Vulgar History - American Revolution, part 8： Ona Judge： Enslaved By George & Martha Washington (pt 1⧸2)

00:00:00.000 Hello everyone. Before we start today's episode, I just wanted to let you know and or remind you

00:00:05.140 if you heard one of my announcements about this before, but I'm going on the road. I'm going to

00:00:09.780 be taking a trip to the UK to research my book about Caroline of Brunswick. And since I know

00:00:14.420 some of you live there, I'm hosting meetups for Tits Out Brigade members in Edinburgh, Scotland,

00:00:19.960 and also in London, England. So I'm going to be hosting this meetup in Edinburgh on Wednesday,

00:00:25.920 august 21st and i'm going to be hosting a meetup in london on wednesday august 28th and if you want

00:00:31.940 more information if you want to go on the list to learn details about when where we're going to be

00:00:36.240 meeting you can rsvp at you go to vulgarhistory.com slash meetup that's vulgarhistory.com

00:00:42.640 slash m-e-e-t-u-p to let me know you're interested so i know how many people are coming and i can

00:00:47.980 let you know where we're going to be and when can't wait to go over there can't wait to

00:00:51.660 to meet with those of you who are able to make it. It's an exciting time.

00:01:07.220 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is Anne

00:01:12.200 Foster and this is season seven. How do you solve a problem like Marie Antoinette? And part one of

00:01:18.420 this season seven has been primarily talking about stuff that happened in America surrounding

00:01:24.320 the American Revolution because the American Revolution had a lot of overlap of people

00:01:29.640 and philosophies and it had a really big effect on what eventually would become the French

00:01:34.820 Revolution. The French Revolution had a real profound effect on Marie Antoinette in the sense

00:01:39.760 of she was killed by the French revolutionaries. So we're doing a slow rollout towards Marie

00:01:46.420 Antoinette. And I want to say, I'm just really, people have been sending me when Marie Antoinette

00:01:51.140 is kind of like in pop culture. Like when the season first started, there was this viral sound

00:01:55.040 on TikTok about let the meat cake when this influencer was at the Met Gala. And then there

00:02:00.780 was the Olympic opening ceremonies, controversially, the whole thing with the decapitated Marie

00:02:05.200 Antoinettes. And then Gojira was singing the revolutionary song. Chapel Rowan recently was

00:02:10.960 appearing dressed as Marie Antoinette. So as much as I'm like, oh no, I was thinking like,

00:02:16.180 we're doing a slow roll of getting towards Marie Antoinette, but Marie Antoinette's not

00:02:19.900 going anywhere. She's in the zeitgeist. So when we do eventually get to our Marie Antoinette

00:02:26.060 episode, I feel like inevitably there's going to be something in pop culture about Marie Antoinette

00:02:31.480 that we can connect it all to. But for now, we're doing this American Revolutionary era stuff.

00:02:37.320 And that's why this week we're talking about Own a Judge. And this is a story. I read the

00:02:43.080 incredible book, Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. And it was one of those books, like as

00:02:47.560 soon as I finished reading it, I think I turned on my microphone to record this story because I was

00:02:51.160 so hype on the story. I was so excited to share it with you. It's going to be a more than one

00:02:55.920 part episode because there's so much to talk about. And I want to mention, so this is in this

00:03:01.120 season part, this is the third enslaved black woman who we've talked about. We started season

00:03:06.780 seven with Marie-Joseph Angelique. Midway through, we talked about Sally Hemings. Now we're talking

00:03:11.380 about own a judge. And during the Sally Hemings episode, I shared some information that I had

00:03:15.880 just learned that had just been announced about Ancestry.com and the new resources that they have

00:03:20.700 for people today, Black people in America who want to research their enslaved ancestors.

00:03:27.040 And after I announced that, a listener named Evelyn let me know about another project.

00:03:31.920 So this is called the Brister English Project. So the Brister English Project is dedicated to

00:03:37.120 illuminating the rich heritage of American descendants of chattel slavery, fostering

00:03:41.360 self-discovery and unity through genealogical exploration. Their mission is to provide an

00:03:46.160 inclusive, supportive platform that celebrates ancestral roots, strengthens cultural bonds,

00:03:50.480 and inspires future generations to embrace their unique legacy with pride and purpose.

00:03:55.040 The Brister English Project provide direct assistance in building family trees, offer

00:03:59.540 a comprehensive database of free genealogy resources, and conduct educational workshops

00:04:04.020 for the Black community. Their goal is to bridge the gap between the past and present by making

00:04:08.640 genealogical research accessible and meaningful. And so you can learn more and support their work

00:04:14.620 because they do. You can donate to help them with what they're doing at bristerep.org. That's

00:04:20.400 b-r-i-s-t-e-r-e-p.org. And the link is in the show notes if you want to learn more about them

00:04:27.420 and what they're up to. But you know what? We're going to jump right into this. We're talking about

00:04:32.660 American heroine, Ona Judge. So, Ona Judge. Now, I do want to say why I'm going to be calling her

00:04:46.880 Ona Judge. And that's because partially that's how she's best known, but also because the main

00:04:53.160 source I used for this episode is a biography of Ona Judge called Never Caught, The Washington's

00:04:58.660 relentless pursuit of their runaway slave own a judge by erica armstrong dunbar and erica armstrong

00:05:04.160 dunbar did she says in her in the epilogue like a decade plus of research on this and if she's

00:05:10.420 saying own a judge i'm gonna say own a judge the thing is that own a judge went by oney o-n-e-y

00:05:15.840 judge and sometimes you see her written up as that but i'm just going with what erica armstrong

00:05:20.120 dunbar did because she is the expert on this topic also as per her author's note in this book

00:05:26.680 she says i prefer to use the term enslaved when referring to people who are held in bondage because

00:05:31.680 it shifts the attention to an action that was involuntarily placed upon millions of black

00:05:35.880 people however throughout the text i chose to use the word slave for the purposes of narrative flow

00:05:41.240 and i'm going to echo that for this episode wherever it just kind of makes sense in a sentence

00:05:46.680 i'm going to be using enslaved but i will be saying slave sometimes just for the same way she

00:05:51.480 did in the book the same way her book has that in the title it's just sort of i don't know for

00:05:55.660 narrative flow anyway i am so hyped to tell you this story this is really reminds me to how i

00:06:02.560 started doing this podcast vulgar history because i would read these biographies i'd learn about

00:06:08.380 people and all i want to do is talk to everyone in my life about them but now i have this outlet

00:06:12.700 thank goodness because i really need to to go through this and tell you all this stuff i also

00:06:19.060 want to mention that a bit ago, I did do this survey of some American listeners. I posted it

00:06:25.940 on the Patreon. It was an Instagram there for a minute. And so I've got responses from almost

00:06:29.900 400 people because mostly just asking who from history have you heard of? So I know because

00:06:36.120 we're talking about American history, I know a lot of listeners are American. And I'm just curious

00:06:42.420 to know how much of this is history you know, how many of these figures are really famous to you

00:06:46.980 or not. And so I will say this story does include George Washington, a person who 99.2% of people

00:06:55.900 said they'd heard of, as well as Martha Washington, his wife, who 95.7% of people had heard of. So

00:07:04.240 these are some of the highest numbers. The most recognizable person on the survey was George

00:07:09.020 Washington. Second place, Thomas Jefferson. Not in this story. I'm just thinking. I'm sure he's

00:07:14.380 around. I'm pretty sure he's not in the story. Martha Washington is the third most heard of

00:07:19.240 person amongst Americans. So like George and Martha Washington, famous. But then the main

00:07:24.400 character, Ona Judge, 9.4% of people had heard of her. I know you love these statistics, but

00:07:32.520 I just want you to understand that like 392 people had heard, said they had heard of George

00:07:39.240 Washington, 37 had heard of Ona Judge. So let's just try to write this out. All of you are now

00:07:45.420 going to know who Ona Judge is. And it's such an interesting story. And I'm really excited to share

00:07:51.460 it with you if you haven't heard this story before. So Ona Maria Judge. Now this might be

00:07:57.660 Ona Mariah Judge. I know sometimes in oldie times, the name Maria is pronounced Mariah. I'll say

00:08:03.100 Maria. It's not going to come up a lot, her middle name. So she's born in June, 17, 17, 73.

