Vulgar History - American Revolution, part 9： Ona Judge： Escaping Slavery And The Washingtons (pt 2⧸2)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. Before the episode starts, I just want to let you know. Oh, I guess if you're

00:00:04.480 listening to this today, the day that it officially comes out, August 21st, today, I'm hosting a

00:00:09.180 meetup in Edinburgh for the Tits Out Brigade. And if you want to find out where and when we're

00:00:13.440 meeting, then go to vulgarhistory.com slash meetup, vulgarhistory.com slash M-E-E-T-U-P.

00:00:19.820 Next Wednesday, August 28th, I'm going to be hosting a meetup in London, England. And if you 0.84

00:00:25.520 want to RSVP for that and find out when and where we're meeting there. Again, go to vulgarhistory.com

00:00:30.720 slash meetup, just fill in the form either way, and I'll let you know the when and the way we're

00:00:35.100 going. And it really helps me to know how new people are coming because that affects where

00:00:39.140 we're going to be meeting. But anyway, I'm so excited and I can't wait to meet some of you

00:00:43.600 over there in the UK. Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history

00:00:57.640 comedy podcast. My name is Anne Foster and this is season seven. How do you solve a problem like

00:01:02.600 Marie Antoinette? And as I say at the beginning of every episode so far, we're not actually

00:01:08.340 talking about Marie Antoinette, really, this episode. What we're doing is a slow examination

00:01:14.040 of kind of what was going on in the world to lead up to the events of Marie Antoinette's life.

00:01:19.300 And this part of the season, season seven, part one, we've been looking a lot at what was going

00:01:23.660 on in America as regards the American Revolution, but the main characters are not the men from the

00:01:30.440 musical Hamilton. The main characters are women like Ona Judge, whose story we were looking at,

00:01:35.120 we started looking at last week, I left you with quite a cliffhanger. So I don't want to do too

00:01:39.360 much of an intro here because I mean, what's she going to do next? It's such a story that I'm

00:01:45.260 really, I was so worked up about it when I was reading this book, Never Caught by Erica Armstrong

00:01:50.200 Dunbar, which is such a great propulsive narrative, wonderful book. And like I put down the book and

00:01:56.380 I just started recording this part one and then part two right away because I just needed to show

00:02:00.240 you this story. And honestly, let's just jump into it. At the end of last episode, Ona Judge

00:02:04.680 decided that she was going to escape and let's see what happened next 1.00

00:02:11.700 so last time we saw ona maria judge she was she decided that she was going to enter her 1.00

00:02:22.620 on the run era she's going to peace out of this life living with george and martha w 1.00

00:02:29.280 and if she couldn't be emancipated she was going to effectively uh free herself so how was she 0.53

00:02:37.840 going to do this again as a spoiler in like a positive way like she's gonna do it and the

00:02:43.920 evidence for that is that my main source for this is the book never caught the washington's

00:02:48.120 relentless pursuit of their runaway slave ona judge by erica armstrong dunbar so she's gonna

00:02:54.340 to get away. This is great. This is what she does. So Ona had been living in Philadelphia for,

00:03:00.620 I want to say it was seven years, I think. And in that time, although the Washingtons had said like,

00:03:05.580 oh, she's not allowed to go to the, to hang out with the free black people. I don't know if they

00:03:11.340 still thought they were trying to keep from her the information that after you'd been in Philadelphia

00:03:15.860 for six months, you could be freed. Although she had never been in Philadelphia for six months.

00:03:19.920 she was always there for only 5.5 months she met people she did stuff we're gonna find in a minute

00:03:26.780 like she was sent to like pick up some shoes from a cobbler like she saw she saw people she talked

00:03:33.660 to people you couldn't stop her from like secretly getting information out and getting some connections

00:03:37.940 she had contacts among the free black population of philadelphia who could help her with an escape

00:03:42.780 because that's what they did we mentioned last time that this was um or maybe i'm gonna mention

00:03:48.000 this time. I just remember reading about it. Oh no, I'm going to tell you. I'll tell you. Let's

00:03:51.940 talk about the free black population of Philadelphia. Everyone among the free black 0.98

00:03:56.980 population of Philadelphia knew there was one man who could and did help runaways. And that was the

00:04:01.980 preacher Richard Allen. So Richard Allen was a black man. He was formerly enslaved. He was at

00:04:08.020 this point in his mid late thirties. He had various different things he did besides just like super

00:04:13.440 secretly helping people escape slavery. So he had turned an old blacksmith shop into the first church

00:04:18.980 for black Christians in the United States. Later in life, he would become the first African-American

00:04:24.240 to be officially ordained in the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The organization of

00:04:29.880 the Bethel Society led in 1816 to the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which

00:04:35.800 elected him as the first bishop. So this guy is important. He's powerful. He also runs a chimney

00:04:41.980 sweep business. He has got side hustles on side hustles. And so he ran his chimney sweep business.

00:04:48.760 And this was the chimney sweep business that the Washingtons used. So he, Richard Allen,

00:04:52.880 probably would have been in their house at some point, maybe regularly. So Ona Judge might have

00:04:56.300 connected with him there. Maybe they might have spoken to each other. I doubt that the

00:05:02.720 Washingtons knew that Richard Allen, the guy who ran their chimney sweep company that they used,

00:05:07.060 was also the guy to help sneak enslaved people out of Philadelphia. Anyway, so she might have

00:05:12.220 met him in a chimney sweep context. He also operated a shoe shop. So I mentioned that he

00:05:16.440 had turned an old blacksmith shop into a church and he also operated a shoe shop. So we know,

00:05:22.320 like this was written down in one of the receipts, like literal receipts that Ona Judge

00:05:25.980 is known to have gone there to purchase new shoes before. So she might've just lingered

00:05:30.180 while picking up the shoes, gotten some information, dropped some information to him

00:05:33.860 that she was looking to escape. And so she had a plan. The plan was in motion. Her allies,

00:05:38.720 Richard Allen and I, I mean, I don't know their names and that's because they wanted to hide what

00:05:43.500 they were doing, but the free black population of Philadelphia, Philadelphia itself, such a

00:05:50.140 character in the story, the free black population of Philadelphia, when we get to the end of this

00:05:54.880 and we're looking at giving awards for, for people who were helpful, strong allies, like

00:06:00.460 these people showed up for her so they got everything in place she was like i am out of

00:06:05.100 here and they're like we got this like we got you like just wait two weeks we'll figure it out

00:06:09.960 so she had to wait two weeks like knowing that she was making this life altering very extremely

00:06:15.560 dangerous decision because there's the fugitive slave law and everything and she just had to

00:06:20.260 pretend like everything was fine and this is where i feel like make the movie make the tv show like 0.98

00:06:25.260 the drama of her have knowing this is all in the works and all she could do is just like brushing

00:06:29.920 Martha W's hair and like just watching the grandchildren and pretending like she wasn't

00:06:35.240 gonna leave suit. And so the household was busy packing for their every 5.5 months trip back to

00:06:42.060 Mount Vernon. And she was helping to pack like, yeah, no, I'm surely gonna go on that trip with

00:06:46.680 you as well. Where else would I be going? This is a quote from Ona Judge from later on in her life

00:06:50.740 when she gave an interview to a newspaper quote, whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia,

00:06:55.980 I was packing to go. I didn't know where for I knew that if I went back to Virginia,

00:07:00.200 I should never get my liberty. And so she was busy all the time. We've talked a bit about

00:07:07.580 what her job duties were like. Like she slept in the room with the one grandchild that was adjacent 0.97

00:07:11.540 to Martha's room. And so she was on like 24 hour notice to go and help if Martha was having one of

00:07:16.840 her attacks of anxiety or just whining or just being a bitch. Like Ona Judge had to be there 1.00

00:07:23.280 for her all the time. She would accompany her on her outings. She would brush her hair. She would 0.97

00:07:26.840 help her with her outfits. That's what she was doing. But there was one duty that she was not

00:07:31.060 responsible for helping out with, and that is meal prep. Because there was a whole group of

00:07:36.140 people in the kitchen who did all that stuff. And so she could have some free time while meal

00:07:40.940 preparation was happening. And also while the Washingtons were entertaining guests, like during

00:07:45.220 dinner, she didn't have to be there with them. And that is why on Saturday, May 21st, 1796,

00:07:50.820 she left the house while the Washingtons were having dinner and she just got absorbed into

00:07:56.920 the free black community of Philadelphia who had all these plans for her. They were waiting for her.

00:08:00.900 She just walked outside and no one noticed right away. But I mean, eventually I'm sure they did

00:08:06.900 notice when, you know, Martha W., maybe her nightgown wasn't laid out or her like wigs were

00:08:12.880 in the right place. Like someone noticed pretty quickly, like Ona Judge is like, she's peaced

00:08:16.860 out of here. Where is she gone? Such that two days later, an ad appeared in the newspaper.

00:08:22.220 And this was sort of, there was often ads in the newspaper about runway slaves because

00:08:27.140 this was a frequent occurrence. The same as in way back in the Marie-Joseph-Angelique

00:08:32.780 saga. Like as long as there was this chattel slavery of black people in the Americas, 0.89

00:08:39.920 there were people who escaped because of course they did. And this is where, 0.98

00:08:44.440 So George Washington, his understanding of the purpose or like how slavery worked was he felt like the way that he rationalized it was that he felt that black people were benefiting from this in the sense of he sort of saw them as equivalent to maybe some sorts of animals you might bring into your house where it's like they couldn't survive on their own.

