The One That Got Away
An English tailor named Andrew Judge came to America as an indentured servant. As far as servitude gigs go, his was pretty cool. He was the personal tailor to George Washington. If you’ve seen paintings with General Washington in his dashing blue uniform coat, that coat was the work of Andrew Judge.
Washington’s wife Martha also had fine clothes and someone to sew them. Her wardrobe was maintained by an enslaved seamstress named Betty.
Somewhere in the course of human events, the seamstress and the tailor had a baby girl named Ona. They called her Oney. Oney was described as “almost white” with very black eyes, and was “much freckled.” And she was born a slave.
George and Martha had a “his and hers” slaves situation. George had slaves of his own. Martha had the lifetime use of one-third of her late first husband’s property— including Betty and another eighty-something enslaved persons. When Oney was born she became part of that inventory.
Oney grew up playing with the nieces and nephews and grandchildren of the Washingtons. But when the other children were learning to read, Oney was learning to sew and how to lay out Martha Washington’s clothes for her. When Oney was ten she became Martha’s personal maid.
When Oney was fifteen, George was elected president. The Washingtons moved to the temporary capital in New York, taking Oney and nine other house slaves. The next year they moved to another temporary capital in Philadelphia. (Washington, D.C. was officially the capital, but it would take ten years for the capitol buildings to be completed.)
In Philidelphia, George’s Attorney General, Edmund Randolph, came to visit with some bad news. (I am paraphrasing the conversation.)
Randolph: Mister President, I’ve got a little heads up for you. In Pennsylvania, after slaves reside here for six months, they are declared free.
George: Really? Good to know. Maybe we just won’t tell them.
Randolph: I didn’t tell mine, but they were still quoting Pennsylvania law to me. And they can’t even read! Don’t worry, though—all you have to do is take them out of state for a few days, and the six months will start over.
(This explains the time Martha and the house staff took a short holiday in New Jersey.)
Oney was trusted to leave the house on her own for errands and things. The Washingtons would sometimes give her money for the theater or the circus.
George and Martha thought that serving the first family was such a groovy gig that no slave would ever want to leave them. (You know, and live as a free person).
Oney met plenty of free black people when she was out and about in Philidelphia. And she met people who would help her escape if she wanted to. They advised her to be ready to leave at any time—so when the opportunity came she could just go for it.
Here’s what happened:
One day Martha told Oney she was going to give her to her granddaughter Eliza as a wedding present.
Oney knew two things:
* If she went back to Virginia she would never be free.
* Eliza was a total bitch.
That night while the Washingtons were having dinner, Oney went out the back door and kept on going. With a little help from her friends, she moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she got a job as a maid.
The new job was hard work, but Oney did okay. One day at the market she ran into Elizabeth Langdon, the granddaughter of Senator John Langdon. They knew each other because the Langdons were friends with the Washingtons. Oney didn’t answer Elizabeth when she called out. Oney walked around until after dark before she went home, so no one would follow her.
The Langdons didn’t believe in slavery but John felt he should write their friend George Washinton and let him know that Oney was around.
George was furious. He said Oney had been treated like family. How dare she!
George thought slavery should be phased out, but he claimed he didn’t want to reward the bad behavior of escaping. George contacted a customs inspector named Thomas Whipple and tasked him with finding Oney in Portsmouth.
Whipple ran a fake ad for domestic help. Oney answered it.
Whipple told her she would be given her freedom in a few years if she would return to the Washingtons. She agreed.
But Oney never showed up when Whipple was waiting for her at the ship to give her a ticket.
Whipple didn’t want to let the president down, but George wanted him to take Oney by force and put her on a boat to Virginia. Whipple wasn’t down with that. His family had freed their slaves and were now vocal against enslavement. He couldn’t bring himself to abduct this girl. Also, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 required captured slaves to appear before a judge before being exported from a free state. George wanted to skirt the law and skip the “before a judge” part to keep this capture on the down-low. Whipple didn’t want to be implicated in that either.
So Whipple wrote George and told him Oney didn’t want to go—and if George was really concerned about the status of slaves in free states, he could just emancipate all slaves in all states.
George never contacted Whipple again.
Oney married a free black man, a sailor named Jack Staines. They had two girls and a boy.
Technically, Oney still belonged to the family of Martha Washington’s first husband. And technically, so did her children.
EXTRAS:
* When the Washingtons—the very first family—moved to the temporary capital in New York, they rented a house at One Cherry Street. When they moved to Philadelphia, they moved into the house where Benedict Arnold used to live.
* Martha Washington’s late first husband was Daniel Parke Custis. George proposed to the widow Custis when she was twenty-eight. Custis had died without a will, which was why her inheritance (including slaves) would revert back to the Custis estate when she died.
* Oney’s mother Betty had children with men other than Andrew Judge. She took the name Davis. There are two famous women named Betty Davis in more recent history. I decided this was too silly to mention at the top of the article. It also would have been too silly to call this piece “The Oney That Got Away.” I’m glad I didn’t.
* On two occasions Martha’s nephew, Burwell Bassett Junior, went to Portsmouth to try to convince Oney to return. She refused him. After one of these occasions, while Burwell was having dinner at the Langdon’s, he was ranting about sending some men over to abduct her. While Burwell was busy enjoying the blackberry cobbler, John Langdon sent a messenger to Oney’s house to warn her. Oney had a one-year-old daughter at the time. They went to hide at a friend’s house eight miles away in Greenland, New Hamshire.
* Late in life, Ona Judge Staines told her story to an abolitionist newspaper. The story was popular, and she became an inspiration to the growing anti-slavery movement of the time.
* Earlier I mentioned the fake ad that led Oney to Thomas Whipple. I don’t know if she saw the ad, or if someone told her about it. She only learned to read after her escape. Reading was one of the great pleasures of her life in freedom. She said she had “never received the least mental or moral instruction, of any kind” while she was with the Washingtons.
* About three years after Oney’s escape, George Washington died. George’s will freed his 123 slaves, but not until Martha’s death. About a year later Martha went ahead and freed them anyway. (There may have been a little tension in the air with 123 people wanting her to die.) Martha lived for about a year after that.
*The elder of Georges’s freed slaves received a pension. Some folks praise George for this gesture, but it was actually a requirement of Virginia law.
* The slaves that belonged to Martha’s late first husband’s family trust ( including Oney) were not freed. After Martha’s death, they were given to various family members by the trust. Oney’s younger half-sister Delphy was given to that bitch Eliza.