https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/ona-judge
"On January 1, 1847, the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator published a letter from Reverend Benjamin Chase describing his recent visit with an elderly African American woman near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.1 The woman, Ona Judge Staines, had fled enslavement at the Washingtons’ household fifty years earlier. Staines’s account of her dramatic quest for freedom represents a rare moment when the voice of a person (formerly) enslaved at Mount Vernon appears in the historical record.
Ona Judge, often referenced by the Washingtons as Oney, was born at Mount Vernon around 1774. She was the daughter of Betty, an enslaved seamstress living on Mansion House Farm, and Andrew Judge, a white English tailor whom Washington hired from 1772 to 1784.2 Ona was later described as “a light mulatto girl, much freckled” and “almost white.”3 Like many other slaves of mixed-race descent, she received a post in the household: at age ten, she became Martha Washington’s personal maid. Like her mother, Ona was skilled at sewing, “the perfect mistress of her needle.”4 Also, like her mother, Ona and her younger sister Delphy belonged to the Custis estate, and so would pass to Martha Washington’s heirs upon the latter’s death.
When George Washington was elected president, fifteen-year-old Ona Judge traveled with seven other enslaved people to the executive residence, first in New York and then in Philadelphia. She was among the enslaved people whom Washington secretly rotated out of the latter city in order to evade the 1780 Pennsylvania emancipation law. Washington asked his secretary to accomplish this rotation “under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public.”5
During Washington’s presidency, Judge continued her daily work waiting on Martha Washington—helping her bathe and dress, cleaning and mending her clothing, organizing her personal belongings, and anything else her she required. However, in the bustling capital city of Philadelphia, life was dramatically different for her and the other enslaved people from Mount Vernon. Judge received nominal cash from Washington on several occasions to go see a play, the circus, and the “tumbling feats.” Her visible position in the household meant that she received a regular supply of high-quality clothing. Washington’s account book notes purchases for her gowns, shoes, stockings, and bonnets.6 The city’s large free black and Quaker abolitionist communities also offered the young woman new ideas, new connections, and new opportunities to escape."... (more)
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