00:09:10.780 like they need us to help them like they're sort of infantilized but also dehumanized like he felt

00:09:15.940 slavery was good George Washington felt this is not me saying this George Washington felt

00:09:22.380 slavery was a good thing for black people because it gave them a roof over their heads and 0.51

00:09:27.300 you know a job to do and they couldn't live on their own so to him and and slavers like him

00:09:34.780 the fact that people would run away just they couldn't compute because like but why would they

00:09:39.400 run away when this is better than the other life they could have for themselves like this is good

00:09:43.340 and if you have to start sort of questioning the paradigm of what you're doing you're like wait

00:09:47.480 but if slavery isn't good then like why do i own these 300 people oh my god like so he wouldn't

00:09:53.620 he never quite made that turn mentally martha w neither did she she was a nightmare person

00:10:01.240 anyway so the notices the notice came out for on a judge in the newspaper so it said absconded from

00:10:06.740 the household of the president of the United States on Saturday afternoon, Oni Judge, which

00:10:11.240 was her nickname she went by. It described what she looked like, her light skin, very freckled,

00:10:16.600 very black eyes, her bushy hair. And also it said, quote, she had many changes of very good

00:10:23.040 clothes of all sorts, but they're not sufficiently recollected to describe, which is wild to me.

00:10:28.100 Like, okay, so first of all, it's not wild that she had very expensive, lovely clothes because

00:10:32.560 she did, because she was going to all these places with Martha, like she was going to society events

00:10:37.000 and to the theater and stuff. And she needed to be dressed to an equivalent level of the other

00:10:41.460 people around there. But also the fact that they could describe what she looked like, like her

00:10:45.800 skin tone, her hair texture, but they couldn't remember what her clothes look like. Like this is

00:10:50.500 Ona Judge would know every millimeter of every dress of Martha Washington. She would know her 0.95

00:10:58.000 hair. She would know everything about Martha Washington's whole wardrobe, all of her wigs,

00:11:02.800 and the fact that they couldn't even describe what her clothes look like because they couldn't

00:11:06.200 recollect. It's like how negligible she was to them until she went missing. The notice also said,

00:11:12.360 as she may attempt to escape by water, all matters of vessels are cautioned against admitting her

00:11:17.120 into them. Although probably she will attempt to pass for a free woman and has, it is said,

00:11:22.420 wherewithal to pay her passage. So they're in Philadelphia and somewhat correctly, they're 0.81

00:11:31.020 like, she's probably going to try to escape via boat because that's how people get out of

00:11:36.380 Philadelphia to other places in those times. And indeed, that's what Ona did. So there was some 0.98

00:11:41.560 thoughts. They thought maybe she would go to New York City, but she knew not to go to New York

00:11:45.620 City because she had lived there for a couple of years and people would recognize her because she

00:11:48.800 used to be out and about with Martha Washington. And Martha Washington might not have noticed 1.00

00:11:52.260 what her outfits were like but ona herself was distinctive looking she would have been a familiar 0.93

00:11:56.440 face there so she didn't go to new york city where people would know her like this is where

00:11:59.740 the free black people richard allen and his team like they got her like they knew what to do they

00:12:04.920 had done this before for so many people ona judge was in a different situation because she was more

00:12:09.260 visible because she had been seen so much with martha washington who's such a famous person

00:12:13.020 so what they did what they arranged for ona is she left via a boat and the way that this all

00:12:18.860 probably happen because this is how it worked for most people in the situation who are escaping

00:12:22.600 she wouldn't have been told the details beforehand because then if she was captured and tortured she

00:12:27.560 wouldn't have anything to tell like she was only told probably someone probably she met at a meeting

00:12:32.080 place or they picked her up she went to the harbor and then they were like okay it's this boat and

00:12:36.020 this is where it's going goodbye like because they didn't want anyone to have extraneous knowledge

00:12:40.180 or information especially because ona lived in that house where everyone's so close to each other

00:12:43.920 information could have left. Information could have been overheard by people. And so the place

00:12:49.380 that she was headed on her boat, she learned, was going to Portsmouth, which I hope that's

00:12:54.240 how you pronounce it, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in a boat called The Nancy, which I love a boat

00:13:02.780 with a person name. So the pilot of this boat was Captain John Bowles. He ran a freight business

00:13:09.640 along the eastern coast between Philadelphia and New York City. And Ona Judge, she never said who

00:13:15.980 was the pilot of the ship as long as he was alive because of the Fugitive Slave Act. Anyone who

00:13:21.200 helped her, that's the thing, this is so dangerous for her, but it's so dangerous for anyone who

00:13:24.360 helped her because they would also be subject to that horrible law. So she never spoke his name

00:13:28.840 publicly until more than a decade after his death to keep him safe from punishment. So John Bowles,

00:13:33.800 you know an ally thank you john bowls and so she had paid for the ticket maybe the free black

00:13:41.060 community had helped her pay for the ticket or maybe she had been given like some spending money

00:13:45.820 every now and then by the washington's anyway somehow she got on the boat she would have been 0.97

00:13:50.000 like i'm a woman like a woman traveling by yourself unusual in this situation a black woman traveling 0.65

00:13:55.700 by herself unusual in this situation but she would have to impersonate a free black person 0.99

00:13:59.980 And she met a lot of them, so she would kind of know how to act and how to dress. 0.66

00:14:04.620 So her friends in Philadelphia had let her know when she landed in Portsmouth who to look for,

00:14:10.120 like who was going to meet her, who to trust.

00:14:12.860 And so the Black population in Portsmouth at this point, I don't know what it's like today,

00:14:17.300 was small, like 2% to 3% of the population.

00:14:20.500 It was a bustling, shipping town.

00:14:23.080 The people there, the free Black people, helped her find lodgings.

00:14:26.900 And she set about to find work as a domestic worker.

00:14:29.980 So this is also just to backtrack, Portsmouth in general, where Ona Judge had lived for the first, what, 16 years of her life, had been at Mount Vernon, like on the plantation.

00:14:41.020 So there was so many hundreds of enslaved black people there, as well as the white indentured servants and the white people, the Washingtons, the enslavers.

00:14:51.320 And then she went, she was in Philadelphia, she was in New York City. 0.82

00:14:54.160 and so she would have been in places where there was a high proportion of black people that's just 0.81

00:15:01.640 what it had always been like everywhere she went and then Portsmouth would have been I think 0.97

00:15:05.380 again different for her like she was worldly in the sense of she had lived in three different

00:15:11.100 cities she had different experiences different situations but not like this one so she would

00:15:16.360 have stood out there probably in a different way but her face wouldn't be known like she was in

00:15:21.740 Philadelphia or New York City. And so the work that she would have applied for being a domestic 0.99

00:15:27.520 worker, so just like doing work around someone's house, like house cleaning, cooking, watching the

00:15:31.240 children, doing the laundry, that sort of stuff, which would have been extremely physically

00:15:34.940 punishing work. I mean, similar to some of the work that she was doing with the Washingtons,

00:15:40.140 but with the Washingtons, it was more brushing hair and like fixing clothes and that sort of

00:15:45.740 thing. It wasn't like scrubbing the floors and that sort of stuff. Although she would have known

00:15:49.200 people who were doing those jobs because people were doing those jobs everywhere. So Erica Armstrong

00:15:54.760 Dunbar in her book, Never Caught, she explains like the fact that Ona Judge chose to take

00:16:00.100 arguably a more physically taxing job really speaks to her character. Erica Armstrong Dunbar

00:16:07.640 says, quote, that Ona elected to become a domestic, that she chose to endure physically

00:16:12.460 punishing work in New Hampshire rather than remain a slave says everything we need to know

00:16:16.500 about how much she valued freedom. So the most prominent family in this area were the Langdons,

00:16:23.900 who were the family of Senator John Langdon, who was like, he'd been friends with George W.

00:16:29.460 They had hung out with his family often, which red flag for Ona Judge. And there's also, I think,

00:16:35.460 in this place, I think in Portsmouth, there's still like the Langdon House is a museum or

00:16:39.180 something. So they were like a notable family. So Senator John Langdon had a daughter, Elizabeth,

00:16:43.600 who had been good friends with the Washington's granddaughter, Nellie, like as little girls,

00:16:48.340 they had met, they had play dates, they had hung out together. And Ona Judge was for most of her

00:16:53.760 teens, like her job, one of her responsibilities was to be to watch over Nellie. And so she would 0.99

00:17:00.940 have known Elizabeth and Elizabeth, even if she didn't remember Ona Judge's dresses look like, 0.96

00:17:04.840 she'd be like, Oh, freckle face, like very dark eyes, like that's Ona Judge. And so one day sort

00:17:11.320 of inevitably Ona Judge was just walking around, you know, to or from work or whatever. And Elizabeth

00:17:17.960 Langdon was there on the street and she recognized her and she's like, oh, isn't that Ona who was

00:17:23.040 like one of the slaves at the Washington's house? I wonder if the Washingtons are in town because 0.99

00:17:27.520 she wouldn't have known that Ona had escaped. She didn't read the newspaper, I guess. So she 0.97

00:17:32.100 went home, Elizabeth Langdon, and he mentioned to her parents like, hey, I just saw Ona, like the 0.91

00:17:36.780 the slave who used to hang out with the Washingtons. The Langdons, of course, knew because 0.70

00:17:41.560 I'm sure George W. had been like screaming to all of his friends about this. He knew that owner

00:17:45.320 judge was a fugitive. And so they sent word to the Washingtons. The next section of my notes,

00:17:51.540 I call Javert vibes, because this is a bit where George W. goes a bit Javert from Les Miserables

00:17:58.700 in terms of obsessively hunting down a person. So he was still busy. Remember he'd been the

00:18:04.500 president, but he had decided he was going to retire from being president. So he's in the midst

00:18:09.180 of planning his retirement, but even in the midst of all that, he's still a time for slave catching.

