In Never Caught, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar seeks to tell the story of Ona “Oney” Judge Staines, one of George and Martha Washington’s slaves. As an enslaved Black woman, Ona was denied freedom, agency, and autonomy throughout her entire life, even after she escaped from bondage and began living as a “free” woman in New Hampshire. Throughout the book, Dunbar attempts to restore what was lost of Ona’s story. As Dunbar uses historical records and social contexts of the time to fill in the gaps in Ona’s experiences, she ultimately argues that because history has erased Ona’s journey—and the journeys of countless enslaved Black women like her—from the record, it is scholars’ duties to piece these stories together the best they can and use their platforms to make narratives like Ona’s heard.
Throughout Never Caught, Dunbar demonstrates the many factors that lead to the erasure of the narratives of women, particularly the narratives of Black women, throughout history. Dunbar, a prominent scholar whose studies focus on “the lives of women of African descent who called America their home during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” has stated in interviews that she was surprised the first time she came across the story of Ona Judge Staines—it didn’t make sense to her that a renowned, hardworking historian such as herself hadn’t heard Ona’s tale. In an author’s note at the beginning of the book, Dunbar writes that “enslavement, racism, and sexism often discarded [Black] women from the historical record, and as historians we are frequently left unsatisfied with scant evidence. Much of the earlier historical record was written by other people, typically white men, who were literate and in positions of power.” Dunbar attributes the erasure of Ona’s story to the structural mechanisms of “enslavement, racism, and sexism.” Because history, as the aphorism goes, is written by the victors—and because white men, due to the privileges of their race and sex, are so often victorious—written historical records often ignore or even actively seek to expunge Black narratives that indict the morality of history’s “victors.” Dunbar is able to recognize the cruelty in these erasures, and in Never Caught, she seeks to rebel against them by extending to Ona the attention, care, patience, and gratitude that Ona never received in her lifetime.
Dunbar uses elements of informed speculation in order to further underscore just how profoundly absent enslaved Black women’s stories are from the historical record. Many sections of the book are speculative—that is to say, they use historical context, emotional intelligence, and instinct to piece together Ona’s experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Because Ona stated in her own words that she “never received the least mental or moral instruction of any kind” from the Washingtons and could neither read nor write, there are no extant letters or documents in which she tells her story from her own point of view. A pair of interviews she gave to two newspapers toward the end of her life are the only instance in which Ona tells her story in her own words. In attempting to reconstruct what it must have felt like to make a hasty escape from the Washingtons’ home or approximate what Ona must have been feeling as she tasted freedom for the first time in Portsmouth, Dunbar seeks to give Ona’s story the platform, respect, and attention it never received while she lived. Stories like Ona’s have just barely endured throughout the years, and Dunbar argues that unless historians, scholars, writers, and storytellers use their privilege and their platforms to amplify these stories, patterns of erasing Black women’s voices from history will only continue on.
The erasure of the narratives of countless enslaved Black women from the historical record is, for scholars like Dunbar and for countless Americans, a painful and regrettable reality. Structural racism, enforced illiteracy, and the control and suppression of slaves all have their parts to play in these erasures. Yet Dunbar’s necessary, vital work seeks to do justice to stories like Ona’s by taking the imaginative leaps of empathy necessary to reconstruct what Ona’s journey must have been like as she fought tirelessly for her freedom.
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Narrative and Historical Erasure Quotes in Never Caught
The business of slavery received every new enslaved baby with open arms, no matter the circumstances of conception.
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.
With George and Martha Washington hundreds of miles away, their lives were now in the hands of George Augustine and the overseers. Would the slaves at Mount Vernon be treated decently? Would the nature of their work change, and if so, how? The uncertainty of life and the involuntary separation of family members reminded every black person at Mount Vernon that the system of slavery rendered them powerless.
Although private correspondence reveals Martha Washington's personal struggles with the new demands placed upon her; Ona Judge, an illiterate teenager, left behind no such trace. We can only imagine what Judge's transition to Northern life must have felt like; it had to have been terrifying or at the very least, unsteadying. Yet the young bondwoman handled the abrupt change like a seasoned slave. […] [Ona] was Martha's "go-to girl" for just about everything, and it was Judge's duty to know the desires of her mistress before Martha Washington knew them herself. A slave always had to be prepared, for anything.
