The Woman Washington Couldn’t Catch
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · May 21, 1796
On a Saturday in May of 1796, President George Washington sat down to dinner with his family in the brick mansion on Market Street in Philadelphia.
The house was busy that week. The Washingtons were getting ready to spend the summer at Mount Vernon, and the household staff, free and enslaved, were packing for the journey.
One of them was a young woman of about twenty-two, slender, with dark eyes and thick black hair. She had dressed Martha Washington nearly every morning for twelve years. She knew the First Lady’s gowns, her moods, and her habits better than anyone alive.
While the family ate, she walked out of the house.
She carried nothing with her, because her things were already gone, sent ahead quietly to friends in the city. Years later she explained it simply. While the family was packing to go to Virginia, she was packing too. She only did not know yet where she was going.
By the time Martha Washington called for her, Ona Judge had disappeared into Philadelphia. George Washington would spend the last three years of his life trying to get her back.
She was born at Mount Vernon around 1774. Her mother, Betty, was an enslaved seamstress. Her father, Andrew Judge, was a white English tailor who had come to Virginia as an indentured servant…