00:18:15.080 He wanted like in a real Javert vibe, like he wanted Ona back because the whole thing,

00:18:21.860 like it just made him, if she hadn't liked being enslaved to him, then maybe that meant slavery

00:18:27.860 wasn't good. And then that meant like what fundamentally his understanding of the world

00:18:33.140 would have to be challenged and so he's like no can't have that for pr reasons it was hard for

00:18:39.640 george w to go slave hunting in new hampshire because that's in the north and it was less fond

00:18:48.400 of slavery as virginia for instance and he was president moving into his retirement era and he's

00:18:56.140 still it's still i want to emphasize that like the united states was still a precarious concept and

00:19:02.600 And he kind of people having faith in him was important and having kind of everybody

00:19:07.200 on all the sides support him was important.

00:19:09.600 And so if he was seen to pursue own a judge, then this might make people start thinking

00:19:15.640 about him in terms of slavery.

00:19:17.480 And that might make people notice his whole like 5.5 month rotation system.

00:19:23.260 And that's just kind of a bad look for him generally, especially because he's the one

00:19:27.080 who signed this slave act into law and everything.

00:19:30.380 Anyway, he just wanted to not look like he was sort of skirting the law and the vibe that, you know, he was the president of the United States, the first president, and the whole thing about how the concept of slavery and for people to rationalize and to do it relied to a certain extent on people choosing to believe that the people who were enslaved were cool with it.

00:19:56.220 and one would think that sort of the best place to be enslaved would be under the president of

00:20:03.260 the united states it's obviously terrible everywhere so just in terms of him wanting

00:20:08.000 to like keep enslavement happening he couldn't make it look like even being enslaved to him 0.99

00:20:12.960 was was also bad so he's just like let's just let this go maybe but no his bitch of a wife 0.98

00:20:18.680 martha washington was like no ona judge belongs to me because remember that's the whole thing like 0.97

00:20:23.240 Ona Judge's mother, Betty, had been a dour slave of Martha Washington's first husband.

00:20:30.500 And when the first husband died, then Martha Washington is the one who inherited Betty

00:20:33.940 and therefore Ona. And so Martha W. is like, no, like Ona belongs to me. I want to give her

00:20:39.060 as a wedding present to my awful granddaughter who is getting teenage married to an old grifter. 0.99

00:20:45.040 So George Washington, you go and catch her or else you will owe money to the Custis estate, 0.95

00:20:49.820 which is the estate of her like dead husband and so George Washington was like let's do this then

00:20:56.640 so he hired the secretary of the treasury Oliver Wolcott Jr. to go and get Ona which

00:21:03.040 um is an interesting use of like government people and funds to like do a private thing

00:21:10.380 which you might recall uh Benedict Arnold got in trouble for doing but I guess it's cool if

00:21:14.460 you're like actually the president in olden times, not in modern times, right? Martha Washington was

00:21:20.520 being a bitch about all this. George Washington, like, of course he was mad about it. Of course 1.00

00:21:24.240 he wanted to own it back, but it was most of PR reasons why he didn't. So he wrote a three page

00:21:29.320 letter, just like an angry, like written out incel podcast about how mad he was about how

00:21:35.960 ingrateful she was being to him. And also the way that he was sort of trying to rationalize the fact

00:21:42.220 because she didn't want to live enslaved to his wife.

00:21:47.400 He was like, well, she must've been manipulated

00:21:49.360 into doing this by someone else

00:21:50.820 because she is not the sort of person,

00:21:53.000 like not that he sees her as a person,

00:21:54.540 but he's just like, she's not someone

00:21:55.700 who would like get an idea of her own in her mind.

00:21:57.840 She would never want to do this.

00:21:59.040 She must've been manipulated. 0.91

00:22:00.900 And I think she had a boyfriend 0.95

00:22:02.040 who was a mentally unstable Frenchman 0.98

00:22:04.560 and that's who was behind all of this, 0.84

00:22:07.000 which is quite a leap.

00:22:08.120 Like, first of all, just to think like,

00:22:10.040 oh, she must've been tricked into this,

00:22:11.260 which again maria um joseph angelique also had that thing where she actually was working with

00:22:15.820 her boyfriend but here the fact that george w was just like no ona could never have done this

00:22:19.840 herself it has to be a boyfriend and not just a boyfriend a mentally unstable frenchman which

00:22:25.260 the vibes are very much like my boyfriend george glass in canada and so he's just like yes and in

00:22:32.380 three page like wild letter he was like yeah and i think she's probably been abandoned by this

00:22:38.980 boyfriend now, and she's probably begging for work and penniless. So actually coming back to 1.00

00:22:42.720 the Washington's, but actually he thought or claimed, you know, that's actually would be

00:22:48.680 better for her because she's probably, her life is probably terrible away from us. And so he got

00:22:53.400 this guy who was at the like attorney general, no, the secretary of the treasury, Oliver Wolcott

00:22:59.520 Jr. to contact Portsmouth's customs officer, Joseph Whipple. So this is like, again, using

00:23:06.060 government resources to get her, which again, is the sort of thing that got Benedict Arnold in

00:23:09.980 trouble in the first place. But it's cool when you're George Washington. And he offered various

00:23:14.580 suggestions to get Ona, which were all like high key illegal, actually, because the fugitive slave

00:23:21.940 law that he, George Washington, had signed into law like three years ago, said that when a runaway

00:23:28.960 slave is caught, they need to be brought before like a judge who would then, you know, say you

00:23:34.880 have to go back to your owner or whatever. But he's like, with Ona Judge, what if we capture

00:23:39.020 her, but don't bring her in front of a judge and just like low key, bring her back to the

00:23:44.080 Washington. So just like no one hears about any of this. And if you're an American person who's

00:23:49.460 listened to all this so far, and if you haven't heard of Ona Judge in this whole scenario,

00:23:52.860 like this, this is why George Washington in the moment of all this happening was just like,

00:23:59.140 how about no one ever hears about this? Great. So yeah, he offered money to the customs officer,

00:24:04.440 joseph whipple for doing this so just you know sort of bribery using government funds or whatever

00:24:10.740 and joseph whipple who is in the context of the like white men in the story i'm gonna say

00:24:17.100 okay he was like all right like i'll do this i guess because he's the president for like a couple

00:24:23.640 more weeks but also he's like i'm gonna do this my own way and not the way george washington is

00:24:28.800 saying because george washington has gone like full javert about this and he's like unhinged about

00:24:33.900 the situation like vis-a-vis you know the french boyfriend and whatever so this guy whipple he just

00:24:41.580 kind of like put word out he's just kind of like own a judge she's like somewhere here in portsmouth

00:24:45.580 there's not that many black people and i know the people like the free black people here are looking

00:24:49.980 for work so he had this kind of like i'm gonna say like clever plan in terms of schemes so he

00:24:58.220 just said a word that he wanted to hire a domestic servant and he was the customs official. And so

00:25:04.140 he's one of the wealthier people in town. So this is like a pretty good job. And so word spread

00:25:08.420 around town. And then Ona judge heard about this and she's like, Oh, this sounds like actually a

00:25:12.960 good job. I will apply for this job. And so she went to meet him for the job interview. And so

00:25:18.760 when they met, he started out doing like a job interview, like a fake job interview, but he

00:25:22.960 started asking all these leading questions. Eventually when he started being like, so do you

00:25:27.660 have do you have a boyfriend or a husband like perhaps a mentally unbalanced french boyfriend 0.97

00:25:33.480 or husband and she was like oh god damn it like this is a trap george washington has set this all 1.00

00:25:38.200 up and she's like fuck but then she also saw the whipple is like again in the context of a white 1.00

00:25:43.360 man in the story okay she saw that he wasn't going to like grab her and throw her on a boat or 0.99

00:25:49.060 whatever and so she's like listen like can we just talk about this and he's like yeah he just wanted

00:25:53.820 to reason with her and so what he was trying to do is to be like you know being a slave isn't that

00:25:59.460 better than being a domestic servant it's like less physical work and also don't you want to go

00:26:04.960 back to the washingtons and isn't that like a thing you want to do on a judge and she was just

00:26:10.140 like she gave him a piece of her mind she's just like listen under no circumstances will I ever

00:26:16.020 return to slavery I'm paraphrasing part of what she said in interviews later on she's like I will

00:26:20.260 not returned to where I could be sold or given to any person I'd rather die than return and so I

00:26:25.860 feel like he took a pause they're like okay okay so then he counter offered he's like well what if 0.94

00:26:30.960 you went back to the Washingtons because if you like be their slave again maybe after they die

00:26:37.740 maybe they'll free you which is like a thing sometimes people did and she's like oh that

00:26:44.760 sounds like not true but she also knew that she needed to get out of this fake job interview

00:26:50.200 situation so she's like okay yeah yeah yeah i hear you i hear you like sure like let's let's

00:26:57.020 think on this and so she left but with no intention of like going back to the washington's ever and so

00:27:02.540 he's like okay great um this is the ship that you should get on it'll take you back to virginia

00:27:07.540 and she's like okay yeah that's the ship and that's the time it's leaving like and then

00:27:13.420 Obviously, like the next day or whatever, she obviously did not catch that ship.

00:27:17.440 And Whipple was waiting by the ship like, oh, hey, why did she not show up?

00:27:20.960 And then he's like, oh, you know what?

00:27:24.280 Makes sense.

00:27:25.360 Like, why would she want to return to a life of enslavement?

00:27:28.520 He's like, I get it because I'm like an OK white man in this story. 0.51

00:27:33.360 But he had to explain this to George Washington, this like unhinged president.