00:08:12.540 And let's just put this in context of other people that we have been looking at this season,

00:08:21.920 who's around, who's been born around the same time. So she's born 1773. This is around,

00:08:31.660 So Zhang Yisou, the Chinese lady pirate born two years later, 1775. Marie-Louise Christophe, who we talked about in the episode over a bit ago when I had Vanessa Riley on talking about the book she wrote, The Queen of Exiles, about the Queen of Haiti. So she's born 1778. People have looked at Charlotte Badger from New Zealand, born 1778.

00:08:55.720 So these people are all being born. And also the American Revolution started 1776. So she's born

00:09:04.280 just around when that is all starting. Actually, let's just double check to tell us all back to

00:09:11.540 our main heroine. So Marie Antoinette born 1755. So this is like 20 years later. So I'm going to 0.92

00:09:19.060 throw one more person in here who is Peggy Shippen because there's a bit of overlap in

00:09:23.180 story. So she was born in 1760. So this is like 13 years after the birth of Peggy Shippen and

00:09:28.520 everything. Some of the stuff in the story is very specifically like a decade after Peggy Shippen,

00:09:33.260 still in America. So she was born just before the American revolution like officially started.

00:09:39.780 And, but you know, it had been percolating for quite a while. Her mother's name was Betty,

00:09:44.540 no last name, who was around 35 years old at this time. She was enslaved Betty. That's part 1.00

00:09:51.360 why she doesn't have a last name. Ona Judge's biological father was a man called Andrew Judge.

00:09:57.600 And this is how we know this is why she has a last name, because her father claimed her

00:10:02.720 was willing to give her the last name. So Andrew Judge was a white guy. He was an English tailor

00:10:09.620 who came over from England as an indentured servant. We're going to come up with some

00:10:16.420 similarities of people between this story and the one that we started off this season,

00:10:20.800 Marie-Joseph Angelique in Montreal. So again, we've got white people come over to be indentured 0.64

00:10:27.240 servants. Meanwhile, Black people are enslaved people. So inner judge was a tailor. Betty was 0.97

00:10:33.880 a seamstress. So they probably would have gotten to know each other on the plantation where they 1.00

00:10:38.080 both lived, which spoiler, is called Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. And so

00:10:43.700 So in the book, Never Caught, Erica Armstrong Dunbar's book, she sort of theorizes, because we know lots of things about Ona Judge, actually, much more than we know about any other of the enslaved people who were on this plantation.

00:10:58.000 But we don't know exactly the context of how she was conceived.

00:11:01.480 So who knows if Betty and Andrew Judge had a consensual affair or what was going on, but they probably were in each other's orbit because he was a tailor doing, you know, sewing.

00:11:12.100 Betty was a very talented seamstress, embroiderer, and so they would have met each other that way.

00:11:17.480 Andrew Judge leaves a story at the end of this paragraph.

00:11:20.600 He, once his indentured servitude era had ended, he left Mount Vernon and he never went back and he never visited them.

00:11:27.400 And that is that.

00:11:30.240 So his parting gift to Ona Judge was perhaps he had some influence over her unique first and middle name.

00:11:36.040 So the name Ona is a name that comes up in both some African cultures, also a Gaelic name. So who knows which or both of those meanings is why they chose that name for her. No other enslaved person at Mount Vernon had this as their given name. So already she's unique and even more exceptional. She had a middle name, Maria or Mariah.

00:11:58.700 enslaved people is rare in this at Mount Vernon would have a last name, let alone middle name.

00:12:06.440 So Betty, her mom had a while ago, she had an older half brother. Betty had had a son whose

00:12:13.760 name was Austin, who is something like 14 years older than Ona. Betty also had some other children

00:12:19.420 around closer to Ona's age, Tom Davis and Betty Davis. And their father was the white indentured

00:12:25.760 weaver, Thomas Davis. So again, both just making connections, consensual or not, just in the,

00:12:32.340 I don't know, like the fabric room or whatever, like they had similar jobs.

00:12:36.980 Ona also had a half-sister whose name was Philadelphia, who went by Delphi. No last name,

00:12:43.620 father unknown. So Betty's situation, oh, she was also an expert spinner. Just for the record, 0.92

00:12:50.960 Ona would also inherit slash learn these skills from her. And on this podcast, we have a great

00:12:56.880 respect for the textile arts. So Betty was one of the favorite slaves belonging to Martha Washington,

00:13:05.860 the wife of George Washington. And so the way that she had become Martha's slave is that,

00:13:13.540 so Martha Washington, before she was married to George Washington, was married to a different guy

00:13:17.660 whose name was Daniel Park Custis. And then he died without a will after a short time,

00:13:25.260 Martha W., which is what we're going to call her, aka Revolution Era Karen. And I mean that

00:13:31.720 all love to all the people named Karen, who I know, who are my friends. But in these stories

00:13:38.020 of American history, I really am picking up on some blueprints for some things that one sees

00:13:44.080 an American present, and one of those is the Karen archetype, and Martha Washington, I think,

00:13:50.700 is the original Karen. Anyway, so after her first husband died, Martha, not yet Washington,

00:13:56.720 Martha Custis, so she received what was called a dour share of his estate. So this meant that

00:14:02.920 until she died, she was entitled to use a third of her dead husband's wealth. So this included

00:14:09.380 six plantations and close to 300 enslaved people. So as a widow, she's one of the wealthiest widows 0.93

00:14:16.120 in Virginia. She had some children. She's just like a widow with a bunch of money, some young

00:14:22.380 children, and she needs a husband. And two years after Daniel died, she got married again to 0.93

00:14:28.480 George Washington, George W., who we've talked about before. In the Peggy Shippen episode,

00:14:34.380 He kind of made numerous cameos there.

00:14:37.380 We're going to get more into what he was like in this episode.

00:14:40.540 So at the time that they got married, George and Martha, he was a colonel slash prominent

00:14:45.640 landowner.

00:14:46.740 He didn't have any children of his own and he and Martha never had children together.

00:14:50.960 So he just kind of needed, I don't know.

00:14:53.840 I feel like it was sort of like people see now, even in politics in America, it's like

00:14:58.080 you can't be a politician unless you're married and your wife took your last name and

00:15:04.240 hopefully you have children. Wasn't that a whole thing with Bernie Sanders? He had to marry his

00:15:08.760 longtime common law person just because it's like, you can't run for office and not be married.

