A Fictional Interview with Ona Judge
at the President’s House Site
TRAVEL IN TIME WITH DAN | Philadelphia — 1796, shortly before her escape to New Hampshire
| ⚠️ AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is a fictional historical interview. Ona Judge (c. 1773–1848) was enslaved by George and Martha Washington and held at the President’s House site in Philadelphia during Washington’s second term. Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 required non-resident enslavers to free enslaved individuals held in the state for more than six months; Washington circumvented this law by rotating the nine enslaved people he held in Philadelphia — including Judge — out of state before the deadline. In 1796, Ona Judge escaped to freedom in New Hampshire and, despite the Washingtons’ repeated attempts to recapture her, was never returned to bondage. She lived the remainder of her life free. This site was rediscovered through archaeological excavation after decades in which the history had been paved over. The historical facts are real. Ona Judge’s own words, drawn from later newspaper interviews she gave as a free woman, inform some of what appears below, though this conversation itself is imagined. The dialogue is creative fiction. |
📍 SETTING: A quiet corner near the President’s House, close enough to hear the bell that hangs a few streets away. A young woman pauses near the open-air foundation markers, glancing toward the house behind her before speaking.
Dan: Ms. Judge, this house sits just a few streets from the Liberty Bell. What’s it like living in the shadow of that particular bell?
Ona: It rings for people it was never rung for. I have walked past it more times than I can count, on errands for a household that speaks constantly of liberty at the dinner table and holds nine of us in bondage under this same roof. You learn to carry that contradiction quietly, because saying it aloud in this house changes nothing except your own safety.
Dan: Pennsylvania law says anyone held here past six months by a non-resident should be freed. That should apply to General Washington.
Ona: It should, and he knows it should better than most, being a man who reads law closely when it suits him. Instead, every six months, before the deadline arrives, we are quietly sent across the state line and brought back after. A rotation, nothing more, designed by a president to keep the law technically unbroken while its purpose is broken entirely. I do not think he sees the cruelty in it. I think he sees only the inconvenience of losing property he considers rightfully his.
Dan: You’re young, but you already sound like someone who’s thought hard about what freedom would actually cost you.
Ona: I have thought of little else for some time. Freedom is not simply a word I long for from a distance. It is a decision I am turning over daily, weighing everything I would leave and everyone I might never see again against a life where no one owns the outcome of my own choices. That is not a small calculation, and I resent that I am forced to make it while people twenty steps from here celebrate their own liberty as an accomplished fact.
Dan: If you did leave — if you ran — what would you want people two hundred fifty years from now to understand about that choice?
Ona: That it was not recklessness. It was the most carefully reasoned decision of my life, made by someone the law refused to consider capable of reasoning at all. I would want them to know I was not a footnote in George Washington’s story. I was the author of my own, the moment I decided his ownership of me was a fiction I no longer intended to honor with my obedience.
Dan: This house was paved over for generations after it came down — a public bathroom sat on the exact spot for years before anyone dug deeper. What does it mean to you that the ground itself kept the secret so long?
Ona: It means the truth doesn’t disappear just because someone builds over it. It waits. My people were saying for generations what happened on this ground, and for generations they were not believed, or not listened to closely enough to matter. The digging that finally found the foundation and many artifacts only confirmed what descendants already knew. That should trouble anyone who assumes history settles itself accurately without being made to.
Dan: It was all waiting patiently to come to the surface. Thanks for your time, Ona.
Ona Judge escaped from the President’s House in 1796 and, despite Martha Washington’s efforts and a fugitive advertisement placed by the president himself, lived the rest of her life free in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, never recaptured. The President’s House site — for decades paved over, with a public restroom once standing directly atop its foundation — was only rediscovered through archaeological excavation that confirmed what descendant communities had maintained for generations: that slavery sat at the literal center of the early American presidency, streets from the Liberty Bell. The leadership lesson from this site is uncomfortable and necessary: strong leaders and strong nations confront the uncomfortable truths of their past rather than paving over them. You cannot make things right going forward if you refuse to dig up what actually happened.
Uncovering History. Inspiring Leadership
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