00:27:39.660 So she went back and he's, I feel like I didn't write down, but I think he might've been like,

00:27:43.800 how to explain this. Let's just kind of do this through a third party, which was Wolcott,

00:27:49.140 the secretary general or whatever. And so George Washington heard about this and he fired Wolcott

00:27:53.900 from his job for like, even though his job was being secretary of the treasury or whatever,

00:27:58.500 but because he didn't catch a slave, he was fired from the job. So again, George Washington,

00:28:02.380 I feel like his use of like government hiring practices, his human resource management,

00:28:07.920 it's like questionable. So George Washington cut Wolcott out as a middleman and wrote back to

00:28:13.760 Whipple, the okay person. He wrote another just like deranged letter being like, put her on a 0.98

00:28:19.360 ship, like pick her up with your hands, throw her on a ship, send her back to me. Whipple again,

00:28:25.220 he took like a month before responding and his letter was kind of like, yeah, that those are

00:28:30.840 words you said. And that is a concept that you suggested. And so anyway, George Washington got

00:28:37.420 busy transitioning into like his retirement era and the whole thing sort of like what got like

00:28:45.340 the final thing that got Ona Judge to decide to escape was when she found out that she's going to

00:28:50.760 be given as a wedding present to Martha Washington's like nightmare granddaughter so Martha 1.00

00:28:57.020 Washington was like we'll have to give some something as a wedding present should I give 1.00

00:29:00.740 this like mix master toaster should I give this like beautiful set of glassware or should I give 0.61

00:29:06.300 a human being. Yes. And so she sent Ona Judge's younger sister, Delphi, in her place. So that's 0.95

00:29:14.260 how that went. But meanwhile, Ona Judge, like she got her way out of that attempt to send her back 1.00

00:29:22.280 into enslavement. And meanwhile, she's just like living in Portsmouth. She's just being this like

00:29:27.320 hot young single girl, lots of freckles, just like hanging out. And she knew that because of

00:29:32.880 the society in which she lived she needed a husband like she needed for protection and for 0.96

00:29:38.400 survival and because two incomes are necessary to make do in the life she's living it's like a black

00:29:43.300 woman and also for a black man like free black men were constantly disrespected trapped in the

00:29:48.600 web of racial discrimination but because they were men they carried some power and so ona needed that 0.99

00:29:53.980 for security and even to potentially prosper like she needed to be part of a power couple and so she 0.89

00:30:00.660 quickly found a guy. And like Martha Washington's nightmare granddaughter, Ona met and married 0.99

00:30:08.760 somebody pretty quickly. So the guy who she met, the lucky man was named Jack Staines and he was

00:30:14.740 a sailor. So in this situation, being a sailor was a way for black men to earn wages unavailable 0.99

00:30:21.060 to them elsewhere. Because of the racism of colonial America, there was a lot of jobs that

00:30:29.220 black people like just couldn't get. So of the jobs that black men could get, um, being a sailor

00:30:34.820 was seen within the free black community as sort of a position of honor and respectability. So

00:30:39.520 this is kind of like the highest that Ona could reach in terms of trying to find like a successful 0.99

00:30:44.920 black husband. And this is partially because like they'll go off to sea for six months or whatever, 0.79

00:30:50.240 but at the end they would come back and they'll get these lump sum payments, which was enough 0.74

00:30:53.940 money that they could purchase land or a home, which was unachievable for most black men.

00:30:59.220 in this place and time. This did also mean like, you know, when Jack was away, Ona Judge would have

00:31:04.900 to fend for herself against like, cause she was still technically a dour slave blind to Martha

00:31:10.960 Washington, who was like, people are still looking for her. Right. So it's like, okay, this is sort

00:31:17.000 of the, maybe like the highest caliber husband I can find in the free black community, but also

00:31:23.060 pros and cons like he will be away six months out of every year anyway they got engaged and Whipple

00:31:29.720 the okay white man heard news of the engagement and he's just like hmm okay this is I'm not sure

00:31:36.580 what his motivation is here I guess he just still felt like he owed something to George Washington

00:31:40.300 or something anyway so I do want to also mention that Ona Judge as an enslaved person like it's

00:31:46.500 like people could not get married that was not a thing you're allowed to do because you

00:31:50.020 and considered a person and only people can get married. So already she's doing something that

00:31:54.580 she never would have been able to do pre escaping. Anyway, they were doing everything like by the

00:31:59.480 book, like they announced their engagement and they want to get their paperwork to get married.

00:32:03.440 But Whipple convinced the clerk in Portsmouth to delay their paperwork, maybe until he could tell

00:32:10.500 George Washington about it. I'm clear, but they're just like, well, fuck that then. And so they went 0.99

00:32:15.160 to a nearby place called Greenland, not the country, a city and or town, Greenland, New

00:32:21.420 Hampshire. And they just got their documents done there and they got married. So this is where Ona

00:32:26.780 Maria Judge becomes Ona Maria Judge Staines, which is the surname that she went by for the rest of

00:32:32.680 her life. And they moved into a home together. She became pregnant and their first child was a

00:32:37.960 daughter named Eliza. And then because of the way that slavery laws worked, et cetera, because it

00:32:44.100 inherited through the mother. So technically her daughter was now also technically a dower slave 1.00

00:32:49.980 to Martha Washington's husband's estate. Two years pass and they're just like being a young couple, 0.51

00:32:57.400 working hard. You know, she's being a single mom for a while. He's away at sea and they're just

00:33:02.280 like getting by and living this life that was so much beyond what her life could have been had she

00:33:08.420 not fled like she's able to to have a job earn her own income get married have a family like

00:33:14.740 live in this house like she's she's figuring it out you know they're a young young newlywed

00:33:19.280 couple in their 20s but after two years George Washington he'd now been retired for a while he'd

00:33:26.260 like settled into his retirement and he was just like you know what I feel like there's some loose

00:33:29.880 ends that I need to what was that thing I meant to do oh that's right catch own a judge so he 0.82

00:33:35.120 recruited a new helper who is martha washington now i didn't goddamn martha washington like i 0.99

00:33:41.820 went to the story wanting to learn about on a judge and just like martha washington just like 1.00

00:33:45.300 steals the show with her like karen haircut every one of martha washington's relatives seems to be

00:33:51.760 a nightmare person were they all i mean it seems like but if anyone listening out here is like a

00:34:00.400 descendant of them. I hope your ancestors, some of them were okay. So Martha Washington's nephew,

00:34:06.820 Burwell Bassett Jr., which is a real Southern name, that's who George W. got to hunt down

00:34:13.840 Ona Judge. He still claimed George W. Ona Judge, she'd been enticed away by an insane Frenchman.

00:34:21.200 That's still what he thought happened. Whipple had been like, maybe you could negotiate with

00:34:27.520 Ona Judge. Like these are some options. And George Washington is like, I will never negotiate

00:34:31.300 with an enslaved person. I want her back here brushing my wife's hair or whatever. 1.00

00:34:37.400 So Burwell Bassett Jr. headed to New Hampshire, where he like pretty easily tracked down Ona

00:34:43.360 because she was, she's not hiding in someone's attic somewhere. Like she was, she had a job, 0.60

00:34:48.160 she had a husband, she like had a house. He found her in the sense of he'd like knocked on her door

00:34:53.500 And she answered. And wouldn't you know it, this was one of the times where her husband Jack was

00:34:58.300 away at sea and Burwell Bassett Jr. was like, well, hi, you know, just trying to do like a real

00:35:04.320 Southern gentleman, like Swedish sugar thing. And he's just like, well, why don't you just come back

00:35:10.700 to the Washingtons in Virginia? I'm sure you won't face any repercussions. And Ona is like,

00:35:16.740 sounds fake just was like no i choose to not go with you no and he was like well what if i promise

00:35:25.000 you that if you return the washington's will free you like wouldn't you want to come back and be

00:35:30.240 freed by them and she's like said no like still no um a quote from her later she explained what

00:35:37.540 she said to him she looked him in the eye and said i am free now and choose to remain so

00:35:42.540 so if the washington's had thought like because remember george washington had thought that she

00:35:46.600 was like lured by lured away by this Frenchman who then abandoned her and she was like penniless

00:35:51.740 living on the streets it's like no she's actually like working she's like a functioning member of

00:35:56.300 society she's like doing just fine so if they thought that like waiting two years she would

00:36:00.960 be desperate and wanting to come back because remember again like the way that a lot of people

00:36:04.900 rationalize the existence of slavery was thinking that like these people the black enslaved people

00:36:11.120 needed white people to feed them and to tell them what to do and without them they'd just be lost

00:36:17.260 and stranded and that's like foundational for them to rationalize that like these are not also

00:36:22.500 people so George Washington is just like well no like she needs to come back here like the whole

00:36:27.000 concept of slavery depends on this so if he had thought that she would be like weakened and more

00:36:31.920 wanting to come back after all this time it was in fact the opposite because she had now been free

00:36:36.780 for three years and that had prepared her for this battle. She had lived the life of a free

00:36:41.840 person. And she's just like, this is what I want. This is what I choose. Why would I ever go back?

