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  Betty, like other bondwomen, increased her owner’s wealth each time she bore a child. Although she called George Washington her master, he owned neither Betty nor her children. As a dower slave, Betty was technically owned by Martha Washington and the Custis estate. The birth of Ona Judge would not add value to George Washington’s coffers, but her body would be counted among the human property that would produce great profit for Martha Washington and the Custis children and grandchildren.

  Similar to Betty’s other children, Ona had a surname. It belonged to her father, Andrew Judge, an English-born white man. On July 8, 1772, Andrew Judge found his way to America via an indenture agreement, contracting himself to Alexander Coldelough, a merchant from Leeds, England. In exchange for his passage to “Baltimore or any port in America” as well as a promise of food, clothing, appropriate shelter, and an allowance, Judge handed over four years of his life. Although indentured servitude served as the engine for population growth in the early seventeenth century, Andrew Judge entered into service at a time when fewer and fewer English men agreed to hand over their lives for an opportunity in the colonies. Why did he come? Indenture agreements never made clear the circumstances from which a person was exiting, so it is quite possible that Judge was running from debt or a life of destitution. Whatever the problem, the solution for Judge was life as a servant in the colonies, uncertainty and all.

  He landed in Alexandria, Virginia, where George Washington purchased his indenture for thirty pounds. Mount Vernon relied primarily upon slave labor; however, Washington included a number of white indentured servants in his workforce. White servitude had its advantages, but by the late eighteenth century, planters like Washington often complained about their unreliability, their tendency for attempted escape, and their laziness. Yet Andrew Judge did not appear as the target of Washington’s ire in any of his correspondence. In fact he became a trusted tailor relied upon by the colonel for outfitting him at the most important of moments. By 1774 he appeared in the Mount Vernon manager’s account book as responsible for creating the blue uniform worn by Washington when he was named commander in chief of the American forces. Judge was responsible for making clothing for the entire Washington family, which would have required him to make frequent visits to the main house, where he would come into contact with Betty. In her mid- to late thirties, Betty became acquainted with the indentured tailor.

  Interracial relationships were far from uncommon in Virginia at the time, and many mixed-race children were counted among the enslaved. Perhaps Betty and Andrew Judge flirted with one another, eventually engaging in a mutual affair. Maybe the two bound laborers fell in love. If either of these scenarios were true, Betty probably chose her lover, a most powerful example of agency in the life of an enslaved woman. Understanding the inherited status of slavery, Betty would have known that any child born to her would carry the burden of slavery, that any child she bore would be enslaved. Nonetheless, a union with Andrew Judge could facilitate a road to emancipation for their child and perhaps for Betty herself. Eventually Judge would work through his servitude agreement and become a free man. If he saved enough money, he could offer to purchase his progeny, as well as Betty and her additional children. Although a legal union in Virginia between a white man and a black woman would not be recognized for almost two centuries, Judge’s eventual rise in status out of the ranks of servant to that of a free, landholding, white man offered potential power. Andrew Judge may not have been able to marry Betty, but if he loved her, he could try to protect her and her family from the vulnerability of slavery.

  Love or romance, however, may not have brought the two bound laborers together. Although he was a servant, Andrew Judge was a white man with the power to command or force a sexual relationship with the enslaved Betty. What is lost to us is just how consensual their relationship may have been. Perhaps Judge stalked Betty, eventually forcing himself upon her. As a black woman, she would have virtually no ability to protect herself from unwanted advances or sexual attack. The business of slavery received every new enslaved baby with open arms, no matter the circumstances of conception. What we do know is that their union, whether brief or extended, consensual or unwanted, resulted in the birth of a daughter. We also know that however Judge defined his relationship to his daughter, it wasn’t enough to keep him at Mount Vernon.

  Eventually Andrew Judge left and built upon the opportunity that indentured servitude promised. By the 1780s Andrew Judge lived in his own home in Fairfax County. Listed among the occupants of his home were six additional residents, one of whom was black. It’s uncertain if Andrew Judge owned a slave or if he simply hired a free black person who lived on and worked his land. What is clear from the evidence left behind is that Judge left Mount Vernon and his enslaved daughter behind. Perhaps he attempted to purchase Betty and his child but was refused the opportunity by the Washingtons. Or maybe Judge simply didn’t want a complicated relationship with an enslaved woman and a mixed-race daughter. Whatever hope, if any, Betty had placed upon the relationship with Andrew Judge collapsed quickly, leaving her at Mount Vernon to raise Ona and her siblings, including Philadelphia, a daughter she gave birth to after Ona but before Judge left, sometime around 1780.

  Leaving his child behind at Mount Vernon, Andrew Judge’s parting gift to his daughter was a surname and a unique first name. The name is both African and Gaelic, and no other slave at Mount Vernon or the White House on the Pamunkey River was named Ona. Perhaps even more exceptional was that she was given a middle name, Maria. Her distinctive name set her apart from her siblings and from the majority of the other bondmen and bondwomen who toiled with her in Virginia.