00:15:13.600 Anyway, George W needed this and he's like, oh great. Here's like a woman with children. Let's

00:15:17.600 marry her. She's also rich. Doesn't hurt. And so this is all happening in Virginia. So 0.99

00:15:23.420 after I did my survey of American listeners, I will reveal, well, this isn't really a reveal.

00:15:31.840 everyone knows that my understanding of geography is not strong, particularly when it comes to

00:15:38.820 the United States of America. But there's a real north-south divide in this story. And in the

00:15:44.400 context of this story, Virginia is very much the south. So this is where all these plantations are.

00:15:49.900 This is where Mount Vernon is, I think. Asterix, we'll get to that. Anyway, she was living in

00:15:55.040 Virginia with her 300 enslaved people and her young children. And then they moved 100 miles 0.87

00:16:02.000 from Custis home to George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. Let me just verify. There's so

00:16:10.800 many Americans listening and I want to say things correctly because I'm going to be

00:16:16.800 trashing your founding father and I want to not have any factual mistakes. Mount Vernon, Virginia.

00:16:24.440 Yeah. Yeah. This is in, I'm going to presume the South. So this is where they're Mount Vernon.

00:16:31.720 It's still a historical site. I think it's like a house you can visit. I think. So Ona Maria Judge

00:16:37.400 was, so she was described and we don't know the descriptions of her mostly from, as you might

00:16:44.820 guess, from the name of the book that this biography is drawn for. She does eventually

00:16:49.700 escape enslavement. So we kind of know what she looks like just from the descriptions in the

00:16:54.440 like wanted escaped slave posters. But we know that she was light-skinned. She had freckles. 0.91

00:17:01.620 She had dark black eyes and quote, bushy hair. So she and her siblings spent their childhood,

00:17:08.460 you know, Betty's other children, the half siblings, Delphi and everybody else. So in a

00:17:14.700 communal space in Mount Vernon known as the quarters or the house for families, because

00:17:19.000 very young children were not able to be helpful as slaves yet. So, and they kind of got in the

00:17:26.320 way if they went up to the house. So they just sort of hung out together, mostly unsupervised,

00:17:30.460 except for some older slave women who were there too, because they had gotten kind of too old

00:17:35.720 or just for medical reasons, not able to do any other work. And then when Ona Judge was 10 years 0.98

00:17:42.080 old, she got called up to the mansion house to come and personally serve Martha W. And this is

00:17:48.580 probably partially because her mother, Betty, was one of Martha W.'s favorite slaves. 0.98

00:17:54.000 And so maybe Betty put in a good word for Ona. 1.00

00:17:57.320 Maybe Martha just assumed Ona would also have the same traits that she would find appealing in a slave.

00:18:03.880 This was the year 1783.

00:18:06.740 So I do want to highlight the fact that this all happened.

00:18:10.540 The American Revolution was happening, but it wasn't like revolutionizing Ona Judge's life, nor the other people there.

00:18:16.120 They're still just doing their jobs. Like the revolution started, it ended. Now she's 10.

00:18:21.300 Like what's life going to bring for us now? What did affect her is that George W. had been off

00:18:25.720 leading the army for eight years. The American revolution happened and he was in his fifties

00:18:32.440 and the time in the war had aged him. He had various medical and health issues and he was

00:18:37.420 just kind of over it. So 1783, he resigned as general and he wanted to just like retire and

00:18:44.340 go live a normal civilian life but his friends aka all the characters from the musical hamilton

00:18:51.680 wouldn't let him do that because they were like okay so the patriots with the continental army

00:18:58.680 had won the american revolution british people had left but they were still really the country

00:19:04.720 was shaky it wasn't really firm it wasn't really finalized like it could easily be undone and so

00:19:10.500 all the cast members from hamilton were like and by which i mean alexander hamilton um thomas

00:19:15.900 jefferson the marquis of lafayette like all the guys hercules mulligan presumably they're all just

00:19:21.380 like george w like we need a strong leader um the new country is not doing well we need someone like

00:19:27.080 you to become i don't know let's call it the president of the united states george washington

00:19:32.020 was finally like oh fine it's a bit of like empress sishi vibes for people who listen to

00:19:37.420 the international season of vulgar history, where she kept trying to retire and just like do like

00:19:42.260 watercolor painting. And then she kept coming back because no one else could lead as well as

00:19:45.540 she could. So George Washington is like, fine, I will run to be president of the United States,

00:19:50.660 the first ever president of the United States. He ran and then he won. He won. He became the

00:19:55.000 president of the United States. And this meant that he, Martha W., and their whole household,

00:19:59.980 or most of them, would have to move to the capital of the United States, which at this point did

00:20:04.680 move around a lot. I didn't know that. But at this point, the capital of the United States was

00:20:08.600 New York City, which is the North. So they didn't choose all of their inside people to come with 0.73

00:20:18.340 them. They chose, I believe, nine of them, which included Ona Judge, who by now is 16 years old.

00:20:24.940 so martha and george washington are giving me like the least pleasant customers in

00:20:35.020 a target just like complaining just entitled like they don't want to be there so it's like well then 0.84

00:20:41.940 why are you here neither like he didn't really want to be president she super didn't want to go

00:20:46.400 to new york cité like they both just wanted to chill out amongst their slaves in virginia and 0.88

00:20:52.680 just like live that plantation, that six plantation owner life. But anyway, so Martha

00:20:57.900 apparently complained constantly to everyone about how much she didn't want to move to 1.00

00:21:02.080 the North. Oh, and a judge being her like right-hand person would have to hear a lot of this 0.74

00:21:10.340 and just like Martha Washington, like I can appreciate your family's moving and you don't

00:21:16.800 want to do it like that episode of bluey but for martha washington to be so like everyone's writing

00:21:23.500 about it like she was complaining to everybody all the time and just to be like oh i don't want

00:21:26.880 to take this trip it's like you know who also probably doesn't want to leave her family and

00:21:30.140 the only place she's known like your 16 year old teen slave here anyway so don't judge just kind

00:21:35.540 of like listen to all this because she was not an experienced traveler she had never left there

00:21:39.840 before and she was about to be separated from her mother for the first time her siblings except for

00:21:44.540 One, her older brother, Austin, was also going to be one of the slaves coming to New York City.

00:21:50.240 But there was, I'm sure, as there was in a lot of situations in the life of many people who were

00:21:55.540 enslaved, not really space for her to sit with these emotions because Martha Washington is just

00:22:00.120 running around being all, Herm and my pills, like literally. And that was taking up everyone's 1.00

00:22:04.920 attention. It was stressing everybody out. So at this point, New York City was the second largest

00:22:10.380 city in America, population around 30,000 people. It was a place where the wealthy people were

00:22:15.880 really opulent about it, but also there was a great diversity within its public spaces.