00:36:47.180 So Burwell Bassett Jr. left her home and he's just like confused because he's just like used to

00:36:53.380 enslaved people. The only black people he interacted with, I assume, were enslaved people

00:36:58.240 and they did what he told them because they were enslaved by him. And so he's just like,

00:37:02.880 this woman said no to me and that's confusing so he went back to send a letter to george washington

00:37:07.900 to ask for instructions like what do i do she said no what do you do about that he was staying

00:37:12.500 with senator langdon who we talked about before and i guess they're just like sitting around like

00:37:17.240 drinking their whiskey or like what does southern people drink they're like what they're lemonade

00:37:23.320 and then um smoking their cigars and he's just like talking to senator langdon like this woman

00:37:29.240 Like she said, no. So I guess next I just need to go and like grab her and like throw her on a carriage and bring her back. So I guess that's what I'm going to do. He said out loud. Senator Langdon's household staff comprised some free black servants, which again, it's like when there was the other stuff in part one where Ona Judge or the other enslaved people heard what people said. It's like you might forget that they're there, the enslaved people. 0.96

00:37:54.300 You might not notice what their outfits look like, but like they hear you and can tell

00:37:59.700 other people what you said.

00:38:00.880 So thank goodness.

00:38:01.560 One of Senator Langdon's servants heard this plan and he got word back to own a judge that

00:38:07.980 they were going to come and grab her and take her away. 0.98

00:38:11.080 So she grabbed her baby, hired a stable boy to commandeer a horse and carriage and headed

00:38:16.380 again for Greenland, not the country, but the place where she had gotten married, such

00:38:20.620 that when Burwell Bassett Jr. returned to her home, she was gone. This is like, again, in the

00:38:26.240 movie that is the story. He comes back and he sees it's just like the house. It's like, clearly she

00:38:30.320 lived in it. It's like, there's the plate on the table and there's, you know, some laundry over

00:38:34.000 there. It's like someone lived here. Someone actively was living here, but now they're gone.

00:38:37.620 Like she clearly had just fled. And he's just like, well, shoot, doggone. I don't know what

00:38:43.720 he said. So he had to, Burwell Bassett returned to Virginia to let George Washington know he as

00:38:50.180 well had failed in his mission to capture on a judge like everyone kept failing and then shortly

00:38:55.240 after that George Washington died of one of the various maladies that he had as per his will

00:39:03.300 so he had like a late in life vague abolitionist thought which was he was like is slavery what I

00:39:12.420 want not sure so in his will he had said that 123 of the enslaved people at Mount Vernon would

00:39:20.060 be eventually freed but he was only able to to emancipate the ones who belong to the washington

00:39:25.400 estates and all the dower slaves not like ona's family the ones who belong to martha

00:39:29.320 martha washington is just there just kind of like running the plantations herself i guess

00:39:34.660 still being just sort of like i don't know she's in virginia which is all she ever wanted to just 0.98

00:39:38.780 be there and sit on the porch and drink her lemonade or what's that mint juleps and the

00:39:44.980 enslaved people like if you imagine that there's whatever 300 something enslaved people at mount 0.58

00:39:49.520 Vernon. And 123 of them were told, like, you are going to be gradually freed from slavery,

00:39:55.220 but JK, not the other half of you. Like, there is some tension there among the enslaved people

00:40:00.620 about the whole situation. Things happened, like some fires were set, presumably by some of the

00:40:06.820 enslaved people in kind of protests. And so what Martha W. did is she signed a document one year

00:40:13.280 later, one year after George died, freeing George W. slaves right away. Like, he had signed that

00:40:17.880 they were going to be eventually freed and like a long-term thing. But she was like, they can go,

00:40:23.540 they can stop burning down the plants and they can go, I'll just keep my slaves. And the thing

00:40:28.100 with her, I mean, not to give her any credit at all, because she is, as I said in part one, 1.00

00:40:34.280 a cunt. But she also couldn't have freed her dower slaves, even if she wanted to, 1.00

00:40:39.300 not that she did. Because she had inherited just one third of her first husband's estate, 1.00

00:40:43.800 which meant one-third of the slaves. The other two-thirds of the slaves weren't her quote-unquote

00:40:49.580 property. They were to be passed on, like them and their children, to her surviving grandchildren.

00:40:55.740 So anyway, even if she wanted to free some of them, she died pretty much right away after that,

00:41:02.400 transferring her property, including all these slaves, to her heirs. So all of her nightmare

00:41:09.200 relatives grandchildren their children etc and none of this truly affected on his day-to-day

00:41:15.500 life he later said when she was interviewed that after george washington's death the family never

00:41:21.420 troubled me anymore so okay in that sense it did affect her life like because she was no longer

00:41:26.080 being actively hunted but like she wasn't freed because of their death she was still technically

00:41:31.920 a fugitive martha washington's first husband's family the custis estate they could legally

00:41:37.880 recapture her and her children at any time, but they weren't hunting her like George Washington

00:41:43.420 was. So she just kind of like, what can you do? Like she just got on with it. She's like,

00:41:47.980 I'm just going to live my life. Here we go. So she and Jack had two more children, a girl named

00:41:51.760 Nancy. And in the biography I read by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, she suggested maybe named

00:41:56.960 after the ship, Nancy, that had sailed her to freedom, but also one of her, Ona's sister,

00:42:04.260 Betty had a daughter called Nancy. So maybe also named after her niece that she never got to see

00:42:08.140 anymore. And then she had probably a son probably called William because later there's like a man

00:42:13.040 called William Staines who's around the right age and he became a sailor like his dad. But then

00:42:17.640 her husband Jack passed away after six years of marriage. So now we're in 1803 and Ona like the

00:42:25.020 whole thing, like you needed the two incomes to get by in this situation, in this world that they

00:42:30.760 were living in so she didn't have the income to support herself and her three children and so she

00:42:35.100 turned to her friends the jacks family and they were the ones who she hid with the first time that

00:42:41.140 george washington sent somebody to sign her down she went to the jacks family again and this time

00:42:45.940 to the extent that she moved in with them and so they were a free black family as well um and i

00:42:49.820 believe that the patriarch of that family had died so it's just kind of like women supporting each

00:42:53.720 other helping to raise all their children ona judge by now is around 30 years old and so yeah

00:42:59.720 just kind of cohabitating kind of like in the tv show family matters just kind of like

00:43:04.760 adults with like various children who belong to different ones of them all just kind of like

00:43:09.260 raising each other there's a grandma there too you know steve urkel allegory but then over the

00:43:14.580 next 10 years like it became financially unfeasible for her to continue to support her children 1.00

00:43:19.960 because just societal society was not there to support a single free black woman in this 0.98

00:43:27.860 situation um there wasn't any there was not enough support there for her especially without 0.98

00:43:33.100 another income without a husband so in 1816 her two teenage daughters eliza and nancy were sold 0.89

00:43:38.680 into indentured servitude which is where that's like what on a judge's biological father had been

00:43:44.620 where you just unlike enslavement this is where you have a certain term you say it's like one year

00:43:49.260 or six years or whatever and you just agreed to be a servant for that period of time in exchange

00:43:54.080 for money like so in exchange for food and shelter her two daughters went to do this and around the

00:43:59.920 same time this is probably when her son william went to sea as well and so everybody like in the

00:44:05.520 jack's household the stains jack's household we're just like so many of us are now today just trying

00:44:12.780 to make money every which way you can so they tried to bring an additional income however they

00:44:17.660 could both of her daughters were known for their artistic ability and sold sketches to wealthy 0.97

00:44:21.780 families. And I would love to know if any of those are still around, maybe in somebody's attic

00:44:26.060 somewhere. But I think that's sort of lovely that Ona's mother, Betty, had been this really skilled

00:44:30.580 embroidery person, like a seamstress, like dressmaker. And then Ona was also doing that

00:44:35.460 sort of work as well, like sewing and stuff. And then her daughters are artistic in this other way

00:44:39.760 of drawing, just to sort of see that familial connection. So the daughters, neither of them

00:44:46.060 ever married. And eventually they moved back in. And so just like the Jacks and the Staines women

00:44:51.580 were just doing odd jobs, domestic work, literally any side hustles they could figure out to bring in 1.00

00:44:56.400 additional income. Her oldest daughter, Eliza Staines, died in 1832, age 34 from an illness,

00:45:05.800 oldie time illness. Nancy, her younger daughter, died one year later. So Ona was now in her late

00:45:11.980 50s. Her son, if William was still around, he was off being a sailor. Both of her daughters had died.

00:45:18.320 And in this time, like in her time as a free person, she had learned how to read and write,

00:45:22.400 and she became a very religious person. She became a Christian. She explained later that

00:45:27.000 when she's living with the Washingtons, they did a teacher, and like she was not provided

00:45:31.460 with an education, whether a religious education or just reading, writing, and math. Like she

00:45:36.160 didn't get any of that. But then she took that upon herself to learn these skills. And her

00:45:41.100 Christianity became really, really important to her. And I also see some connection between that

00:45:46.320 And the fact that it was this reverend, Reverend Richard Allen, who had been so foundational in helping her to escape as well, if she felt sort of like a connection, if she saw the Christianity, like the power of that through him.

00:45:57.960 And presumably her faith helped her through this time of, you know, having so many financial troubles of her two daughters dying.

00:46:05.900 She said in an interview later on, the ability to read the Bible and participate in religious events made her wise unto salvation.

00:46:12.960 So I would hope also not just her faith, specifically giving her that sort of inner strength, but also being part of a church community and having those supports from other people around her.

00:46:23.980 I do love that this, in the same interview, which I'm going to explain what the interviews were, but in one of them, just speaking of religious stuff, she threw some shade at George Washington in this interview.

00:46:33.140 She said she never heard him pray.

00:46:35.580 She said Martha Washington used to read, she used to read prayers, but I do not call that praying.

