Just before Eliza's marriage and one of those trips back to Virginia, Ona Judge took the opportunity to walk away from the Executive Mansion on High Street in Philadelphia, into the sheltering care of the local free black community, which managed to spirit her out of Pennsylvania to New Hampshire where she lived for the rest of her life, always technically a fugitive slave. ![]() The Washingtons made sure to pack up the household, including all the servants, to return to Mount Vernon periodically, thereby "resetting the clock" on their servants' residence. In Philadelphia at the time, any enslaved person who had resided there for a period of six months was entitled to request their freedom. When Martha's granddaughter, Eliza, was about to married, Martha made plans to gift Ona to her. Ona traveled with the Washingtons as part of Martha's household staff when they left Mount Vernon for New York, and later for Philadelphia as the new nation's capitol transitioned from one city to the other. Martha could sell Ona or give her away to a family member, but she could not (even had she wished to) emancipate her. Ona Judge was one of the enslaved women included in the Custis Estate-Martha Washington's property during her lifetime, as a result of her first husband's death. I've rated it 2 stars for some interesting and presumably factual information about George and Martha Washington and circumstances of his presidency that I somehow never encountered before, but I may be talking myself out of one of those stars as I write this. ![]() This is a a mish-mash of those things, and the author makes no excuse for what have to be fabrications of detail. (And it somehow became a National Book Award finalist, fer sobbin' out loud!) There's non-fiction, and then there's historical fiction. From its tabloid-style subtitle to the author's fanciful imaginings of Ona Judge's feelings (which often have a distinctly 21st century sensibility somehow) this is a sorry excuse for a historical narrative. by Erica Armstrong Dunbar If ever a book was written to appeal to earnest book club mavens, this is it. “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” ( USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. ![]() In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. ![]() When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” ( The Philadelphia Inquirer).
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