  The slaves who were directly connected to the work at the Mansion House lived across the road from the blacksmith’s forge in the communal space known as the Quarters, or House for Families. Betty and other women who worked in the Mansion House were typically required to be present from sunrise to sundown, preparing meals, mending clothes, cleaning, spinning, and performing other domestic tasks, leaving most enslaved children separated from their parent or parents most of the day. Many of the children at Mount Vernon began structured labor between the ages of nine and fourteen, but most performed odd jobs just as soon as they were physically able. As very young enslaved children were unhelpful and sometimes considered a nuisance, they were often left in the Quarters without much supervision beyond the older slave women, who were deemed incapable of working in the fields and no longer up to the task of domestic work.

  Bushy haired, with light skin and freckles, a young Ona probably spent some of her days playing with her siblings and other enslaved children in the Quarters. More often than not, though, she had to learn how to fend for herself. Judge and the other children at Mount Vernon cried out in loneliness for their parents, witnessed the brutality of whippings and corporal punishment, and fell victim to early death due to accidental fires and drowning. Childhood for enslaved girls and boys was fleeting and fraught with calamity. Many perished before reaching young adulthood. Judge’s childhood wasn’t shortened by a plantation fatality. Instead, hers ended at age ten, when she was called to serve Martha Washington up at the Mansion House.

  A good number of children at Mount Vernon did not live with both of their parents, a circumstance created by the separation of enslaved spouses. Washington may not have broken up slave marriages by selling away husbands and wives, but he was not averse to separating slave couples by placing them on different farms. While he may not have purposefully disrupted slave unions, the business of slavery and the needs of Mount Vernon always came first. For slave couples and enslaved families, this meant that they would see each other only when permission was given.

  Just like other enslaved children, Ona Judge did not spend the majority of her youth with two parents. Andrew Judge had the privilege of white skin and the power anchored in a male body that allowed him to slip away from a life of unpaid labor. Betty had neither gender nor race on her side, and spent the entirety of her l
ife in human bondage in Virginia, a colony that would eventually become the slave-breeding capital of a new nation. Ona Judge learned valuable lessons from both of her parents. From her mother she would learn the power of perseverance. From her father, Judge would learn that the decision to free oneself trumped everything, no matter who was left behind.

  Two

  * * *

  New York–Bound

  George Washington taking the presidential oath of office, Federal Hall, 1789.

  On Christmas Eve 1783, George Washington returned to his family and beloved Mount Vernon a very changed man. For eight and a half years, Washington had led his countrymen as commander of the Continental Army, a poorly outfitted and undertrained band of men who took on the Herculean fight that many believed would end in failure. It had been a terrible war that lasted far longer than anyone had ever predicted. There were never enough shoes, blankets, or shirts for the men who enlisted. Even gunpowder was hard to come by. General Washington held the lives of more than one hundred thousand men in his hands, men who had agreed to bear arms in the new Continental Army, men who risked their limbs and lives in order to create a new country. More than thirty thousand American soldiers perished in the war, many from direct combat, and others from slow-moving disease and infection that ravaged makeshift infirmaries and camp hospitals. Unknown numbers of men died in the most dreadful ways—accidentally shot by comrades, crushed by old and unstable heavy wagons, falls from horses, and accidental drowning. Simply unable to live with the violence of war, some men took their own lives, leaving wives and children to face poverty and starvation.

  The general was a lucky man. He would return home without the visible markers of war that thousands of his countrymen carried to their graves. Even though he had escaped the ailments that plagued his soldiers, the amputation of legs, blindness, and grotesque facial disfigurement from musket fire, his health was far from stable. Now in his fifties, he had aged considerably.

  In the eighteen months before his return home to Mount Vernon, Washington witnessed the collapse of the mighty British Army. After the surprising victory at Yorktown, earnest negotiations began in Paris, resulting in a signed peace treaty and the evacuation of British troops. Washington left his post in New York and headed to Annapolis, Maryland, where he would resign as commander of the Continental Army. He had been home to visit only one time during the Revolution, and he wanted desperately to return to the life he once enjoyed. He missed his wife and longed for the privacy that his estate offered. Having completed his duties, the general looked forward to a restful Christmas holiday with his family and friends and returned to Virginia with a sense of great accomplishment for doing what most had imagined impossible: he had won the Revolution. But very few Americans had much faith in the new nation, including Washington. The United States of America was fragile; its infrastructure was anything but secure as the former colonies took their time forming a more cohesive country. Making matters worse, the new nation was on the brink of financial collapse. Dependent upon foreign loans, America was broke.

  His return to civilian life at Mount Vernon was brief; Washington could not remove himself from the politics and the concerns of the new nation, even when he tried. When invited to serve on Virginia’s delegation to the Constitutional Convention, Washington declined. It would take months for friends and political acquaintances to convince the retired general that he must attend the convention in Philadelphia. A reluctant yet duty-bound Washington was unanimously elected as the convention’s president where the new nation’s Constitution was created—but no one knew if it would work.