00:46:40.480 so she was just kind of saying like the two of them were like actually not actually religious

00:46:44.980 which is very interesting to me because of the way that the united states government and the

00:46:52.920 founding fathers and it's all even today it's still so connected with like the government and

00:46:57.140 like christianity are so co-mingled like in the peggy ship in episode we talked about benedict

00:47:02.680 arnold was it's like he sold a soul to the devil by turning against george washington and stuff so

00:47:08.140 the fact that George Washington himself wasn't even particularly religious, notable. So what

00:47:15.380 are these interviews I'm talking about? So in 1845, Ona was interviewed for the Granite Freeman,

00:47:22.400 which was an abolitionist newspaper. So this is leading up to, because slavery was, you know,

00:47:29.040 slowly abolished between the time that she was enslaved up till the time she did this interview,

00:47:34.340 like more and more places in the North were abolishing slavery, but the South, it was still

00:47:39.920 happening. And that's what would lead up to the American civil war of the 19th century.

00:47:44.220 So Ona Judge was interviewed by Reverend Thomas Archibald for this newspaper. And this article

00:47:48.900 appeared on the 49th anniversary of her escape. She was in her early seventies at the time she

00:47:54.800 gave this interview. And at this point, she no longer feared being returned to Martha Washington's

00:47:59.800 heirs. Like she was able to speak out and diss George Washington basically with impunity. And

00:48:07.520 so this is where we got a lot of her first person information. This is why we know more about her

00:48:10.940 than any of the other Mount Vernon slaves, because she shared her story in this way.

00:48:15.900 So she gave that interview 1845. Two years later, 1847, she gave another interview for

00:48:20.420 The Liberator, the leading abolitionist newspaper of the era. And she was asked in one of these

00:48:25.940 interviews, if she regrets running away, as she had seemingly labored so much harder since she

00:48:33.940 left enslavement, just how physically demanding her work was as a domestic servant. And then

00:48:38.760 everything that happened, just like struggling financially, her daughter's dying, everything.

00:48:42.420 It's like, do you regret having run away? And she replied, and I'll quote her words,

00:48:46.740 no, I am free and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.

00:48:51.480 so she died on february 25th 1848 as erica armstrong dunbar wrote in her book ona maria

00:49:00.020 stains was carried away not by slave catchers but by her god and more i didn't want to i really

00:49:09.660 want to focus this these episodes on ona herself but the book really talks more about what happened

00:49:14.540 to her sister delphi aka philadelphia later on which is like she also eventually was freed

00:49:21.420 She also got married.

00:49:22.380 She also had children.

00:49:23.360 So while Ona's children died, her siblings had children.

00:49:27.860 And so her lineage lives on in those ways.

00:49:30.360 And she never saw her sister or her family again.

00:49:32.740 And that was like a great sadness for her.

00:49:35.780 But that trade-off of being free was worth it for her. 0.81

00:49:39.500 But it's just, Erika Armstrong Dunbar writes in the book about how Ona Judge probably would

00:49:44.780 have found such comfort and solace in knowing that her sister eventually also got to live

00:49:49.020 this free life. 0.98

00:49:50.060 And now for a quick advertising break.

00:49:53.420 Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.

00:49:58.220 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

00:50:02.360 the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,

00:50:06.720 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

00:50:11.500 Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred.

00:50:18.780 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more

00:50:22.960 The war is over and both sides lost

00:50:29.980 Kingdoms were reduced to cinders

00:50:32.020 And armies scattered like bones in the dust

00:50:35.200 Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world

00:50:39.660 Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight

00:50:42.680 But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins

00:50:46.820 this is old school adventuring

00:50:49.260 at it's most cruel

00:50:50.600 your torch ticks down in real time

00:50:53.020 and when that flame dies

00:50:54.400 something else rises to finish the job

00:50:56.680 this is a brutal rules light nightmare

00:50:58.980 with a story that emerges organically

00:51:01.680 based on the decisions that the characters make

00:51:04.300 this is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s

00:51:06.720 and man, it is so good to be back

00:51:09.000 join the Glass Cannon podcast

00:51:10.300 as we plunge into the shadow dark

00:51:12.060 every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern

00:51:14.120 on youtube.com slash the glass cannon

00:51:16.400 with the podcast version dropping the next day.

00:51:19.780 See what everybody's talking about

00:51:21.080 and join us in the dark.

00:51:27.000 Oh, please, not that music.

00:51:28.880 That music gives me nightmares from my childhood.

00:51:31.260 Could we get something a little bit lighter,

00:51:33.020 some lighter music here?

00:51:34.260 Are you a fan of true crime TV shows?

00:51:37.520 And what about Unsolved Mysteries,

00:51:39.120 the show that jump-started all of our love of true crime?

00:51:42.280 I'm Ellen Marsh.

00:51:43.660 And I'm Joey Taranto.

00:51:44.660 And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries.

00:51:55.380 Baby, you will laugh. You will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way.

00:51:59.820 And you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics?

00:52:02.640 New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon.

00:52:08.640 And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week.

00:52:16.240 So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:52:22.960 Ever look at someone at the top and wonder, do they even remember where they started?

00:52:27.840 What did it take to get there?

00:52:29.720 I do on every episode.

00:52:32.060 I'm Evelyn, and on my podcast, Reppin, the people the world thinks it knows, gets to say

00:52:38.160 who they actually are, the grit, the doubt, the moments nobody sees, and everything they

00:52:44.740 learned getting there, it's yours for the taking.

00:52:48.720 Reppin, find us wherever you listen.

00:52:51.340 Go get it now.

00:52:54.320 And we're back.

00:52:56.200 So talking about her legacy,

00:52:58.540 visitors to Portsmouth, New Hampshire,

00:53:01.000 can learn about Ona on tours

00:53:02.540 hosted by the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire.

00:53:05.760 And there's also, you can get a tour of Langdon House,

00:53:09.880 which is where the Senator Langdon lived,

00:53:13.320 which is part of the historic New England,

00:53:16.320 I guess, you know, the houses that are maintained.

00:53:18.460 On June 19th, 2021, Juneteenth,

00:53:22.860 the holiday celebrating emancipation of Black enslaved people in America. A Virginia state

00:53:30.260 historical marker honoring Ona Judge was unveiled on Mount Vernon Memorial Highway near the Mount

00:53:35.980 Vernon estate in Fairfax County, Virginia. As of April 2024, Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire

00:53:42.860 announced they will be unveiling a new mural commemorating Ona Judge Staines on its Portsmouth,

00:53:48.260 New Hampshire headquarters as part of a local history through art initiative.

00:53:52.860 Speaking of arts initiatives. So I was looking up to see how she's being commemorated, which is

00:53:59.260 like increasingly more, especially since 2020, I think. Well, I guess she's being commemorated

00:54:04.480 more, especially since maybe 2000. And it's been picking up a bit more steam as more people hear

00:54:08.940 about her story, especially after this biography was published. So there is a memorial for her

00:54:14.020 in Philadelphia that is commemorating the enslaved Black people who lived with the

00:54:18.240 Washington's in Philadelphia. And it's at this site called President's House. And so I got

00:54:23.020 information about this. Most of the information I got about this was from Hidden City Philadelphia

00:54:27.760 website. And I'll put the link to that in the show notes because there's lots of details there.

00:54:32.160 So this house, where this memorial is now, is on the site of the Master's Pen Mansion,

00:54:38.580 which is the house where also Benedict Arnold and Peggy Shippen had lived. And then George

00:54:43.660 Washington. Martha W. lived there with their nine enslaved people. And then after he stopped being 0.99

00:54:48.860 president, the next president, John Adams, also lived there. So it's called President's House

00:54:52.440 because two presidents live there. This house itself is eventually torn down. But in 2000,

00:54:59.640 plans were set in motion to build a huge new, almost like campus, comprising all kinds of

00:55:04.840 memorial things to lots of American Revolution era stuff. Specifically, a new building to house

00:55:10.400 the Liberty Bell, which is this bell that is important to American history. And so when they

00:55:18.360 were like, okay, we're going to dig up the site and we're going to move the Liberty Bell onto this

00:55:21.760 new building here. And as they were doing that, they did an archeological sort of like investigation

00:55:26.540 to see like, well, what's underneath here. And so they found that the site, part of the site of the

00:55:30.920 new proposed Liberty Bell building was on top of the footprint of the slave quarters that George

00:55:36.740 w had commissioned when he lived in that house and so ona herself had lived in the bedroom with

00:55:43.100 one of the grandchildren mall the other woman servant or enslaved person did also but there's

00:55:48.260 other enslaved people too so um when george w moved into that house he had commissioned 0.68

00:55:53.620 slave quarters to be built to house his enslaved stable workers as well as the white coachmen

00:55:58.400 So I guess near where the horses were. Anyway, so this became a important thing in the news of the

00:56:06.880 era. People from Philadelphia who were around then maybe heard about this. So construction

00:56:10.960 was underway, but it's like, ooh, we're building this new building for the Liberty Bell on top of 0.87

00:56:15.860 the George Washington, like the slave quarters that he had commissioned. You know, we're making 0.91

00:56:21.000 this thing to like celebrate like America and freedom, but also it's like on the site of where

00:56:25.580 George Washington built slate quarters next to the house where he lived with enslaved people.

