Judge, Ona, 1773-1848

On January 1, 1847, the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator published a letter from Reverend Benjamin Chase describing his recent visit with an elderly African American woman near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.1 The woman, Ona Judge Staines, had fled enslavement at the Washingtons’ household fifty years earlier. Staines’s account of her dramatic quest for freedom represents a rare moment when the voice of a person (formerly) enslaved at Mount Vernon appears in the historical record.


We rarely know what 18th-century enslaved individuals looked like. This silhouette is meant to represent Ona Judge. The design was based on physical descriptions, age, gender, clothing, and work assignment.


Ona Judge, often referenced by the Washingtons as Oney, was born at Mount Vernon around 1774. She was the daughter of Betty, an enslaved seamstress living on Mansion House Farm, and Andrew Judge, a white English tailor whom Washington hired from 1772 to 1784.2 Ona was later described as “a light mulatto girl, much freckled” and “almost white.”3 Like many other slaves of mixed-race descent, she received a post in the household: at age ten, she became Martha Washington’s personal maid. Like her mother, Ona was skilled at sewing, “the perfect mistress of her needle.”4 Also, like her mother, Ona and her younger sister Delphy belonged to the Custis estate, and so would pass to Martha Washington’s heirs upon the latter’s death.

When George Washington was elected president, fifteen-year-old Ona Judge traveled with seven other enslaved people to the executive residence, first in New York and then in Philadelphia. She was among the enslaved people whom Washington secretly rotated out of the latter city in order to evade the 1780 Pennsylvania emancipation law. Washington asked his secretary to accomplish this rotation “under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public.”5

During Washington’s presidency, Judge continued her daily work waiting on Martha Washington—helping her bathe and dress, cleaning and mending her clothing, organizing her personal belongings, and anything else her she required. However, in the bustling capital city of Philadelphia, life was dramatically different for her and the other enslaved people from Mount Vernon. Judge received nominal cash from Washington on several occasions to go see a play, the circus, and the “tumbling feats.” Her visible position in the household meant that she received a regular supply of high-quality clothing. Washington’s account book notes purchases for her gowns, shoes, stockings, and bonnets.6 The city’s large free black and Quaker abolitionist communities also offered the young woman new ideas, new connections, and new opportunities to escape.

On May 20, 1796, as the Washingtons prepared to return to Mount Vernon for the summer, Ona Judge fled. As she recalled in 1845, “Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.”7

Two days later, Frederick Kitt—the hired steward at the executive residence—placed an advertisement in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser announcing that “Oney Judge” had “absconded” from the president’s house and offering a $10 reward for her recapture. Kitt described the young woman’s “very black eyes and bushy black hair,” noting that she was “of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed.” She had “many changes of good clothes, all sorts,” Kitt warned and might be trying to pass as a free woman, escaping on a ship leaving the port of Philadelphia.8

Kitt’s advertisement stated that Judge had run off with “no provocation,” but her later interview revealed that she had two reasons for running away. First, “she wanted to be free,” and second, she had overheard that she would soon be given to Martha Washington’s eldest granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis Law, who was known to have a fierce temper. Judge “was determined,” she recalled, “never to be her slave.”9

Kitt was right about one thing: after leaving the Washingtons’ household, Ona Judge secured passage on the Nancy, a ship commanded by Captain John Bolles and bound for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Judge never revealed Bolles’s name until after he died, “lest they should punish him for bringing me away.”10

Meanwhile, George Washington was stewing. The young woman was owned by the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband, Daniel Parke Custis not Washington. This meant he would be responsible for reimbursing the Custis estate were she not recovered. He also faced pressure from Martha, who was distressed at the loss of a maid who, Washington claimed, “was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant.” Apparently unable to comprehend why she would flee, Washington believed that Judge had been “seduced and enticed away” by a Frenchman.11

Even in New Hampshire, Judge was not safe. Just a few months after arriving, she was recognized on the street by a friend of Martha’s youngest granddaughter, Nelly Parke Custis. Word of the escapee’s whereabouts reached George Washington, who enlisted the help of Joseph Whipple, the customs collector in Portsmouth. Whipple found Judge and tried to convince her to board a ship for Philadelphia. Judge replied that she would readily return, but only if the Washingtons promised to free her after their deaths. Otherwise, she said, “she should rather suffer death than return to Slavery & liable to be sold or given to any other person.” There was no seduction by a Frenchman, she assured Whipple, but rather “a thirst for compleat freedom . . . had been her only motive for absconding.”12