this law, Washington not only would lose their labor but also would have to personally reimburse the Custis estate for their loss under his supervision.

In the spring of 1796, Washington entered the final year of his second term in office, and the staff were informed they would be returning to Mount Vernon for good that summer. The first lady, now in her mid-60s, also told Ona Judge around this time that she was to be bequeathed to a Custis family granddaughter back in Virginia, a prospect Judge dreaded, since she despised her intended new owner. Realizing that the relative freedom she had enjoyed in Philadelphia would soon become a memory, Judge carefully planned her escape.

As she recalled 50 years later, the entire household was preparing to leave for Virginia, and so it was not seen as suspicious when she began packing the “many changes of good clothes, of all sorts” mentioned in the runaway ad. Assisted by acquaintances in Philadelphia’s free black community, she stored her belongings at a friend’s house and found a merchant sloop, the Nancy, that would transport her to Portsmouth, N.H. Judge made her way to the Nancy one evening in late May while the first family was at dinner. By the time they learned of her escape, Judge had arrived in Portsmouth. She was not legally free and was at risk of recapture under the federal Fugitive Slave Law—which Washington had signed in 1793—but for the first time in her life, she was free of the demands of Martha Washington.

The First Family’s Desperate Search

The Washingtons were shocked, and the Gazette advertisement suggests that they initially had no idea why she had fled. Martha Washington, in particular, took Judge’s flight badly, viewing it as ingratitude and as a personal slight, and came to believe that Judge was pregnant and had been seduced by a mentally unstable Frenchman. At least, that is the story that George Washington used in his efforts behind the scenes to recapture her. Certainly there were many Frenchmen and French- and Kreyòl-speaking Haitians in Philadelphia, but there is no evidence that Judge had relations with any of them.

In late August, however, Judge’s luck ran out. The daughter of Sen. John Langdon, a close friend of the Washingtons and a frequent visitor to the Executive Mansion, came upon her on a Portsmouth street and expressed surprise that she was not attending the first lady. President Washington was soon apprised of the situation and immediately ordered Oliver Wolcott, the secretary of the treasury, to engage the Portsmouth collector of customs to retrieve her.