00:56:32.380 So construction was underway. And I'm going to try to share the story involving just as many of

00:56:38.420 the names of historians as I can, because this is part of, I find this really exciting. It really

00:56:42.480 shows the power of history and of historians and how the present and the past really coexists

00:56:50.800 together so a historian named um edward lawler wrote an article about like hey so they're building

00:56:56.100 this new place for the liberty bell and fyi just so you know like part of where it's going is on

00:57:00.320 top of where george washington's built slave quarters and a certain amount of people read

00:57:05.060 that history journal that he published that in and they were like oh this is kind of a bad luck

00:57:09.820 isn't it and word spread and so some people started asking the planners of this project

00:57:15.020 which is called the overall thing is called independence park is like the whole sort of

00:57:19.520 campus of historical buildings. And they were like, hey, do you want to incorporate maybe like

00:57:25.520 an interpretive display into the Liberty Bell building to just sort of be like, oh, hey,

00:57:30.880 where you're standing is where George Washington had slave quarters built because he kept enslaved

00:57:35.700 people. And the Independence Park planners were like, no, because that was sort of, this is the

00:57:40.900 Liberty Bell building. And we don't want to, you know, confuse people by also talking about

00:57:45.280 slavery. So why don't you build like a slave interpretive center, like 800 miles away in

00:57:49.860 some other city? And they were like, but isn't the whole history of America fundamentally connected 0.77

00:57:55.520 to enslavement? And isn't it sort of like whitewashing to not talk about it? A historian

00:57:59.940 named another historian, Gary Nash, spoke about this whole thing on a radio show. And then more

00:58:03.980 people heard about it. Public reaction was swift and angry. Gary Nash was one of the people who

00:58:08.860 founded a group called the Ad Hoc Historians, which was a group of scholars from Philadelphia

00:58:15.400 area. And the purpose of their group was to incorporate slavery history at this site and

00:58:22.800 to not pretend that that wasn't there. So this group advocated the National Park Service to

00:58:28.380 acknowledge the connection between slavery and the Liberty Bell site. Simultaneously,

00:58:33.520 like this is like some scholars, academics, historians doing this, but at the same time,

00:58:36.820 a powerful grassroots movement developed just like among the Black community in Philadelphia.

00:58:42.020 So an attorney named Michael Kord formed a group called Avenge the Ancestors Coalition,

00:58:47.300 ATAC, who pushed for a plan to recognize the lives of the enslaved at this site. He put together a

00:58:53.860 petition with 15,000 signatures that they gave to the Independence Park Project team, urging them

00:58:59.560 to build a memorial at this site to commemorate the enslaved people who live with George Washington.

00:59:05.880 And so it's sort of being an annual thing on July 3rd, because July 4th is like Independence Day, is that what it's called in America? July 3rd, there would be every year demonstrations at this site, led by the ATAC, just to sort of like keep the pressure going to say like, we need to remember this history and you need to commemorate it. You can't, don't build this site pretending like you're not building on top of like literally the slave quarters.

00:59:28.460 And thanks to the ongoing years-long efforts of the academics, activists, and journalists, pressure mounted to the point that Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed resolutions and that just sort of forced the National Park Service to come up with a plan.

00:59:45.400 in 2003 the mayor at that time john street announced that the city would dedicate money

00:59:51.040 to build a slavery memorial at this site and the new park superintendent like the previous one was

00:59:57.880 just like not on board but a new person an ally cindy mcleod was on board with this as well and

01:00:04.280 so they looked to to find who would they hire i think first they hired a firm to do the monument

01:00:09.320 and they had a reveal of these plans to the, you know, interested parties, like largely the Black

01:00:17.120 community of Philadelphia, who are all just like, no, thanks, not a fan of that. So they went back

01:00:21.540 and they called for different options. And ultimately, a Black-owned architecture firm,

01:00:26.360 Kelly Maialo, won the competition to design this new monument. And the monument is so

01:00:31.020 interesting looking, just from the pictures I've been looking at it. So it's called President's

01:00:35.220 House, Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation. It was designed by Emanuel Kelly.

01:00:40.460 And so what it looks like, it looks like a house, but just sort of like the outline of a house,

01:00:46.960 like there's walls, but they don't really connect. So you can walk in and out in and around it. So

01:00:51.440 it's described as an open air pavilion that shows the outline of the original buildings and allows

01:00:56.420 visitors to view the remaining foundations. The memorial was a joint project of the city of

01:01:01.120 philadelphia and the national park service and so again like honestly just like look up pictures of

01:01:06.640 this i'll post a link to it on instagram it's just a really interesting it's sort of like it's an

01:01:11.660 outside thing and it's a house it looks i think it's like red bricks it's kind of like part of a

01:01:16.080 wall but then a big space and then the next part of a wall so you can really walk on almost like

01:01:20.720 a maze so the innovative monument broadly represents the structure and dimensions of

01:01:25.260 the president's house the master's pen mansion and features reenactments displayed on video

01:01:30.200 monitors perched above brick walls resembling fireplaces. So these videos, one is about Ona

01:01:35.200 Judge, for instance, and these were written by Lorene Carey and filmed by Louis Messiah.

01:01:40.120 And just on one side of it, there's a big concrete wall, I guess monument, sort of a big wall.

01:01:47.780 And the name of Ona Judge and the other eight enslaved people who were enslaved there are all

01:01:53.160 carved right into the wall so you can see their names. And I think this is so lovely. There are

01:01:58.300 some bronze footsteps embedded in the stone floor of the memorial, which symbolizes the brave escape

01:02:04.960 of Ona Judge. They're sort of like feet the size of what her feet probably would have been like.

01:02:10.300 In 2020, ATAC founder Michael Kord reflected on the 10th anniversary of this monument,

01:02:16.600 saying there's nothing more productive than telling the truth about the sad past in order

01:02:20.620 to lay the foundation for a happy future. And, you know, on this podcast, we talk about so many

01:02:27.580 people and some of them are commemorated via tombs or monuments or things most of them aren't

01:02:33.340 and this one i think is such a lovely tribute to own a judge but also just representing all of the

01:02:40.480 enslaved people whose stories we don't know as well and their importance and how they were so

01:02:45.220 much how their impact on their lives were not discussed and not shared and not talked about

01:02:53.660 for such a long time so i do before we get to the scoring we have if you're new listeners the

01:02:59.040 podcast on the show there's often we often tell the stories of people who are just kind of on

01:03:04.880 their own and struggling and no one ever really helps them so in the rare instance where i get

01:03:11.840 a story where somebody like has a friend somebody actually helps them out we uh commemorate that by

01:03:17.620 giving an award so the first award is the lady jane seymour memorial award for outstanding

01:03:22.280 supporting performance. And that's for someone who just like really has somebody's back.

01:03:27.000 The higher honor is a jewel tortoise award for legendary ally or friend behavior for somebody

01:03:34.680 who's just like truly ride or die for one of these people. And I have to give the jewel tortoise

01:03:39.760 award to basically everybody who helped her escape. Richard Allen, the free black community

01:03:46.280 of philadelphia to the guy who piloted the ship called nancy all the people in portsmouth and in

01:03:54.640 greenland the clerk who gave them a marriage license the guy in the house the langdon house

01:04:00.060 who overheard that she was gonna be taken and then he spread the word like the way that this

01:04:04.260 community wrapped itself around her to protect her and to allow her to continue living life

01:04:12.420 as a free woman um i think it's so powerful and so important and i'm really glad that she there

01:04:20.120 was this community who really like i said just like really wrapped themselves around her and

01:04:24.140 looked out for her and really allowed her to live this life she wanted to live so everyone else on

01:04:28.740 this list is like a person's name um but i'm just gonna say everyone who helped own a judge 0.52

01:04:35.080 escape slash the free black population of philadelphia and new hampshire just type me

01:04:43.660 into my documents that's official because they i love i love that and they kept supporting her

01:04:48.400 as best as they could but just the way that she wanted to escape she let them know and then they

01:04:52.260 arranged it all for her it's just it's beautiful it's beautiful i love that that was there for her

01:04:57.040 so in terms of this podcast i always score the people we talk about in four different categories

01:05:03.640 And the categories were chosen. I mean, it's just sort of a fun way to wrap up an episode,

01:05:07.160 but it's also a way to different people thrive in different ways. And so everyone, everyone does

01:05:14.400 well and almost everyone does well in at least one of the categories. It's rare people get high

01:05:18.900 scores in all the categories. So let's just, let's just see how own a judge is going to do. 0.65

01:05:22.960 And already it's hard for me because the first category is scandalousness. And this is about a

01:05:28.060 person who causes a scene who the people in society are like harming my pills and i think

01:05:34.160 like just being a black enslaved woman who escaped was scandalous was very shocking to people like

01:05:41.280 martha washington so that's scandalous but at the same time it's reasonable and heroic like to the

01:05:47.900 other to the people who are helping her like she wasn't causing scandal for the sake of just being

01:05:52.440 like a wild and crazy person like she just did a thing that was sort of unexpected to some other 0.60

01:05:57.460 I'm going to give her, I think a five, a five out of 10 for scandalousness because like escaping

01:06:02.780 is inherently, it was a very scandalous, dangerous thing to do. And a lot of people were shocked by

01:06:10.140 what she did, confused. And she did it without the help of an insane French boyfriend. But also I 0.89

01:06:15.700 feel like her whole life, she just wanted to be free. And then when she was, she was like a wife

01:06:20.140 and a mother and she went to church. Like she was, I don't think she would want to be thought of as

01:06:26.000 a scandalous person. And I don't think she was in any other way. Scheminess, I'm going to give for

01:06:31.040 a 10 out of 10. Scheminess in the context of this podcast. It's a word that sometimes has a negative

01:06:35.760 connotation, but here it's always positive. And it's just a person with a plan, a person who sees

01:06:41.620 what's going on and can sort of adapt and be flexible about it, but also who literally comes

01:06:46.720 up with a plan. And while she had lots of helpers to book the ship and stuff, she was the one who

01:06:52.160 figured out like did she talk to Richard Ellum and he was their shimmy suite business or when

01:06:56.280 she was going to his like shoe shop like the way that she made that contact let them know that she