00:22:21.480 People of all genders, white people, enslaved Black people, free Black people, all resided

00:22:27.220 within the city limits. And if you're going to the marketplace or whatever, you're going to cross 0.97

00:22:31.460 a more diverse type of population than what Ona Judge would have seen in Mount Vernon,

00:22:39.240 for instance. So freedom and opportunity were there, were possibilities for people in

00:22:47.100 the North. So other places in the North, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts had already

00:22:52.920 started enacting gradual abolition laws. New York was not on that page yet, but the North

00:22:58.400 in general, this is where we kind of see this North South split that kind of was there from

00:23:06.340 the beginning of America and that would eventually turn into the civil war in the 1800s. So the North

00:23:12.860 was slowly, and when I say gradual abolition laws, these are sorts of laws that are like, okay, well,

00:23:17.320 when people die, then maybe their children won't be slaves also. It's not just like everyone is

00:23:23.960 free. It's sort of gradual. So this concept, like Ona Judge is coming to a place where this,

00:23:29.940 these discussions are at least happening, but it made George and Martha W. worry because they

00:23:36.260 didn't want their slaves to be freed. They didn't want abolition for their slaves. And this is why 0.94

00:23:42.780 they were careful about who they brought with them to New York City. They only picked the slaves who 0.97

00:23:47.100 they thought of as like the most loyal and the least likely to try to escape. So Ona Judge was

00:23:54.280 one of only two enslaved women to make this trip. The other was named Mall, M-O-L-L, who was a 50 1.00

00:24:00.620 year old seamstress. And so they would both serve Martha W. as her housemaids slash personal 1.00

00:24:07.100 attendants. On a judge, her job would involve things like drawing Martha's bath, preparing her 1.00

00:24:12.160 bed clothing, brushing her hair, tend to her when she's sick, and travel with her through the city 1.00

00:24:17.100 on social calls as kind of her assistant. Mall's job was more nanny adjacent. She would care for 0.85

00:24:24.180 the grandchildren who lived in the home. So Martha W.'s children had died from her first marriage,

00:24:28.920 but those children had been adults and had children. So there is grandchildren in the

00:24:32.780 situation. It's George and Martha W. And then the grandchildren Nellie and Wash, which is short for

00:24:39.340 Washington. And this is also, I think, the origin of this era. These sorts of people are the origin

00:24:46.660 of american political figures having very interestingly unusually named children so

00:24:54.020 i want to judge she's on the move she's traveling with martha w up to this new place

00:24:59.140 en route to new york city they stopped in philadelphia just like in the peggy ship in

00:25:04.660 episode the fifth girl in sex in the city philadelphia showing up i don't think there's

00:25:08.360 much riots but like philadelphia listeners you must feel the way that edinburgh listeners did

00:25:14.500 during the married queen of scott season your city is just all over this saga so philadelphia

00:25:21.680 this was ona's first experience of a place where enslaved people um and also free black people

00:25:27.480 could co-mingle so philadelphia was one of the first places to get real about abolition stuff

00:25:35.660 and this is partially the influence of our friends the quakers who had i think by this point 10 or 20 0.96

00:25:41.320 years ago made a rule that any Quaker who engaged in the traffic of human souls would be kicked out

00:25:46.260 of being a Quaker. And for Quakers, it's really important to be a Quaker. So all the Quakers were 0.86

00:25:50.300 like, got it. That's what we're doing. And so their influence spread around other Northern areas. 1.00

00:25:56.880 And then, oh, I didn't mention. So when Ona Judge was born, she's born in the month of June

00:26:01.400 in Virginia, and it was snowing, which is, I mean, I live in Canada and even where I live in like

00:26:08.960 central Canada, snow in June would be unusual. But snow in June in Virginia feels to me sort of

00:26:18.360 like a portent, like something world-changing is about to happen. And the day before Ona Judge

00:26:25.680 and the W's left Philadelphia, there was a solar eclipse. So Sunday, May 24th, 1789. So just

00:26:32.180 astrologically speaking, there's a lot of portents happening. And we just had the solar eclipse here

00:26:37.520 in the year 2024. So what would she have thought of that? The Washingtons did not provide education

00:26:44.460 for her, either reading or writing, obviously not astronomy, astrology, science, but also not

00:26:51.540 religious education or anything. So I don't know what she thought when there was a solar eclipse.

00:26:56.420 Anyway, so the whole entourage arrives in New York City. They move into a house on Cherry Street.

00:27:03.340 and so it's the W's as well as the grandchildren and then the nine enslaved people including Ona 0.51

00:27:10.380 Judge and then they also hired 14 white servants including more housemaids because like this is a

00:27:16.340 big house this is you know the first family Ona Judge and Maul couldn't do literally every woman's 0.60

00:27:22.120 job in that house so the servants lived in small shared quarters with the enslaved people from

00:27:30.000 Virginia. So this is probably the first time that Ona Judge had shared quarters with free 0.66

00:27:34.360 white servants. So again, she's just getting this, just seeing the wider world, meeting different 0.62

00:27:39.480 kinds of people. And so one of the jobs that she had was she was in charge of arranging or just

00:27:45.180 overseeing the leisure time activities for Martha W's grandchildren, George W's step-grandchildren,

00:27:51.120 Nellie and Wash, who at this point were 10 and eight years old. Nellie was very gifted musically.

00:27:58.180 and for a time she had a music tutor named Alexander Reinagle, who was a composer and

00:28:03.800 performer who had met Mozart when they were both like teen musicians. So he's got that sort of

00:28:09.800 prestige. And I wanted to especially mention that because Mozart knew Marie Antoinette,

00:28:14.300 so by this in mind, for when we get to the nothing but net section, you might be like,

00:28:19.040 oh, no judge, like how could she be to someone like Marie Antoinette? But she's what, like one

00:28:23.660 or Two Steps from Mozart.

00:28:25.280 So this is the world she's living in.

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00:30:31.900 Reality TV is messy.

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00:30:38.440 Welcome to Roxanne.

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00:30:40.560 The podcast where cousins Roxanne and Chantelle break down reality TV,

00:30:44.640 celebrity drama, and the stories everyone's texting about.

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00:31:00.620 This is Roxanne.

00:31:02.120 And Chantel. 0.90

00:31:03.180 Let's get into it.

00:31:05.360 And we're back to, no one's surprise, revolutionary Karen, the original Karen, Martha Washington, 0.98

00:31:13.980 hated it in New York City. 0.97

00:31:16.080 She complained all the time.

00:31:17.840 and she referred to her time in the North as her, quote, lost years. She and George W. had to

00:31:26.600 constantly have people over and host parties because he was the president. And she hated

00:31:32.140 having people over. She hated having to do stuff. She wanted to just be living out her gone with the

00:31:36.760 wind fantasies in her six plantations amongst her 300 slaves. But instead, she had to be in

00:31:43.600 New York City. But while they were hosting parties and having dinners and stuff,

00:31:48.200 that was where Ona Judge got a little bit of free time for herself because her job was like 1.00

00:31:52.240 watching the children or going around with Martha W. while she was running her errands or whatever. 1.00

00:31:56.880 When dinner parties were happening, there wasn't because Ona wasn't involved in the

00:32:00.040 food preparation. So she had some time for herself in this really crowded house where everybody was

00:32:06.640 stepping on top of each other. So during this time, she could hang out with the other servants

00:32:11.220 and enslaved people. And maybe if she was running errands, she could meet cool new

00:32:15.820 New York city friends, including free black people, which I'm, she did. Cause we know later 0.74

00:32:22.820 she had friends there. So in terms of George W bringing slaves to New York city, this was not

00:32:29.300 weird at the time, even though slavery was kind of not as prevalent there as in Virginia,

00:32:37.500 for instance it was still happening so like the governor of new york owned eight enslaved people

00:32:42.100 new york city resident aaron burr owned five despite both of those guys the governor and

00:32:47.200 aaron burr were both involved in the new york manumission society which was like i don't know

00:32:52.260 guys just like smoking cigars and being like should we have abolition of slaves i don't know

00:32:56.560 so being an enslaver was a sign of being an upper class person so these guys did and they

00:33:03.320 were cool with george w bringing his slaves with it but as we talked about a bit when i had the

00:33:09.200 episode a while ago with nikki taylor talking about her book about the black women the rebellion

00:33:17.080 of enslaved black women or even in the marie joseph angelique episode like people in the north

00:33:23.560 who owned enslaved people didn't own a great number of them because there wasn't space there 0.97

00:33:29.800 wasn't plantations. So most sleep holders in New York City had one or two because there's nowhere

00:33:36.320 to put more than that. And then Church W is a guy, again, he didn't want to be president. He

00:33:44.440 also just wanted to live out his God with the wind fantasies, just like sitting on the front porch

00:33:49.620 of a plantation with a fan or whatever. One month later, he was sick all the time, this guy. So one

00:33:55.260 month after they arrived in New York city, he became extremely sick. And I don't know what

00:33:59.840 this disease is or what this situation is, but a large tumor grew on his leg, not a cancerous

00:34:07.540 tumor, but just like his tumor. Is that just a word to me? Just like giant swollen lump thing.

