7/26/2023 0 Comments Ona judge deathHe also noted that all but two of his slaves in Philadelphia, including Judge and Austin, were dower slaves, meaning that they had come to the marriage with his wife and were technically owned by the estate of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. Whatever the case, Washington took no chances, explaining to his secretary that the movement of his slaves ought to be accomplished “under the pretext that may deceive both them and the Public.” Washington worried that should his slaves learn of the law they might be tempted by freedom. There also was some confusion at the time over whether federal officials were exempt from the law’s requirements and, if they were not, whether Pennsylvania would enforce them in such a politically sensitive situation. It is unclear whether he was aware of a 1788 amendment to the Pennsylvania act that prohibited exactly this means of subverting the law. In a letter to his personal secretary, dated April 12, 1791, Washington ordered that his slaves be sent back to Virginia before their six months expired in May, and then returned to Philadelphia. Passed in 1780, “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” required that any slaves living in Pennsylvania for six uninterrupted months be freed. In the spring of 1791, George Washington learned that Pennsylvania law complicated his ability to hold slaves in the state. In the meantime, the capital had moved to Philadelphia, where the Washingtons traveled in November, again with Judge and her half-brother. They lived in New York for just more than a year, returning to Mount Vernon for an extended visit on August 30, 1790. On May 16, Martha Washington and her household, including Judge, Austin, and five other slaves, left Mount Vernon to join him. On February 4, 1789, George Washington was elected president, and in April he left for New York, the federal capital. At the age of ten, she became the body servant of Martha Washington. Judge recalled receiving no education or religious instruction as a child. The Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 24, 1796. Runaway Advertisement for Oney Judge, enslaved servant in George Washington’s presidential household. Through her mother, Judge had four half-siblings: Austin, whose father is unknown Tom Davis and Betty Davis, the children of an indentured weaver named Thomas Davis and Philadelphia (later Philadelphia Costin). In a 1796 letter Washington referred to “Oney Judge as she called herself while with us.” Judge was the daughter of Betty, an enslaved seamstress, and probably the English tailor Andrew Judge, an indentured servant who labored at Mount Vernon from 1772 until about 1780. Oney is a nickname that appears in Washington’s papers and in advertisements for her return. A newspaper report from 1845 noted that her name at the time of her escape had been Ona Maria Judge. She is listed as twelve years old in an inventory of slaves prepared by Washington and dated February 18, 1786. Oney Judge was born about 1773 at Mount Vernon, the Fairfax County plantation of George Washington. She died in Greenland, New Hampshire, in 1848. In 18 she gave interviews to abolitionist newspapers, recounting the story of her life with the Washington family and her escape from slavery. Oney Judge Staines lived the rest of her life in poverty. Judge married the free black sailor John Staines in 1797 and the couple had three children before his death in 1803. Washington’s agents tracked her there, twice speaking with her, in 17, but failing to apprehend her. On May 21, 1796, she escaped from the president’s mansion while the family ate dinner and boarded a ship for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After George Washington was elected president in 1789, she accompanied the family to New York and then, when the federal capital moved, to Philadelphia. Born about 1773 at Mount Vernon, Judge began laboring in the mansion when she was ten years old. Oney Judge was the enslaved personal attendant of Martha Custis Washington when she ran away from the President’s House in Philadelphia in 1796.
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