Never Caught Read online

  But there were places and venues that Judge would not have visited. The watchful eyes of her masters were omnipresent, and the Washingtons would never allow their slaves to interact closely with the free blacks of Philadelphia. Three years before Judge’s arrival, a group of free blacks, including Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, came together to form the Free African Society. It was the first black mutual aid society in Philadelphia, and its goals were to help widows, the poor, and fugitive slaves, who were unable to provide for themselves. Donations of firewood, clothing, and food were offered to black Philadelphians who found themselves mired in paralyzing poverty, and financial contributions were distributed for decent burials. The Washingtons would have stopped at nothing to keep their slaves away from the city’s black leaders and trailblazers. But this was an almost impossible mission. Inevitably, Ona Judge became acquainted with free black Philadelphians, some of whom, when she made the decision to flee, would become the most supportive friends imaginable.

  Judge spent the next five and a half years (albeit rotating every six months back to Mount Vernon or out of state) in Philadelphia, serving her masters while she watched the rest of Philadelphia’s enslaved population break free from the bonds of slavery. Her interactions with paid servants, contracted hired help, and with her own enslaved housemates informed her thoughts about her life and the possibilities of freedom. After the information breech regarding the Washingtons’ slave rotation, it would have been virtually impossible to keep Judge in the dark about the laws of the state. If Hercules knew the law and the Washingtons’ intentions, then Judge most certainly did, too.

  Judge may have believed that as a minor, she could not claim freedom as easily as Hercules or one of the other adult slaves who lived in the President’s House. If she escaped her masters before their calculated trips out of state, and hid among the free blacks of Philadelphia, she could contest her slave status, but the risk was high. Because Judge was under the age of eighteen years old, her enslavement would convert to a contract of servitude, one that could place her fate into the hands of an unknown person until she reached the age of twenty-eight. She could be hired out to serve a particularly cruel employer, someone who might demand a more physically taxing or dangerous type of labor. Worse yet, her new owner could exploit her sexually, a fear that every female slave and servant harbored when presented with new labor assignments. While Judge may have preferred freedom, she must have felt relatively safe in the President’s House and made the decision to stay put for the time being.

  Ona Judge was not the only person in Philadelphia who wondered about the future. While emancipation touched the lives of many black men and women who lived in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it was a process that was slow and cumbersome. Pennsylvania may have been revolutionary in its move to gradually end African slavery, but for black Philadelphians, especially those who were enslaved, change didn’t come fast enough. Some refused to wait for freedom, choosing to live the vulnerable life of a fugitive. During the 1780s, more than 160 slaves took their chances and headed north from the city, looking for freedom and anonymity. Most runaways were young black men, but the few women who attempted escape in Philadelphia often did so to join free husbands scattered about New England, often with their children in tow.

  Although the number of free people continued to grow, black men and women always remained in the minority in Philadelphia. It must have been strange to live in a land that was predominantly white. Aside from living on a plantation that counted more than two hundred enslaved people, Fairfax County, Virginia, where she had spent the majority of her life, was home to a large proportion of black residents. There were close to 4,500 blacks living around Mount Vernon, though only 135 of them were free. Judge was accustomed to living around enslaved black people, and Philadelphia was, in reality, a white city. In 1790 the first federal census takers counted more than forty-four thousand residents who made their home in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Black men and women comprised only 5 percent of the city’s population.

  Judge watched as slave owners emancipated their male slaves at a much faster rate than their women, creating a larger pool of female slaves who would spend much more time in bondage. As domestic help was a necessity and a labor shortage evaporated the pool of good servants, artisans and merchants held tight to their female slaves. Judge must have known some of the enslaved women living in Philadelphia, a reminder that she was not alone. But she would have also calculated that her peers would eventually find freedom through the laws of the state, and that this was not a possibility for her.

  Most of the black women who lived in Philadelphia labored long hours as domestics. Employment opportunities outside of cleaning homes and washing clothes were nearly impossible for women of any race, but especially for women of African descent. Free black women took in laundry, sold pepper pot soup and fruits and vegetables on the streets, or took to rag picking, the latter only by those who were destitute. Searching through trash heaps, they gathered discarded clothing or bits of cloth and cleaned them for resale. It was dirty work and offered the smallest of financial rewards, but it was work, and it often allowed black women and their children to evade hunger and malnutrition. Judge witnessed black poverty and understood that freedom was by no means an easy endeavor.

  Judge also watched black men and women make their way out of slavery through indentured servitude. Just like George Washington, many slave owners who moved to Pennsylvania (and there was a flood of them as a result of the revolt during the 1790s in Saint-Domingue, which would become Haiti) looked for ways around the law that stripped them of their human property after six months. Many whites in Pennsylvania acknowledged that abolition was a fait accompli, so to slow it down, slave owners emancipated their slaves and indentured them for lengthy periods of time.

