The story of the Washingtons is a cornerstone of American history, etched in stone and textbook. We know of the general, the president, the father of a country. We know of Martha, the dignified first lady. But for decades, a crucial part of their narrative remained in the shadows: the story of Ona Judge, the woman who ran away from the most powerful family in America.
Her escape wasn’t just a flight from slavery; it was a direct challenge to the authority of George Washington himself, revealing a profound contradiction at the very heart of the new nation.
To the world, Ona Judge was Ona Staines, a favored enslaved maid to Martha Washington. She was described as light-skinned and graceful, a skilled seamstress who attended to the first lady’s every need. She lived in the opulent President’s House in Philadelphia, a world away from the fields of Mount Vernon. By many accounts, she was treated well. But treatment is not freedom.
The catalyst for her flight was a deeply personal betrayal. Upon learning that Martha Washington planned to give her as a wedding gift to the first lady’s notoriously temperamental granddaughter, Eliza Custis, Ona made a courageous decision. She would not be passed around like property. She would not trade one kind master for a cruel one. She would seize her own destiny.
In the spring of 1796, while the Washingtons were eating dinner, Ona Judge slipped out of the house and into the bustling streets of Philadelphia. With the help of a free Black community and a network of abolitionists, she boarded a ship, the Nancy, and sailed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There, she began a new life, tasting liberty for the first time.
The reaction from the President’s House was not one of concern for a missing member of the household, but of fury over lost property. George Washington, the man who symbolized liberty for a nation, immediately set about orchestrating her recapture.
Using the powers of his office, he bypassed Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition laws and secretly tasked his secretary, Tobias Lear, with her retrieval. They discovered her whereabouts months later, and Washington personally instructed the federal customs collector in Portsmouth, Joseph Whipple, to apprehend her.
Whipple attempted to seize Ona but found her integrated into the free Black community of Portsmouth and unwilling to return. He reported back to Washington that she would only come back if the president promised her freedom upon his and Martha’s deaths—a guarantee Washington refused to make. He was furious that Whipple had not simply kidnapped her and demanded absolute secrecy, fearing public scandal.
For the remaining three years of his presidency and even after his retirement to Mount Vernon, George Washington continued to pursue her. He actively tried to circumvent laws and manipulate situations to have her kidnapped and returned, all while expressing in private letters his desire to avoid a public outcry.
Ona Judge lived the rest of her life in New Hampshire. She married, had children, and learned to read and write. But her freedom was forever precarious. She lived in fear of Washington’s agents and later, of slave catchers empowered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. She was never truly safe, yet she never regretted her choice.
In two extraordinary interviews with abolitionist newspapers late in her life, she told her story on her own terms. She directly refuted the idea that she was somehow “ungrateful” or had been treated poorly. Her reasoning was far more profound and simple: “I wanted to be free.”
The story of Ona Judge is not a footnote. It is a central chapter in understanding American history. It forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that the man who fought for American liberty also relentlessly pursued a woman who sought that very same liberty for herself. Her courage underscores a powerful and enduring truth: freedom is not given, it is taken. And no amount of gilded captivity can ever compare to its worth.