00:34:13.000 So he was unable to sit. He was in constant pain and it kept getting worse. Everyone is like,

00:34:17.700 well, he's clearly going to die, but no one can know that because he was the president and the

00:34:21.160 country was so like fragile. So Ona Judge and everybody had to keep it a secret. Eventually

00:34:25.740 they blocked off the street. So nobody could even come by the house to hear him. I don't know,

00:34:29.640 screaming with pain. Anyway, he got leg surgery, which he survived. Um, this, I mean, what you

00:34:37.240 know of Martha W's character, I think you can imagine she was already unhappy. Now she's 0.99

00:34:42.840 frantic about this, especially because her first husband had died young and her adult children

00:34:47.400 and died young. She was not doing well. She hated being there. Her husband was almost dying.

00:34:53.680 And so Ona Judge, this teenage girl, her task would probably also involve a lot of soothing

00:34:58.900 Martha's nerves, bringing her tea, running her bath, brushing her hair. So the family relocated

00:35:04.500 to a larger home on Broadway, which gave everyone at least a bit more space. And then a few months

00:35:10.320 later, George W. fell sick again, this time with a fever, which coincided with an influenza epidemic

00:35:15.760 that was going through the city. He came down with a virus that was a gateway for pneumonia.

00:35:20.180 During this illness, he lost most of his hearing, but then he got better. Again,

00:35:24.200 this guy's constitution. He's just always getting better. Anyway, that summer, the W family packed

00:35:31.400 up the household to return to Mount Vernon for an extended visit, which is wild to me.

00:35:36.540 Not that they wanted to go back to the place that they wanted to be, to the home that they preferred,

00:35:40.260 but is that in the summer? Like, isn't the summer where you'd want to not be in the South? Isn't it

00:35:48.000 like unpleasantly hot then? But I guess they're true Southerners and that's where they thrive.

00:35:52.340 There was not air conditioning yet. And so they came back and Ona Judge returned and she had lived

00:35:59.540 this very contained life up till this point at Mount Vernon. Like that was her world and she

00:36:04.740 didn't leave it and she didn't know other kinds of ways of being. Now she'd been to Philadelphia,

00:36:09.040 she'd be to New York city and she was changed. Like she could never go back to the person she

00:36:12.880 was before. And I would think going back there, she would see her mom and her sisters and

00:36:17.520 everybody, but it might look different to her perhaps. So then 1790. So all this stuff is

00:36:25.860 happening. And it honestly delights me to just skip over all the American history stuff that

00:36:31.120 I feel like American listeners all learn in school. It has to do with what were the founding

00:36:34.780 fathers doing. For some reason, they all decided to move the capital of America from New York City

00:36:40.800 to Philadelphia. Sure. This meant that the Washington household had to move to Philadelphia,

00:36:47.620 Quakerville. So they had been living in New York City for 1.5 years, other than the trip

00:36:53.000 to Virginia for the summer. And when they did visit Virginia at BTW, so one of her sisters,

00:37:01.840 her sister betty davis not the actress betty davis but her sister betty davis had had a daughter

00:37:08.140 and so ona got to meet her new niece nancy anyway so they're again not to anyone's surprise

00:37:17.160 martha washington who spent all her time saying what she hated new york city now that she had to

00:37:21.780 go to philadelphia she was like oh i'm mad to be leaving new york city i'd rather stay in new york

00:37:25.720 city because this she just she was just a complainer she's one of those people she's a

00:37:30.380 verbal processor and just she's never not complaining like how exhausting to be her

00:37:38.360 husband to be her grandchild to be a friend who visits her once a year but to be on a judge and

00:37:45.700 having to spend every waking minute like sleeping in a room connected to hers yikes so anyway so 0.61

00:37:51.880 she was bitching about all this and so they brought when they went from new york city to 1.00

00:37:56.500 Philadelphia, they had heard that there was a lack of white laborers in Philadelphia. And people

00:38:02.040 were saying, they're like, oh, the white paid servants are like, they're lazy and they don't 0.99

00:38:06.900 work as well as the enslaved black people. And so they're like, oh no, we need good laborers. 0.98

00:38:11.380 So anyway, they brought more slaves with them this time, including the people who had been

00:38:16.340 there before. Ona Judge, Maul, Ona's brother Austin. And so they moved into 190 High Street,

00:38:24.300 aka market street in philadelphia aka the master's penthouse aka where benedict arnold and peggy

00:38:31.900 shippen had lived for a hot minute around 10 years before this i was like look at me noticing

00:38:38.000 connections in american history so it's the same house so 10 years ago benedict arnold had started

00:38:42.500 doing his like being a bad spy lifestyle in this mansion 10 years later um george w martha and ona

00:38:50.540 to move in. So this household contained all the same people for George W., Martha, Nellie, Wash.

00:38:57.080 And then more people were added because the house was bigger. So it included George W.'s chief of

00:39:01.800 staff and the wife of the chief of staff and the chief of staff's toddler and the chief of staff's 0.63

00:39:06.980 own eight slaves and 15 white servants. So there are between 25 to 30 residents in this place.

00:39:12.640 George W. had to have slave quarters built so that there'd be space for all these people.

00:39:18.800 and that's going to come back later well basically just the fact that he had slave

00:39:23.620 quarters made um affects the current monument where this house was but i'll talk to that later

00:39:30.180 that's teasing you for some information for later anyway so in this new house the grandchildren each

00:39:35.960 had their own room um and ona slept in one of the rooms i think with wash um and mal slept in the

00:39:41.100 room with the other one nelly and so i just want to note that ona judged so later in life part of

00:39:48.600 how we know so much about her is she gave two very in-depth interviews to newspapers much later in

00:39:53.020 life. So this is why we know more about her than any other enslaved person from George Washington's

00:39:59.100 retinue. And so she never accused George W. of being sexually predatory with her. Although I

00:40:06.900 would think being a young Black woman, a young enslaved Black woman in this household, there's 1.00

00:40:13.280 all the other lose lots of opportunities for shitty people to assault her but she never spoke 0.96

00:40:19.880 about that happening and perhaps the fact that she was martha w's like preferred right-hand 0.68

00:40:25.540 person protected her a bit but also the fact she slept in the same room as wash the young grandson

00:40:30.780 instead of sleeping in a larger quarters with more people that maybe protected her from george w