  But there were amazing things about the city that Judge would have to witness from afar. Free black communities were organizing, creating churches, schools, and social societies, all within a stone’s throw of Judge’s residence. While Judge probably rode or walked by the buildings owned by free blacks, she would not have stopped to interact with its members. If Judge were caught speaking to or socializing with free blacks, she would put her presence on High Street in jeopardy. She had seen how the Washingtons handled the transgressions of her enslaved housemates. The Washingtons would simply not tolerate the contagion of freedom seeping into the lives of their slaves. If there was the slightest suspicion of fraternizing with free blacks, Judge’s life could be turned upside down.

  Judge knew that no one’s place, including her own, was secure on High Street. The spring of 1791 brought the first round of change at the President’s House, beginning with the enslaved postilion, Giles. While on a Southern tour with the president, Giles was severely injured, perhaps thrown from a horse, a common and life-altering accident. His injuries were so grave that Washington had no choice but to remove Giles from service and to leave him behind in Virginia, never to return to Philadelphia. This must have been devastating to Giles for several reasons. Aside from being forced to return to Virginia for good, he would no longer serve the Washingtons in a position of distinction. Giles was to be trained in some other form of service, but this would most likely be something such as broom making or clay digging, jobs that were the least desirable for slaves at Mount Vernon.

  Like Giles, the young slave Paris would also not return from Mount Vernon to work in the President’s House in Philadelphia, but for very different reasons. Paris also accompanied the president on his tour of the Southern states, but his service was unacceptable to Washington. The president wrote to his secretary,

  Paris has become so lazy, self willed & impudent, that John (the Coachman) had no sort of government of him; on the contrary, Jno. say’s it was a maxim with Paris to do nothing he was ordered, and everything he was forbid. This conduct, added to the incapacity of Giles for a Pistilion, who I believe will never be able to mount a horse again for that purpose, has induced me t
o find Paris some other employment than in the Stable—of course I shall leave him at home.

  Perhaps Paris had been contaminated by the contagion of freedom in Philadelphia, or maybe a difficult Southern trip brought out the impudence in the young slave. Whatever the reason, Paris remained at Mount Vernon for the next two years before illness claimed his life. The removal of Paris was still fresh in the minds of the slaves at the President’s Mansion when Christopher Sheels, the only literate slave on High Street, was sent back to Virginia. It is possible that his literacy left the first family uneasy, deciding that his residency in Philadelphia was too great a risk. Having lived with Sheels for two years, Judge would have likely been saddened by his departure.

  The transition at the Executive Mansion was no excuse for Judge to slow down or to reflect about loss. In fact, it required all the slaves on High Street to work faster, complete extra work assignments, and to simply carry on. Judge understood that as a slave, most of what happened in her life was beyond her control, but she would not stand alone in her vulnerability. All the residents of Philadelphia, including the Washingtons, would soon confront the fragility and unpredictability of life’s circumstances.

  During the late summer of 1793, one of the worst public health crises hit the nation’s capital with unabated destruction. Men and women suffered from headaches, chills, sharp pains, stomach upset, and jaundice, followed by the spewing of black vomit and internal bleeding. Yellow fever sickened and killed many, and thousands of citizens fled from the city, including George and Martha Washington, who along with Judge, retreated to Mount Vernon to escape the death and devastation connected to the dreadful outbreak. Eighteenth-century medicine was still far from a stable science and few understood the actual cause or transmission of the disease. Although yellow fever is acquired via the bite of a mosquito, many believed the illness was associated with foul air, throwing physicians far off the track of preventive care or a possible cure. The yellow fever outbreak did not dissipate until the first frost in November, and the death toll was staggering. Between four and five thousand Philadelphians perished, including the wife of Washington’s secretary Tobias Lear. One of the first victims of the dreaded fever, Polly Lear died on July 28 at the age of twenty-three.

  Yet out of what could only be considered a grim situation, black community leaders Richard Allen and Absalom Jones saw an opportunity for black residents to gain footing in the struggle for black rights in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, their hopes were based upon the faulty beliefs of the well-known physician Benjamin Rush. As one of the top doctors in Philadelphia, many turned to him for guidance during the outbreak. Rush believed incorrectly that people of African descent were immune to the disease. Proclaiming that no black men or women had come down with the fever by September, he reached out to the famed black leaders of Philadelphia asking for their help in recruiting black men and women to lend a hand as nurses and grave diggers.

  Allen and Jones saw this request as an opportunity to uplift the profile of blacks in the city. As emancipation moved forward, the pursuit of racial equality became a priority in emerging black churches and among the growing free population. In the minds of Jones and Allen, assisting whites would prove that black men and women were capable of being good citizens and were worthy of the abolitionist assistance offered to them by leading Philadelphia Quakers. Black leaders saw this moment as an opportunity for African American residents to reverse the detrimental stereotypes of blacks as lazy, impudent, and unreasonable emancipated men and women. If black assistance during this horrible epidemic could help alleviate the growing racial tension in a city that fitfully accepted emancipation, then Jones and Allen were ready to recruit significant numbers of black men and women to help nurse the sick, to hold the hands of the dying, and to dig the graves of those who perished. And they did so with great optimism.