Coming from a family of talented seamstresses, Judge was responsible for Martha Washington's appearance. She selected her gowns, made small repairs on aging skirts, removing stains whether they be from food or the dirt from the unpaved streets, and then dressed her. What appeared to be the mundane task of wardrobe selection for the first lady was actually quite important. A wardrobe lay at the root of one's appearance, and the mistress and her slave girl fashioned an image for the new American aristocracy.
When the carriage returned Judge to the curved driveway at the Mount Vernon estate, the bondwoman would alter her frame of reference. Her eyes would miss the spotting of free black men and women in the marketplace, and her ears longed for discreet conversations about black freedom. On her return trip to Virginia, Judge would confront the fixed reality of her life as a slave. While her lifestyle and duties may have appeared desirable, even glamorous, to the enslaved at Mount Vernon, Judge knew that black Northerners could enjoy much more than she could.
The Federal City would be splendid, and the hands of slaves would build it. The new federal government rented hundreds of slaves to clear the land, making way for paved streets and thoroughfares. These same slaves would bake the bricks and saw the lumber needed to erect buildings on what had been a desolate swamp. Black men and women's unpaid labor would lay the foundation for what would become the seat of America's power.
Imprudently believing that he could prevent his slaves from hearing about the laws, Washington insisted that the utmost discretion be used regarding their plan of slave rotation in and out of Philadelphia. More than a loss of labor was at stake. If Ona Judge and her enslaved companions uncovered the truth about their slave status in Philadelphia, they would possess knowledge that could set them free. Power would shift from the president to his human property, making them less likely to serve their master faithfully, and eventually, they might run away.
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.
But still, she was willing to face dog-sniffing kidnappers and bounty hunters for the rest of her life. Yes, her fear was consuming but so, too, was her anger. Judge could no longer stomach her enslavement, and it was the change in her ownership that pulled the trigger on Judge's fury. She had given everything to the Washingtons. For twelve years she had served her mistress faithfully, and now she was to be discarded like the scraps of material that she cut from Martha Washington's dresses. Any false illusions she had clung to had evaporated, and Judge knew that no matter how obedient or loyal she may have appeared to her owners, she would never be considered fully human.
The beautiful and expensive clothing that she wore to serve the Washingtons was packed away, and instead, Judge would have dressed in inconspicuous clothing, allowing her to hide in plain sight. She was a hunted woman and would try to pass, not for white, but as a free black Northern woman.
In Washington's mind, there was no possible way that Judge could or would have engineered her own escape under the watchful eyes of her owners. Someone else must have lured her away and planned her escape, for as Washington wrote to Wolcott, "not the least suspicion was entertained of her going, or having formed a connexion with any one who could induce her to such an Act."
Over time, Washington grew adamant that a boyfriend was at the center of Judge's getaway. The president believed that a known acquaintance of the first family, a "Frenchman" to be exact, was involved in Judge's escape.
With no extra money to purchase a new wedding dress, Judge would have selected to wear something from her existing wardrobe. For months, the fugitive dressed inconspicuously, wearing plain clothing appropriate for a domestic. But on her wedding day she would have pulled out one of her nicer dresses, one that she used to wear while serving the Washingtons.
Righteous indignation and a belief in her right to be free prompted her final and fierce response to Bassett, telling him, "I am free now and choose to remain so."
Archibald published this first interview on May 27, 1845, in the Granite Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper. The article appeared on the forty-ninth anniversary of her escape—almost to the day. With her children deceased, the elderly Ona Staines no longer hid from the spotlight. Now in her early seventies, the fear of being returned to the Parke Custis heirs had finally been vanquished.
"When asked if she is not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since, than before, her reply is ‘No, I am free, and I have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.’” Although she never regretted her escape, she could not forget her family members who still lived at Mount Vernon. Leaving them behind was the greatest of sacrifices.