00:40:36.200 potentially but also other men's unwanted attention but again it's so many people living

00:40:41.240 in a pretty small space and so again like she would be interacting very closely with the not

00:40:47.280 just the other enslaved black people but also the free white people um and they would share

00:40:52.380 information they would like see what each other was up to like she would be here watching her

00:40:57.720 white colleagues get paid more for their work be able to move around the city with relative ease 0.99

00:41:02.640 to make decisions about their lives to be allowed to do things like get married um versus the fact 1.00

00:41:08.860 that she knew that that was not permitted for her. And then April, 1791, Martha W. learned 0.97

00:41:15.820 something very concerning to her. What had happened was this law that she hadn't realized

00:41:24.100 worked in this way. And a lot of the enslaving people in Pennsylvania, I didn't realize this

00:41:30.800 either. So the attorney general, I didn't write down his name, who cares? So he had enslaved

00:41:36.020 people. Three of them had run away. He went to capture them. He like found them. And when he

00:41:40.360 went to arrest them, they quoted back to him the law of Pennsylvania saying, um, no, no, there's

00:41:44.240 this new law. We're actually going to claim our freedom. So goodbye. And the law, and they were

00:41:50.080 right. So he had to let them go. So the law was this. Effectively, all enslaved people in

00:41:55.900 Pennsylvania, if you were in Pennsylvania for more than six months, even if you didn't usually

00:42:02.700 live there, if you were just visiting there for some reason, and you're an enslaved person,

00:42:06.020 you were required to be emancipated after six months. So like this attorney general person,

00:42:12.280 he wasn't from Pennsylvania. He just had been there for more than six months. And his enslaved

00:42:16.240 people found out about this and they're like, see ya. And Martha Washington was just like, 0.76

00:42:20.120 oh fuck, what? So she's like, I have to let George know he was away on a business trip. 0.99

00:42:25.140 And she was like, okay, this is like super secret information. I can't let any of the enslaved 1.00

00:42:29.360 people in this house know that they are allowed to be freed if they've been in Pennsylvania for

00:42:33.860 more than six months for they had been in Pennsylvania for nearly six months at this

00:42:37.920 point. But this is a house as I believe I've described a few times where everyone is on top

00:42:43.520 of everybody. Like you can't keep a secret when the rooms are close together and everyone talks

00:42:48.660 to everybody. So like quickly everybody learned about this law. So George W found out about the

00:42:55.780 law and he was like, Ooh, but I don't think in a plot now, this is like a real contemporary

00:43:00.460 American politician sort of vibe he's like oh that's the law for everyone else but not for me

00:43:05.000 and he rationalized that by saying like I only live in Pennsylvania as a condition of my employment

00:43:09.660 aka being president of the United States actually I'm a citizen of Virginia and in Virginia it's

00:43:15.700 cool to have slaves so his loophole he figured out and this is the part where I just want to

00:43:22.080 scream about this to everybody um but first I have to explain the rest of the story and that's why

00:43:27.680 I'm doing it on the podcast. I'm not just like yelling it on the street. So what George Washington

00:43:31.920 did is he decided that every almost six months, like when they're at 5.5 months, they would just

00:43:38.400 move all the household back to Mount Vernon, hang out there for a bit, and then return to Pennsylvania.

00:43:44.460 So it would like reset the clock. So the slaves would never be there for six months. They'd be

00:43:49.940 there for like 5.75 months. So they would never get the six months. They could never be freed.

00:43:54.740 but even he knew that this was like a pretty slimy thing to do he'd only been the president

00:44:00.820 of this still like fragile could fall apart at any moment new country for two years and he knew

00:44:06.360 that like philadelphia the quaker influence like people there probably wouldn't appreciate him

00:44:11.700 doing this so he just kind of was like let's keep this on the down low let's just go on trips and

00:44:17.400 pretend like we're not doing it on purpose and so just to be clear the reason that george and

00:44:22.040 martha w didn't want their slaves to run away was because they were considered property the same way

00:44:27.320 their furniture was keeping them was protecting an investment that they planned to pass down to 1.00

00:44:33.160 martha w's heirs because the way the law worked as well like the reason why ona judge was born 1.00

00:44:39.000 enslaved is because any children born to an enslaved person to an enslaved woman they become 0.99

00:44:44.620 enslaved themselves anyway that's why they're so mad about it also they were assholes so they're 0.98

00:44:50.340 like oh god it's ticking clock okay so they're looking like okay who's been here for how long 0.97

00:44:54.120 austin he'd been there for almost six months they're like we'll send austin back to mount

00:44:59.060 vernon but don't tell anybody why and they thought that they were okay with ona judge um and some of

00:45:04.560 the other younger enslaved people because they thought this law only applied to adults but guess

00:45:08.380 what it also applies to teen slaves and i guess child slaves so they martha w was like okay um

00:45:16.300 Ona and I are just going to go on a quick trip to New Jersey. No reason. And this plan, this plan

00:45:22.000 of like moving, making sure the slaves never stayed in Pennsylvania for six months. They did

00:45:28.820 this for five years. Like this worked as long as it did. But meanwhile, Pennsylvania, Ona is living

00:45:37.280 in her Pennsylvania era. And this is a city that, because again, the Quaker influence,

00:45:43.420 the city had promised to end slavery and was in the midst of doing so and she also had more

00:45:49.960 not freedom but she had free time and she's given permission to do fun things like she's allowed to

00:45:56.400 attend the theater with her brother austin like not just as accompanying martha w but like going 0.82

00:46:01.500 with her brother she apparently attended the circus every time she could sometimes the slaves

00:46:07.280 would be given a small financial gift and they were allowed to go shopping and like they were 0.91

00:46:11.460 there for five years and she was always with martha w at social events so ona judge who sounds

00:46:16.980 like a memorable looking person with a pale like the light skin the freckles the bushy hair the

00:46:22.980 black eyes like and she was always with martha w so like she was a recognizable person among both 0.97

00:46:27.900 black and white philadelphians she was forbidden by the washington's from hanging out with the free 0.62

00:46:34.740 black people of philadelphia around the time she was there the free african society

00:46:39.880 had started up that was the first mutual aid society in philadelphia and it worked to help

00:46:46.300 emancipate slaves and to for people who had just become free uh to help get them like places to

00:46:52.660 live and jobs and clothes and things and they're like you're forbidden to talk to them but it's

00:46:56.840 like how again it's the city version of the house with everyone on top of everyone inevitably she

00:47:03.100 would interact with them. Free black communities in Philadelphia were organizing, creating churches,

00:47:08.060 schools, and social societies, all within like a block of where Ona was living. Like she couldn't 0.94

00:47:14.540 not talk to them if she's out like running to the store to buy some apples or something like

00:47:18.620 she'd pass somebody. And as these five years passed in Philadelphia, she would have seen

00:47:22.700 other enslaved people, not any of the people in her household, because they were moving out every

00:47:26.820 5.5 months, but other people. So she saw, like she knew that this law was happening. She saw

00:47:31.420 other enslaved people become free and she didn't try to escape at this point herself um and erica

00:47:37.980 armstrong dunbar theorizes there's lots of reasons like own a judge might have misunderstood the law 0.99

00:47:43.080 to think because she was so young maybe she wouldn't she wasn't eligible for this law or 1.00

00:47:47.400 maybe she just suspected or she knew if she was caught um she could be sold to a more cruel owner 1.00

