In Never Caught, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar tells the story of Ona Maria Judge Staines, who was born into slavery at George and Martha Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation. Ona escaped to freedom in 1796, absconding from Philadelphia to New Hampshire. Ona was born in 1773, just days after the death of Martha Washington’s daughter Patsy. The daughter of Betty, one of Martha Washington’s “dower slaves,” or human “property” from her first marriage, and a white indentured servant from England named Andrew Judge, Ona was raised primarily by her mother after her father departed alone once his tenure of servitude at Mount Vernon expired.
In 1789, as Washington ascends to the presidency, the 16-year-old Ona—now in the personal employ of Martha Washington as a seamstress and handmaiden, charged with outfitting the first lady in finery each day—accompanies the Washingtons northward to New York, the nation’s temporary capital. In New York, as Ona caters to the nervous, recalcitrant Martha, she encounters for the first time communities of free Black men and women living communally and autonomously. Ona—and the Washingtons—begin to realize that Northern attitudes toward slavery are changing.
After a brief return to Mount Vernon in 1790, the Washingtons move from New York to Philadelphia. The new nation is in flux, and Congress has decided to create a new capital in Virginia. While the capital is being constructed, the nation’s new temporary capital will be centered in Philadelphia—a place which, due to its Quaker roots, is even more progressive than New York. At the large Executive Mansion on High Street in Philadelphia, Ona finds herself living in a house stuffed to the gills with members of the Washington family (and administration), white indentured servants, and enslaved Black people alike. Ona begins caring for the Washington’s grandchildren Wash and Nelly—and after being in close quarters not only with the Washingtons’ white servants but with the rapidly-expanding free Black community in Philadelphia, Ona begins to fixate on what freedom would be like.
After several months of living in Philadelphia, a member of Washington’s administration informs George and Martha that a Pennsylvania law threatens their power over the handful of enslaved men and women they have brought north with them. According to the law, adult slaves who have lived in Pennsylvania for more than six months are entitled to claim their freedom. In order to work around this law, George and Martha begin “shuffling” their slaves around by sending them back and forth from Mount Vernon every six months—knowing all the while that it is only a matter of time before Ona and her fellow bondwomen and bondmen learn the truth of what they’re being denied. Washington’s chief of staff, Tobias Lear, is instrumental in organizing the Washingtons’ “slave shuffle” for nearly six years—all the while, Dunbar writes, Ona wrestles with the desire for freedom and the fear of being caught or recaptured. Even if she is successful in running away, Ona knows, she will never feel safe from the Washingtons’ clutches—and she will likely be forced to take on grueling domestic work that is much more difficult than her duties at the Executive Mansion.
After watching two of Washingtons’ enslaved Black drivers, Giles and Paris, fall out of favor, Ona also endures the death of her brother, Austin. Soon after, she’s forced to flee alongside the Washingtons from a devastating outbreak of yellow fever. Then, when Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis, announces her engagement to a much-older man, Thomas Law, Martha announces her intent to “give” Ona to the young Eliza as a wedding gift. Ona is unable to bear the humiliation of realizing how expendable and replaceable she is. The tragedies she has recently endured motivate Ona to at last begin making plans to run away. Aided, Dunbar writes, by a network of free Black people in Philadelphia, Ona escapes in late May of 1796, fleeing the Executive Mansion while George and Martha Washington eat supper one evening. The Washingtons almost immediately place advertisements in local papers offering a reward for Ona’s return—but Ona is already on board a freighter bound for Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
In Portsmouth, Ona keeps a low profile as she secures housing and a domestic job through the small but close-knit network of free Black men and women living in the port town. Though New Hampshire will not legally abolish slavery until 1857, by the time Ona arrives there, few white men and women own slaves. Still, Ona is careful about how she dresses, to whom she tells her story, and how she carries herself. But one day in the summer of 1796, Ona is spotted and recognized by Elizabeth Langdon—the daughter of a New Hampshire Senator named John Langdon who frequently traveled with his family to the Executive Mansion while Ona toiled there. Langdon writes to the Washingtons to tell them of what his daughter has seen.
