Never Caught: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

On December 12th of 1799, Washington takes a ride on horseback across Mount Vernon on a cold, rainy day. Washington returns to the main house at dinner time and stays in his damp clothes throughout the meal. Washington begins complaining of a sore throat soon after dinner, and by the morning, it is clear that Washington needs a doctor. Tobias Lear calls a friend of Washington’s, who lets some of Washington’s blood—an 18th-century medical practice—before a physician, Dr. James Craik, arrives. Washington begins convulsing and struggling mightily for breath. 

Craik, seeing the former president’s serious state, bleeds him yet again and then calls for more doctors to come. The team of physicians tries out several home remedies—as well as therapies such as enemas and emetics—but Washington is beyond help. Washington calls Martha to his side. She helps him to revise his will. He commands her to burn the old copy of it. On December 14th, Washington dies surrounded by his wife, his friends, his doctors, and four of his slaves.

Washington’s final will emancipates 123 of the slaves at Mount Vernon from bondage. For slaves, the death of an owner always represents a major shift or turnover—but for many of Washington’s slaves, their owner’s final act is a welcome surprise. For others, who have created familial bonds with slaves belonging to Martha Washington—who has not emancipated her slaves—it represents more uncertainty, violence, and rupture. Washington’s will stipulates that older slaves will receive assistance in the form of food and clothing, and that younger slaves will be assigned servant positions in which they’ll be taught to read and write. Washington leaves to William Lee an annuity of $30 in exchange for his “faithful services during the Revolutionary War.” Lee chooses to remain on at Mount Vernon—his drinking problem has proven too debilitating.

Washington does not free all of his slaves instantly, however—he stipulates that they will be emancipated only upon the death of Martha Washington. This fact makes Martha uneasy and, in her own words, “unhappy”—she knows that her bondmen and bondwomen are now eagerly anticipating he death. Martha, fearing for her life, emancipates her late husband’s slaves on January 1st of 1801—but she retains her own slaves, numbering nearly 200, in bondage.

News of Washington’s death—and of his decision to emancipate his slaves—surely reaches Ona in New Hampshire. However, she knows that she is technically the property of Martha Washington, and that she cannot let her guard down yet. There may yet be attempts, she knows, to drag her back to Virginia. In May of 1802, Martha succumbs to an illness and dies. Her estate is transferred to her heirs, and her slaves are divided up and relocated to several different farms.

Ona’s life, meanwhile, continues to move forward. She and her husband have two more children together and become prominent members of Portsmouth’s free Black community. Perhaps because Ona is a fugitive, she leaves behind few records of major details of her life: where she lives, who she works for, from whom she and Jack rent their home, and when and where her third child (and only son) was born. Her third child may have been William Staines, who may have been born around 1800 or 1801. In 1819, there are records of a young 19-year-old seaman, Black with a “light complexion,” who began sailing out of New York and Portland, Maine. The young man’s birthplace is listed as Portsmouth; the only family with the surname Staines in Portsmouth was that of Ona and Jack.

Ona’s husband Jack dies suddenly in 1803—a local paper lists his death notice but does not supply a cause of death. Ona is now forced to raise three young children alone on a maidservant’s wages. With the help of the Jacks—the landowning free Black family who took Ona and Eliza in back in 1799 after Bassett’s visit—Ona finds refuge in a difficult time. The Jacks are also mourning the passing of their matriarch, and as Ona moves onto the family’s property, she joins two other free Black women in their thirties, Nancy and Phillis, in pooling their resources to help their two families remain float.

By August of 1816, however, Ona is still in the midst of such hard times that she is forced to place her two daughters into indentured servitude to a family who lives about a mile away. Ona’s eldest daughter, Eliza, and her second daughter, named Nancy, continue to pull in odd jobs over the next several years as they struggle to support their mother, the Jack household, and one another. Eliza dies in February of 1832 at just 34 years old; in September of 1833, Nancy dies. Ona, in her late 50s, is alone once again, having outlived both of her daughters.

Ona finds refuge in Christianity and in the pursuit of literacy. Having never received “mental or moral instruction of any kind” during her youth bound to the Washingtons, she begins teaching herself to read and write, using the Bible as a guide. As Ona finds salvation in the Baptist church, she finds herself questioning privately and publicly the role of religion in the lives of her former owners. Through the church, Ona meets Reverend Thomas Archibald. Archibald publishes an interview with Ona on May 22nd, 1845, in an abolitionist newspaper called the Granite Freeman. The article appears nearly fifty nears to the date after her escape. Two years later, another newspaper, the Liberator, publishes Ona’s life story. In February of 1848, Ona falls ill, and on February 25th, at 74 years old, she dies.