Oney Judge was a slave on George Washington’s plantation in Virginia. Beginning in 1789, teenaged Oney began working as a personal slave to the new First Lady Martha Washington in the presidential households, first in New York City and then in Philadelphia. According to Pennsylvania law, slaves that stayed in the state for longer than six months could take their freedom. George Washington rotated his household slaves out of the state, every six months. That was illegal in Pennsylvania law! But no one challenged the new President and Father of the Nation.
Before one return to Virginia in 1796, when Congress was out of session, Martha Washington told Oney that she was being gifted! Oney was to be given to Martha Washington’s granddaughter as a wedding present. She was twenty at the time. “I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty,” Oney later said in an interview. She contacted her friends among the free black community in Philadelphia, packing and sending her things to a friend’s home in advance. Then one night, while the first family ate dinner, she fled. With the free black community’s help Oney made her way to New Hampshire.
The Washingtons put notices of a runaway in the Philadelphia papers, and after finding out she was in New Hampshire, twice considered trying to kidnap her! Oney, with help from abolitionists both times, remained free. She eventually married a free black sailor, had a family, and died in 1848. Because George Washington’s will did not free her, she and her children were considered fugitives by the law until her death.
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