In September, Washington enlists the help of federal slave-catching agents to try to bring Ona back to Virginia—he believes she has been lured away by a Frenchman, unwilling to even entertain the notion that she has run away of her own free will. One of the men Washington solicits help from is Joseph Whipple, the customs officer in Portsmouth. Whipple puts out a fake advertisement for a domestic, and Ona, in need of work, answers the call. When Whipple interviews Ona, however, she realizes that she has been led into a trap. She appeases Whipple by assuring him she’ll board a boat bound for Virginia—but as Whipple awaits her on the docks, she hides out in a nearby town. Whipple writes of his failure to Washington—Washington begins to realize that if he truly wants Ona back, he will be forced to publicly reveal his desperation in the midst of a shifting sociopolitical climate of anti-slavery sentiment.
Ona, safe for the time being, finds comfort and companionship as she marries Jack Staines—a free Black seaman whose work often takes him away from Portsmouth for months at a time. Ona gives birth to a daughter named Eliza—but she is unaware that Washington has decided to redouble his efforts to recapture her. In the summer of 1799, Washington recruits a nephew of Martha’s (who’s a Virginian senator) named Burwell Bassett Jr. to travel to New Hampshire and bring Ona back by any means necessary. Bassett calls upon Ona at her house and finds her alone with her daughter—but she declares her intent to remain free so firmly that he leaves, determined not to make a scene. The following day, when Bassett returns to the house to take Ona by force, he finds her home empty—she has fled to the nearby Greenland to take shelter with a family called the Jacks.
In December, Washington falls ill with an inflamed throat. His doctors’ attempts to ease his condition fail. Washington revises his will on his deathbed, writing into the document a stipulation which will gradually emancipate 123 of the slaves at Mount Vernon from slavery, granting them their freedom upon the death of his wife. Martha is uneasy with the clause—she fears that she will be killed in order to hasten the emancipation of her husband’s slaves. She herself emancipates them on January 1st of 1801; upon her own death in 1802, her own slaves pass to her grandchildren.
Ona has two more children with Jack Staines—a daughter named Nancy and a son about whom few records exist but who was likely named William. Jack Staines dies in 1803, leaving Ona and her children in a precarious position. Ona seeks the help of the Jacks once again, but still she is forced to indenture her daughters into servitude to a local white family in order to make ends meet. The girls’ work is hard and debilitating, and Eliza and Nancy die in 1832 and 1833 respectively. Having outlived her daughters, Ona continues backbreaking domestic work for low wages. She turns to Christianity for comfort, teaching herself to read and write through studying the Bible. Toward the end of her life, in 1845, the 70-year-old grants two interviews to local abolitionist newspapers before falling ill and dying in 1848.
In a brief epilogue, Dunbar tells the story of Ona’s sister, Philadelphia. Like Ona, Philadelphia was born into slavery at Mount Vernon. When Ona fled in 1796, Philadelphia was given to Eliza Parke Custis Law in Ona’s place. While still enslaved, Philadelphia married a free Black man named William Costin—believed by scholars to be related to Martha Washington, Costin was a prominent and relatively wealthy member of the burgeoning free Black community in the fast-growing District of Columbia. Costin dedicated his life to purchasing and immediately emancipating slaves from the Washingtons’ Mount Vernon estate and other nearby plantations. Philadelphia was emancipated by Thomas Law in 1807. At 28, already the mother of two young daughters, Philadelphia joined her husband in expanding their family, purchasing property, and helping enslaved and recently emancipated members of the District of Columbia’s Black community to make their way in the world. Ona, Dunbar writes, likely knew nothing of her sister’s fate—a sad but necessary casualty of Ona’s pursuit of freedom above all else.