00:47:52.800 like martha w was a cunt but at least she knew what she was in for like she like her fate was 1.00

00:48:01.080 at least she knew kind of what to expect tomorrow if she stayed with the same house where she was. 0.99

00:48:06.020 1793, yellow fever hit the town. Now this is a disease I don't think we've talked about

00:48:11.260 on this podcast. The symptoms are horrible. So first, if you're wondering, do I have yellow

00:48:18.020 fever? I'm hypochondriacs, trigger warning, skip ahead a minute. First, you feel headaches, chills,

00:48:23.760 sharp pains, stomach upset. You get jaundice. That's what's called yellow fever. Your skin

00:48:27.960 gets a yellow pallor then followed by the spewing of black vomit and internal bleeding

00:48:35.160 now this sounds like exorcist adjacent but this ripped through the town everybody was getting it

00:48:41.860 including the well so this is why the w family including on a judge um peaced out of there

00:48:48.760 they're like see you later pennsylvania it's 5.5 months we have to leave anyway they went to mount

00:48:53.460 Vernon to just avoid this whole situation. And going back to Mount Vernon, Ona got to meet her

00:49:00.220 sister. Betty had had another daughter. And this niece was named Oni after Ona because that was

00:49:06.440 her nickname. So it's like her niece named after you. She gets to visit her family. So nice.

00:49:11.320 But then December 1794, Austin. So he had a wife or I guess a partner because enslaved people 0.99

00:49:20.080 couldn't get married. He had a partner and children. He had a family at Mount Vernon.

00:49:25.140 He was going back to visit them. Probably it was his 5.5 month anniversary as well.

00:49:29.560 But he ran into an accident while he was on the trip and then he died. That was December 1794.

00:49:35.520 One month later, January 1795, their mother, Betty, back at Mount Vernon, grew ill and died

00:49:41.300 as well. So Ona Judge was now in her early twenties. She'd been in Philadelphia for a while.

00:49:46.360 her mother had died. This whole time her brother had been there with her, but now she was

00:49:50.880 probably feeling more alone. And then time to introduce a new character into this story,

00:49:57.060 who is Betsy Park Custis, who I didn't list on my survey, but I'm curious how famous she is in the 0.97

00:50:03.480 U.S. I don't know. So this is Martha W.'s other granddaughter. There was Nellie and Wash, 0.98

00:50:09.140 who are these eternal children who are constantly in his house, but she had this other granddaughter,

00:50:13.560 Betsy Park Custis. So Betsy was a scandalous type person, which what you know of Martha W.

00:50:22.700 was not the sort of granddaughter she really wanted. So Betsy had, she was, I think, 19, 0.94

00:50:30.360 and she had taken a suitor who was this guy who was 20 years older than her named Thomas Law,

00:50:35.120 who had come over from England and he was involved in land development, quote unquote,

00:50:38.740 basically a grifter but they needed um george w's permission to get married because he was the

00:50:43.720 president betsy's parents were dead and so she's like hey martha w can i marry this much older man

00:50:52.180 by the way um he arrived in america with two of his three children who are biracial and the

00:50:58.760 result of a relationship he had when he was in india working for the british east india company

00:51:05.720 So George W. was like, this is your man's.

00:51:11.300 This is who you're choosing.

00:51:12.840 But eventually he agreed. 0.96

00:51:15.740 One of the concerns he and Martha both had was that Betsy might go back with Thomas Law to England.

00:51:21.600 They didn't want her to leave.

00:51:23.480 So he strongly suggested that they stay in America.

00:51:27.200 And Betsy got married to Thomas Law in Virginia 1796.

00:51:31.620 simultaneously george w was deciding he never wanted to be president and he's like i'm over it

00:51:39.140 i didn't want to do this job like i'm tired of being president i just want to go live out my

00:51:43.260 going with the wind life in virginia so he wanted to retire so at this point they the w household

00:51:50.620 including ona had been living in philadelphia for seven years you know never more than 5.5

00:51:56.560 months at a time. And this is kind of the home she was used to. She grew up in Mount Vernon.

00:52:02.120 She was in New York for a while, but this is the place where she became a young woman. This is the

00:52:06.220 place where she kind of grew into herself. And so she didn't really want to leave. Unlike Martha W.,

00:52:13.380 she was not in a position to just whine and complain about it all the time, but also she

00:52:19.160 had to think about what she wanted to do next. She had no real attachment to Mount Vernon. She

00:52:24.800 had grown up there her family was there every 5.5 months she got to visit her nieces and stuff but

00:52:30.100 it's just like is that she'd seen this bigger more exciting world full of more opportunities

00:52:34.160 and what freedom could look like and that was what she wanted and on top of this so Betsy was 0.93

00:52:41.800 this 19 year old kind of like scandalous woman who was like yeah I'm just marrying this guy he 1.00

00:52:47.800 has these children and I'll just manage a household I guess but Martha W knew Betsy was unprepared for 1.00

00:52:53.440 marriage. She's 19 years old. She needed help setting up her household. And so she's like,

00:52:57.940 wedding gift for you, Betsy. Ona Judge, my slave. So she bequeathed Ona to Betsy as a wedding gift. 0.99

00:53:04.360 And then Ona found out about this. I'm sure Martha W. was like, oh, we're going to keep

00:53:09.400 this quiet. But it's like, everyone talks to everyone. So there's no secrets of the household.

00:53:13.400 Ona found out. And she was just like, okay, Betsy. Betsy Park Custis had a, quote, stormy

00:53:22.500 reputation she was different from martha w who's more just kind of like a karen type like a can i 1.00

00:53:30.700 talk to your manager type betsy was more like a chaos person so she's known for her stubbornness 1.00

00:53:37.220 her complete disregard for protocol which in some context you're like oh that sounds like a cool 1.00

00:53:42.260 person to party with but it's in this era and situation it's also kind of like the worst possible

00:53:48.600 person to be enslaved to um family members had joked quote in her tastes and pastimes she's more 0.98

00:53:54.980 man than women and regrets that she can't wear pants now i mean i always love a good pants moment

00:54:01.740 but it's they're not really saying that they're more just saying like she has a really strong

00:54:06.580 personality and so ona knew her like she this was martha w's granddaughter like they had visited

00:54:13.140 there like she'd seen her as a nightmare who's that girl from um charlie and the chocolate

00:54:17.300 factory viola something like i just ona judge had seen her being a nightmare child and now she was

00:54:23.200 a nightmare married teenager um she knows she's like ona would know the people who are already 1.00

00:54:28.840 enslaved in the household where betsy grew up she would know what it was like to work for her 0.86

00:54:32.540 and also betsy's new husband thomas law was shady af and the fact that he had these half indian 0.97

00:54:39.560 children, uh, proved that he, uh, had sex with non-white women and wasn't concerned about the 0.99

00:54:48.000 gossip that this might cause. So there could maybe be some like sexual danger for Ona Judge as well. 0.92

00:54:53.340 So in Philadelphia, she had seen freedom. This is a quote from Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

00:54:58.220 Ona Judge had seen freedom, felt freedom and experienced freedom in the smallest of ways.

