DID YOU KNOW…?
Ona Marie Judge, the slave of Martha Washington who escaped to Portsmouth by ship in 1796, made her home in Greenland? After evading several attempts by George Washington to return her to slavery in Virginia, Judge married and raised a family in a home on what is now Dearborn Road.
Her story is told in a bestselling book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. In it we hear of an enslaved woman’s yearning for a life she saw others lead and the measures she would go to ensure she’d remain free. Ona’s story compels us to explore what slavery meant to our founding fathers and its role in our nation’s beginnings, when all men were declared to be “created equal.”
