Ona Judge Escaped From Slavery While George Washington Was Busy Eating Dinner Inside. Now, a New Mural Honors Her Legacy

The artwork in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shows Judge arriving in the city after her journey from Philadelphia in May 1796. She remained a free woman until her death in 1848

Meilan Solly | Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

May 28, 2026 4:07 p.m.

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On May 21, 1796, George Washington and his family sat down for dinner at the President’s House in Philadelphia, enjoying one of their last meals in the city before returning to Mount Vernon for the summer. As the Washingtons dined, an enslaved woman named Ona Judge made her escape, slipping out of the mansion to freedom.

“Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where,” Judge recalled in an 1845 interview. “For I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I never should get my liberty.”

After Judge fled, she made her way north, securing passage on a ship bound for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Despite Washington’s unyielding efforts to track her down, Judge evaded capture, dying in 1848 as a free woman. Two centuries later, Judge’s harrowing account of her escape offers a rare glimpse into the challenges faced by fugitives from slavery in the nascent United States. Her story is also of note for its connection to the nation’s first commander in chief, a man who privately questioned the institution of slavery yet still owned 123 men, women and children.

Last week, just over 230 years after Judge’s self-emancipation from slavery, the nonprofit Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire unveiled a mural in Portsmouth that honors her memory. Created by artist Manuel Ramirez, the work shows Judge soon after her arrival on the city’s waterfront, clad in a green dress and a straw bonnet.

“As we unveil this mural, we unveil memory, we unveil history, we unveil the truth,” JerriAnne Boggs, the nonprofit’s executive director, said at the May 23 ceremony, per Seacoast Online’s Jane Murphy. “We unveil the courage of a young woman who chose freedom despite all the odds. This mural ensures that Ona’s story will no longer remain hidden.”

No known images of Judge survive today, so the team used artificial intelligence to generate a likeness informed by a description in a runaway ad. Published by a Philadelphia newspaper three days after Judge’s escape, the notice stated that she was “a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair. She is of middle stature, slender and delicately formed, about 20 years of age.”

Ramirez filled in the details from there, drawing on research conducted by the nonprofit’s staff to ensure historical accuracy in the 13-by-15-foot scene. As historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of the 2017 book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, tells the Boston Globe’s Steven Porter, the mural is an “authentic” representation of its subject based on the available information. The nonprofit, for its part, notes, “Many artists have imagined what she might have looked like, and ours is yet another interpretation.”

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Who was Ona Judge?

The daughter of an enslaved seamstress and a white tailor, Judge was born at Mount Vernon around 1774. She started working as Martha Washington’s lady’s maid at age 10, tending to her mistress’ needs by mending her clothing, helping her bathe and dress, and organizing her belongings.

When Washington was elected president in 1789, Judge was one of seven enslaved people selected to accompany the family to their new home in New York. The next year, when the family relocated to Philadelphia, Judge went with them. (The cornerstone for the White House was only laid in 1792; John Adams, the nation’s second president, was the first commander in chief to take up residence in the Washington, D.C. mansion.)

As the first lady’s “preferred” maid, Judge “received a fancier wardrobe than most enslaved people,” historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky wrote in a 2019 essay for the White House Historical Association. Her clothing was viewed “as an extension of Martha’s status,” projecting the family’s wealth and privilege to other Philadelphians.

In 1780, Pennsylvania had passed an act that gradually abolished slavery in the state. Under the terms of this law, adults enslaved by long-term visitors to Pennsylvania would be automatically freed if they remained in the state for more than six months.

Washington had no intention of abiding by this provision, so he found a legal loophole: moving the individuals he enslaved out of Pennsylvania each time the deadline approached. “In essence,” Dunbar wrote for the New York Times in 2015, the president “reset the clock,” adopting “a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny.”

Ona Judge’s escape from slavery

Washington genuinely believed that the people he enslaved “were better served and cared for in his possession,” as Dunbar explains in Never Caught. But he was also aware of the risks posed by exposing these men and women to Philadelphia’s vibrant free Black community. “The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist,” Washington wrote in a 1791 letter.