00:55:02.780 She had also seen escaped slaves and knew how dangerous that could be if someone recognized

00:55:06.240 them. So she had heard, like it was obviously dangerous and scary to escape slavery. Like we

00:55:13.600 saw that with Marie-Joseph Angelique. And in the North, especially literally like with Marie-Joseph

00:55:20.040 Angelique, if you do this in the winter, the winters are cold. Frozen rivers could get in

00:55:25.280 your way where you can go where you want to go. Death by hypothermia, if you're not dressed for

00:55:29.180 it appropriately, but then escaping in the summer, also risky. Heat stroke, dehydration, mudslides,

00:55:35.760 like running through the woods like this is a pre it's always dangerous it was always dangerous

00:55:39.680 but this is like the late 17 this is 1796 like this is pre underground railroad situation like

00:55:48.720 you had to figure this out for yourself and also for the record the washington's were maybe

00:55:55.140 like it was more like the devil you know versus devil you don't know but they were not they were 0.98

00:56:00.100 also like shitty enslavers. We know from factual ways, letters and diaries and things. There was 0.90

00:56:08.820 a situation where there was one of the enslaved people displeased George Washington. And so he

00:56:15.180 sold this guy to the Caribbean. He would resort to brutal whipping when he didn't like somebody's

00:56:21.720 attitude. And George Washington had also, as president, signed into law the Fugitive Slave

00:56:27.560 Law of 1793, which said, so an enslaver or his agent could legally seize a runaway slave,

00:56:35.880 put them before a court, and then force them to return. And part of this law also said anyone

00:56:40.760 who helped a slave escape would be fined $500, which is an awful lot of money back then. The

00:56:45.800 person who helped would also be imprisoned and could be sued by the enslaver. So Ona Judge was

00:56:52.360 just like, I'm gonna escape. To be continued, we will talk more about Ona Judge next week.

00:57:06.760 And I do want to mention that I have been sharing these announcements about this trip that I'm going

00:57:13.160 on, that I am, I'm trying to think when you're listening to this episode that I am currently on.

00:57:17.820 If you want to keep up with what I'm seeing during my trip to the UK, I'm posting blogs and also vlogs or videos on my Patreon for free at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter.

00:57:29.200 So those posts are available to anyone who becomes a member of my Patreon.

00:57:33.260 And the sorts of stuff that I'm going to be seeing, I mean, we'll talk about it there.

00:57:37.080 But like some of the stuff that I plan on seeing is the portrait of Francis Howard, an exhibition about the wives of Henry VIII, the statue of Boudicca that's in London.

00:57:47.820 john nox's grave in edinburgh i'm also in edinburgh just everything at hollywood palace

00:57:52.260 the secret sex stairs rizzio's death blood stain um and i'm also and you'll learn more about this

00:57:58.000 if you follow me on patreon gonna see some llamas i am really excited about all of it and if you

00:58:02.940 want to experience this all vicariously yeah patreon.com and foster writer you can become

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00:58:18.500 what I'm doing is kind of brushing off some old essays I had written about various women from

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00:58:53.480 free and see all my travel blogs and stuff. If you want to support me financially on Patreon,

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00:59:03.960 free access to all episodes of Vulgar History. If you pledge $5 or more a month, you get all that

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00:59:13.300 which is where I talk about costume dramas

00:59:15.160 with Alison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson.

00:59:17.280 We're currently in summer hiatus

00:59:18.840 slash me writing a book hiatus,

00:59:20.600 but we will be back in the fall

00:59:21.960 with more fun, you know,

00:59:23.920 two to three hour discussions of various costume dramas.

00:59:27.540 I also have episodes there

00:59:28.880 for the $5 a month or more members. 1.00

00:59:31.400 So this asshole where I talk about shitty men from history. 0.99

00:59:34.320 I'm too mad at George Washington to do a post about him, 0.99

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00:59:39.580 if you want to hear me just being really mad. And then also there's the after show where sometimes

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01:00:00.040 the mythology of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome. Their designs are,

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01:00:13.020 about on the podcast cleopatra is there agrippina livia from i claudius um bodica is there people

01:00:20.280 from mythology like medusa aphrodite um from my sapphics there's a sappho design um anne boleyn

01:00:27.140 is also there because you can't not have anne boleyn if you're talking about difficult women

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01:00:35.600 can get pendants you can get rings vulgar history listeners can always get 15 off all items from

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01:00:47.260 to support this show directly via merch and also just mystify people around you by wearing shirts

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01:01:04.000 recommend going to our red bubble shop which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com we have so far two

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01:01:16.280 has need of these things which i think is cute on a tote bag and then also designed by our merch

01:01:22.280 designer slash podcast guest karen moynihan we have peg plunkett's pub which is a beautiful irish

01:01:28.300 pub themed t-shirt which I plan on and have been wearing during my trip around the UK just having

01:01:36.040 some peg plunket energy there and also so people when I do my meetups you recognize me because

01:01:41.800 you just know me as a voice anyway you can get in touch with me if you have thoughts or feedback

01:01:47.280 especially about these American history adjacent episodes I found it really interesting at first

01:01:51.960 when I was researching the American history stuff I had my survey of tits of brigades and I was

01:01:57.960 messaging with a bunch of people. Like I asked on Instagram, like, who's from the US? Where do

01:02:01.340 you live? And I was like, what do you know about this person? And most people are like, not much.

01:02:04.980 So I've chosen some less famous people from American history who I want to, I hope will

01:02:10.140 become increasingly more famous, not through this podcast, but just in general, I think they're

01:02:15.040 people who deserve to be known about and talked about. So you can get in touch with me. If you

01:02:19.240 go to vulgarhistory.com, there's a little like email form, or you can also message me where I

01:02:23.780 on instagram and threads at vulgar history pod anyway um i also want to mention one other very

01:02:31.700 important thing which is that i want to shout out a production that's currently going on in edinburgh

01:02:35.900 as part of the fringe festival so this is a play called the edinburgh seven and it was written and

01:02:40.920 directed and is acted by the people involved in this production include members of the tits out

01:02:45.960 brigade so the show is being performed through to august 24th with shows on most days like today

01:02:51.940 through then so the play the edinburgh seven is a riveting exploration of the first seven women to

01:02:57.060 go to medical school in edinburgh and the united kingdom the historic group set against the

01:03:01.100 backdrop of the surgeons hall riot unravel their fight for acceptance and recognition

01:03:05.060 this portrayal not only honors their legacy but also serves as a timeless reminder of the ongoing

01:03:10.120 global fight for equality and education and beyond and if you want to go and see this play

01:03:13.760 if you're in or near edinburgh for the fringe festival tickets are only eight pounds what could

01:03:18.260 be more affordable performances are at thistle theater in riddles court and you can learn more

01:03:24.380 about this play um by going to their instagram at edinburgh 7 to 2024 i put a link in the show

01:03:30.940 notes that you can find more about their play and or buy tickets if you want to support them like

01:03:35.420 if you're not there you're not able to see the play but you want to support them in this play

01:03:38.940 it's expensive to be young people or any age people it's expensive to put on a play when

01:03:45.520 you're not supported by, you know, major sponsors. So they do have a GoFundMe that's helping to pay

01:03:50.580 for things like food and lodging for them while they're in Edinburgh doing this play. I put a

01:03:54.500 link to the GoFundMe in the show notes as well if you want to support them. So anyway, yeah,

01:03:59.460 until next time, everybody, keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:04:04.820 Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. The editor 1.00

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01:04:16.980 Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - August 14, 2024

American Revolution, part 8： Ona Judge： Enslaved By George & Martha Washington (pt 1⧸2)

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