  The problem with their plan was that Benjamin Rush was wrong. His assumptions about black immunity to the disease were incorrect, and blacks died at the same rates as did white Philadelphians. As the city trembled under the heat of the summer, the plague not only took the lives of white Philadelphians, but it also struck the city’s black population. Indeed, African Americans represented 10 percent of all deaths related to the fever. Yet insult was added to injury when whites began to hurl accusations of black impropriety during the outbreak of fever. Blacks were accused of exploiting white vulnerability by robbing dying men and women and by ransacking abandoned homes. An opportunity to ease racial animosity between white and black Philadelphians was lost, reminding free blacks, servants, and the enslaved that gradual emancipation would not end centuries of racial violence, stereotypes, or tension overnight.

  The epidemic did do something positive for Judge, however. Fear of contagion prompted the Washington household to pack up for a visit back to Mount Vernon. Once back at her birthplace, she got to know her new niece. Betty Davis had given birth to another daughter, a baby who would share a name with her aunt. Little Oney would remind Judge of the importance of family and of the gift of motherhood, two things that she would never have while serving the Washingtons in Philadelphia. Once again, the trip back home to Mount Vernon was bittersweet.

  As autumn ushered in cold weather, killing disease-carrying mosquitos in the nation’s capital, the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 finally came to a close. The Washingtons and their slaves, including Judge, returned to Philadelphia in December, laying eyes upon the ravaged city. As Philadelphians mourned the loss of five thousand residents, Judge would have noticed more than just grief in the air; the city was rife with racial tension of a sharper kind. Blacks had just buried their own family members only to suffer accusations of hideous behavior. Judge most certainly heard the stories of black anger and resentment from those who had lost loved ones in a grand attempt to prove themselves worthy of freedom and equality.

  No matter the status, free or enslaved, black people were still considered the inferior race. Even when people of African descent offered up their lives to help whites, they were still rejected and scorned. This was a valuable lesson for free black leaders like Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, but it was also a cautionary reminder to people like Ona Judge. Life as an enslaved person robbed her of her dignity and her personhood, but life as a free person, although preferable, would not serve as a conduit to easy living. She thought deeply about her circumstances and about her future, but her reflections came to a sudden stop when she received devastating news about her brother Austin.

  Like Judge, Austin served the Washingtons in New York and Philadelphia and traveled back and forth to Mount Vernon every six months. Austin was scheduled to return to Virginia in December of 1794, and was eager to see his wife, Charlotte, and their five children. As one of the more trusted slaves, Austin was sent home unescorted to Mount Vernon with twenty dollars to cover the cost of his travel and lodgings. Three days after his departure, a letter arrived for the president from Maryland telling of a terrible accident. Austin had experienced tremendous difficulty navigating a river in Harford near Havre de Grace, Maryland, and was “with Great Difficulty . . . Dragged out of the water.” He was “likely to Lose his Life.” Indeed, shortly after being dragged from the river, only in his midthirties, Austin died, leaving behind his family at Mount Vernon and his sister in Philadelphia.

  The news of Austin’s death no doubt shocked Judge. Austin had been her only familial link during her stay in New York and Philadelphia, and now she would be forced to endure the rest of her time in the North without any kinfolk.

  The news was too much for Austin’s mother to bear. An elderly Betty, now in her late fifties, was sickly and worn thin from a life of enslavement. To make matters worse, winter, always a difficult time for the aged, especially those who suffered from chronic illness, and for the enslaved who lived in uninsulated cabins, was just around the corner. She did indeed grow ill, and in January of 1795, George Washington was notified about her death. The president saw her death as merciful, relieving the slave fr
om her debilitating illness. He wrote, “It is happy for old Betty, and her children and friends, that she is taken of[f] the stage; her life must have been miserable to herself, and troublesome to all those around her.” As a slave owner, Washington thought not only about the misery that Betty endured, but he thought practically about her required care. Elderly or sickly slaves were considered a nuisance and a financial drain, as the cost of feeding and clothing them was never recouped. For Washington, Betty’s death was a financial relief, but to Betty’s family, it was an insurmountable blow.

  In 1795 the only four of the original slaves to arrive on High Street—Moll, Hercules, Richmond, and Ona Judge—welcomed a new slave by the name of Joe to the Washington household. There were psychological changes afoot as well. No longer a young girl, Judge, now in her early twenties, had matured and had maintained her respected status as Martha Washington’s first attendant. Judge stayed on in the President’s House as Washington served his second term, becoming accustomed to her episodic trips back to Mount Vernon. Following the death of her mother and brother, the world that she once knew so intimately at Mount Vernon had vanished, perhaps reminding Judge that Mount Vernon was less a home to her than was the North.

  Seven