Judge reached this point of no return after learning that the Washingtons intended to bequeath her to Elizabeth Parke Custis, Martha’s granddaughter, as a wedding gift. According to Never Caught, Custis was infamous for “her stubbornness and complete disregard for protocol”—qualities that would likely make her a difficult mistress. As the Granite Freeman newspaper reported in 1845, Judge had two main reasons for fleeing when she did: First, she simply “wanted to be free,” and second (in reference to Custis), “she was determined never to be her slave.”

To plan her escape, Judge enlisted the help of the city’s free Black community, although she never revealed these individuals’ identities. The 1845 article is scant on details, skipping ahead to her journey to Portsmouth on a ship commanded by John Bowles, whose name Judge kept secret until his death.

Washington quickly jumped into action after noticing Judge’s absence. The runaway ad placed by the president’s steward expressed indignation at her decision to flee, noting, “As there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone or, fully, what her design is.” The steward correctly speculated that Judge would try to travel north “by water,” adding that she would probably “attempt to pass for a free woman and has, it is said, wherewithal to pay her passage.” In exchange for Judge’s return, the Washingtons offered a $10 reward.

Ona Judge’s life in New Hampshire

In Portsmouth, Judge found lodging and employment as a domestic laborer. Compared with her duties as a lady’s maid, this work would have been much more demanding. As Dunbar writes in Never Caught, “That Judge elected to become a domestic, that she chose to endure physically punishing work in New Hampshire, rather than remain a slave, says everything we need to know about how much she valued freedom.”

After the runaway ad failed to lead him to Judge, Washington resorted to other strategies. He learned of Judge’s location from a senator’s daughter who’d spotted the escapee in Portsmouth, then recruited a local customs collector to attempt to negotiate with her on his behalf. As he wrote in an October 1796 letter to Washington, Judge maintained that she would “rather suffer death than return to slavery and [be] liable to be sold or given to any other persons.”

Judge said she would, however, consider returning to the family’s service if the president would agree to her eventual emancipation. (Dunbar argues that Judge simply told the man whatever he wanted to hear, with no intention of keeping such promises.) When the customs collector relayed these stipulations, Washington wrote:

To enter into such a compromise, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissable, for reasons that must strike at first view: For however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment), it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference.

The president urged the customs collector to persist in his efforts to re-enslave Judge, though he cautioned the man to take care to avoid inciting anger among abolitionists in the city. Whether the negotiator followed through on Washington’s request is unclear, but Judge remained a free woman. In early 1797, she married a free Black sailor named Jack Staines. Together, they had three children. Staines died in 1803. Judge outlived both of her daughters, but her son’s fate is unknown.

Ona Judge: A Woman Who Escaped Slavery & the Washingtons

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Washington’s last recorded attempt to recapture Judge took place in August 1799, four months before his death at age 67. The former commander in chief asked Burwell Bassett Jr., Martha’s nephew, to persuade Judge to return. She declined, telling him, “I am free now and choose to remain so.” When Bassett failed to achieve his goal through persuasion, he decided to resort to force. Luckily for Judge, the governor of New Hampshire caught wind of this plan and distracted Bassett while she and her child fled to safety at a free woman’s home outside of the city.

As Judge later recalled, Washington’s family “never troubled me anymore” after his death in December 1799. In his will, the president outlined provisions for the 123 people he enslaved to be freed upon his wife’s death. (Judge wasn’t included in this group, as she was technically the property of the Custis estate, which Martha had a one-third share in through her first husband.) Martha freed these individuals early, not out of principle, but rather because “she did not feel as though her life was safe in their hands, many of whom would be told that it was [in] their interest to get rid of her,” fellow first lady Abigail Adams wrote in a letter.

Judge spent the rest of her life in New Hampshire, still considered a fugitive under the law. She only spoke publicly about her escape from slavery in her later years. Despite the difficulties she’d faced, Judge never regretted her decision to leave the first family. Asked “if she was not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since than before,” according to the 1845 interview, she replied, “No, I am free, and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.”

Meilan Solly | Read More

Meilan Solly is a senior associate digital editor at Smithsonian magazine, where she oversees the online history section. Solly's specialties are Tudor England, medieval Europe and World War II.