  Washington left Philadelphia and returned to Mount Vernon feeling trapped. He avoided conversation about the possibility of becoming the first president of the United States, dodging questions about his intentions and denying a desire to lead the new nation. But once the Congress set the timetable for the presidential election, Washington had to make his feelings known. Presidential electors were to be chosen in January of 1789, and an election would quickly follow. Washington sent his trusted secretary, Tobias Lear, to New York to establish and secure good housing in the city that would become the nation’s first capital. With considerable pressure and reassurance from friends and politicians, Washington had made up his mind; if elected the first president of the United States, he would accept the position.

  On April 14, 1789, Charles Thomson, secretary of the Congress, arrived on horseback at Mount Vernon. It was Thomson’s responsibility to inform the general that he had been unanimously elected to serve as president, capturing all sixty-nine electoral votes. Thomson read aloud a letter, penned by Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, president pro tempore of the Senate.

  Sir, I have the honor to transmit to Your Excellency the information of your unanimous election to the Office of the President of the United States of America. Suffer me sir, to indulge the hope, that so auspicious a mark of public confidence will meet your approbation, and be considered a sure pledge of the affection and support you are to expect from a free and enlightened people.

  For Washington, the letter confirmed that his life would never again be the same, and it set into motion a chain of events that irrevocably altered the lives of George and Martha Washington. The president-elect prepared to leave for New York quickly, but not before borrowing £600 from Captain Richard Conway. Just like the new nation, Washington was cash-strapped. Poor crop harvests and delinquent taxes had placed the soon-to-be leader of the new nation in dire straits. He would need to borrow money (at 6 percent interest) to keep Mount Vernon afloat and to finance his trip to New York. All of this weighed heavy on the president-elect’s mind as he wrote, “I am inclined to do what I never expected to be reduced to the necessity of doing—that is, to borrow money upon interest.”

  Concerned about his failing plantation, unhappy about a northern relocation, and uncertain about the fragile new nation, Washington left for New York, the seat of the nation’s capital, with a great deal on his mind. But he was not the only one with concerns about leaving Mount Vernon; there were others who would travel with the president and his family, people who had no choice in the matter. Seven slaves would accompany the Washingtons to New York, including a sixteen-year-old Ona Judge. The fear of the unknown, the separation from loved ones, and the forced relocation must have felt apocalyptic for the bondmen and bondwomen who would travel to New York. Not that the cares and concerns of Mount Vernon’s slaves entered into the mind of the new president.

  Eager to keep the new nation running, Washington left for New York on April 16, leaving a tremendous amount of the relocation work in the capable hands of Martha Washington, who would join him later. Prior to his departure, the president selected an acting master and mistress for the Mount Vernon estate. George Augustine Washington, the eldest son of the president’s brother Charles, was already living at Mount Vernon, serving as a manager, and was deemed the appropriate choice to fill his uncle’s shoes. His wife, Fanny Bassett (the daughter of Martha Washington’s sister) would look after all things connected to the running of the house and would remain in close contact with George and Martha Washington via the post.

  Fear, regret, and concern spilled onto the pages of the president’s diary. He wrote of his departure from Mount Vernon not in the fashion of a famed general ready for new challenges, but as a man who was extremely tentative: “About ten o’clock, I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express.” He doubted himself and the enterprise he had already accepted. Washington explained that he had the “best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.”

  Washington’s journey north took him through Philadelphia, where nearly twenty thousand men and women lined the streets to greet their new president. The crowds couldn’t compensate for the grueling nature of the trip; the muddy roads and constant festivities sl
owed the pace of travel. By the time Washington arrived in New York, he wanted nothing more than to enter the city as inconspicuously as possible and to begin his work leading the new nation. Washington wrote to New York governor George Clinton, stating, “I can assure you with the utmost sincerity, that no reception can be so congenial to my feelings as a quiet entry devoid of ceremony.” Although the governor offered the president lodging in his private home until a residence was secured for the new first family (a more modern term not used in the eighteenth century), Washington declined the offer, stating that it was simply too much of an imposition. The president planned to take “hired lodgings, or Rooms in a Tavern” until the details of the Washingtons’ new home were settled. Just one week before his arrival, the Congress leased a home for the president at 3 Cherry Street, located in what was then the northeastern section of the city, very near the present-day Brooklyn Bridge.

  Washington began the work of leading the new nation in a city that was very different from his Mount Vernon home. By the late 1780s, New York was the second-largest city in America, with a population of about thirty thousand people, and it was characteristically American. The city displayed signs of opulence and wealth all while maintaining a parochial nature that allowed for great diversity within its public spaces. People from all walks of life found themselves conducting business on the cobblestoned streets. Men, women, white, black, enslaved and free, all resided within the city limits, adding richness to a bustling commercial port city. The streets of New York could be adventurous and filled with opportunity, but they could also be rough terrain to navigate.