01:07:01.220 wanted to do this but then also the scheminess of once she's left on her own you know when Jack was 0.63

01:07:06.940 off at sea and then Burnett Bassett Jr. came by and she's just like the way that she would sort 1.00

01:07:12.860 of like I had the fake job interview the way that she just refused to go with him and then she just 0.99

01:07:16.920 like pieced out and kind of made herself vanish like super schemey she was she was gonna do

01:07:22.880 whatever it took to achieve a free life and to stay in it significance is also with her

01:07:30.520 a multi-layered thing like i think she's very significant in the sense of it's hers is the only

01:07:38.880 story we know this much detail about of an enslaved person at the mount vernon plantation

01:07:43.320 which is significant because that's where george washington lived and he was the first president

01:07:47.060 of america and her narratives in these abolitionist newspapers were significant because that just kind

01:07:52.680 of helped people to better understand what slavery was like and to get people to join the cause

01:07:57.260 to end slavery so they're significant in that way like the fact the monument that there is like the

01:08:05.300 plaques about her and stuff like i think she's so like she's significant on her own but she's also

01:08:09.540 significant in a representational way of kind of all of the enslaved people whose stories we don't

01:08:15.560 know. And many of them also escaped and we don't know the stories and lots of them weren't able to

01:08:20.400 escape. And so she just, because we know as much about her as we do, because she gave these

01:08:24.900 interviews, because there's records of letters and diaries and the newspaper advertisements and

01:08:30.540 stuff, like she becomes significant on her own, but also just representing all the people whose

01:08:35.860 stories are not known in this way. Anyway, I'm going to give her 10 for significance. I think

01:08:41.180 she's a hugely significant figure and I hope that her story gets more and more widely known.

01:08:48.260 The fourth category that I score everybody on is the sexism bonus, which is where I consider how 0.89

01:08:54.180 much did living in a patriarchy, how much did sexism get in the way of her thriving and reaching

01:08:59.820 her full potential and this is all tied together because it's like it's the misogynoir situation

01:09:07.100 it's like racism plus sexism like that's specifically faced by black women and for her

01:09:14.580 like it's just interconnected in this you can't disconnect the two things i will say like looking

01:09:21.200 at her husband's life you know there's still there was in terms of opportunities for black

01:09:27.600 people in let's say new hampshire in 1800 like black men had a bit more option of jobs they could

01:09:34.000 do like he could become a sailor which was pretty well paid um black women a bit less options of

01:09:39.640 sorts of jobs like often it is it's sort of like domestic work enslaved people not that there were

01:09:44.520 enslaved people in it i'm sure very much like no options at all so she had a bit less options

01:09:50.800 by virtue of being a woman the sorts of jobs that she did when she was enslaved were 1.00

01:09:55.940 gendered. And then she also faced the risk of sexual violence to a greater extent than the 1.00

01:10:02.300 male enslaved people did. I would presume, not that Ona Judge, as far as we know, encountered

01:10:07.960 any of that specifically, but that was always sort of a threat. That was always a thing that

01:10:12.340 could happen to her. I mean, I think all in all, I'm going to give her a five. Like if we're just

01:10:17.280 looking at sexism, it's a five. Like there was so much sacked against her in all of society, 0.97

01:10:21.780 but I don't, sexism was not the major one. So when we add this all up, she gets a score of

01:10:27.740 30 altogether to compare that to other people on our list. I'm just curious, like, especially

01:10:34.980 people whose stories are similar or just other people from like black history or American

01:10:38.820 history. So a score of a 30, the queen of Sheba, legendary figure from African history has a 31.

01:10:45.240 So I like that she's sort of adjacent to that. Nefertiti from Egyptian history has a 31.5.

01:10:52.160 Just looking around here and with a score of 30, there was a woman who I did a couple of years ago in the international season named Rani Ditta, who was a queen in like medieval India, basically, I guess Kashmir technically, who was people didn't expect her to thrive as much as she did, but she did.

01:11:15.240 Anyway, so this is where she lands.

01:11:16.640 She's, in terms of American history,

01:11:18.940 Louisa May Alcott has a 29.

01:11:21.000 Like, I feel like this is the neighborhood

01:11:22.340 where it's kind of people

01:11:23.120 who are not specifically scandalous people,

01:11:25.620 but they're just kind of people

01:11:26.520 who own their life story and did what they did.

01:11:31.380 Deborah Sampson slash Robert Shurtleff

01:11:33.460 has a 28.5 in terms of people

01:11:35.620 around in the American Revolution era.

01:11:38.300 And then, because you might have forgotten,

01:11:41.180 but I never do,

01:11:41.900 that this season is technically,

01:11:43.600 how do you solve a problem

01:11:44.440 like Marie Antoinette like overall what we're doing in this part of the season is we're building

01:11:48.500 up the world the world of revolutions that are happening in the 18th century to ultimately build

01:11:53.600 up to the French Revolution and what happens to Marie Antoinette and so I have that's why I have

01:11:58.240 a segment this season called nothing but net where I like to see how do the people we talk about

01:12:03.440 how are they connected to Marie Antoinette by how many how many degrees of separation

01:12:09.040 and this one you might have forgotten but in part one of the of this owner judge saga when she's

01:12:15.800 living i think at the president's house so and she was in charge of watching over the grandchildren

01:12:21.060 nelly and wash uh nelly was interested in music and she had a music tutor for a while named andrew

01:12:27.040 reinagle who was an accomplished musician himself who had hung out with mozart back when he was in

01:12:33.000 Europe. Mozart knew Marie Antoinette. So from Ona Judge and Renegal, Mozart to Marie Antoinette,

01:12:40.860 that is, I believe, three degrees of separation of Ona Judge to Marie Antoinette. You know,

01:12:46.380 it's like, I feel like these stories, they must be so different. They must be so separate. But

01:12:50.420 in fact, like at this time, especially between America and France, like there's so many connections

01:12:56.620 between people. Anyway, I want to judge an icon, a legend. I'm really glad that I learned about her

01:13:05.420 and I have been so excited to share this story with all of you and I'm glad I finally got to.

01:13:14.800 So I do need to let you know something. This is the end of season seven, part one. This is not

01:13:21.400 the end of season seven, far from it. There are going to be, I'm not going to tell you how many

01:13:25.780 parts there are going to be to season seven, but we're going to take a little pause. We're

01:13:30.820 going to take a little, a moment. We've been doing all this American revolutionary talk

01:13:35.920 and Americans, I know that there aren't many of you out there listening and I've talked

01:13:42.180 about your history now. And now we are going to move on to talk about other things. Season

01:13:47.220 seven, part two is called Meanwhile, Back in France. And we're going to be looking at

01:13:51.860 France. I'm going to dust off my Jerry Orbach as Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast French accent

01:13:57.620 because there are some words I'm really excited to say. We're going to be looking at France in the

01:14:02.940 next part, but that's not going to be right away. In fact, next week. Well, honestly, I mean,

01:14:10.000 let's be real. And I try to always be transparent with all of you about what's going on and what's

01:14:14.780 happening. But the real talk is I have a full-time job and I am doing these podcasts every week.

01:14:21.860 And I am writing a book.

01:14:24.120 And I am, as you listen to this, currently on a much needed holiday, which is actually

01:14:30.100 a research trip.

01:14:31.140 So like, is it a holiday?

01:14:32.480 Anyway, we're going to be in reruns for a little bit, but I really love this.

01:14:36.320 We've got such a deep archive of episodes.

01:14:39.100 I mean, I've been doing this show for almost five years and I really like being able to

01:14:44.260 dust off those old episodes and kind of revisit and like reconsider things like the scores

01:14:50.340 that I gave when the show was starting and I had less people to compare against other people.

01:14:55.160 And so we're going to be playing a classic episode next week, which was the first episode

01:15:01.960 of season two. The theme of that was women leaders and the men who whined about them.

01:15:08.220 Pertinent in this current political climate, perhaps men have been whining about women leaders

01:15:15.440 since as we're going to see ancient Egyptian, ancient Roman days. That's right. We're going

01:15:20.680 to be revisiting Cleopatra next week. And I do think her score bears revisiting. So that's what

01:15:27.060 we're going to be looking at next week. And, but you know, I have things to tell you. We're not

01:15:33.620 just going to leave you like that. So one of the things I'm going to tell you is that I am on this

01:15:40.300 trip on this research slash fun trip. And if you want to keep up with what I'm seeing and doing,

01:15:45.440 I'm posting blogs and vlogs and all kinds of things for free on my Patreon page,

01:15:50.500 which is patreon.com slash annfosterwriters.

01:15:52.580 If you want to see me visiting Holyrood Palace and seeing Rizio's death bloodstain,

01:15:58.900 seeing the portrait of Frances Howard at the National Portrait Gallery in London,

01:16:02.280 seeing llamas in Germany, you can see all that stuff there.

01:16:06.760 And it's entirely free.

01:16:07.960 You just have to become a member to see those posts.

01:16:10.000 So go to patreon.com slash annfosterwriter or open, I think, just the Patreon app on your device.

01:16:15.260 and then you can also just look me up there. And there's a link in the show notes so you can see

01:16:19.280 all that stuff and vicariously enjoy my trip along with me. I also have a Substack, which is a

01:16:23.940 newsletter where every week I post an essay about women from history. It's vulgarhistory.substack.com

01:16:30.320 if that's your jam. If you like reading essays, if you want to see what my writing is like,

01:16:35.900 if you're like Anne Foster, you're writing a book, what will that be like? You'll get a good

01:16:39.560 hint by looking at these essays. You can also support the podcast on Patreon, pivoting back

01:16:44.560 to patreon again if you become a member for free you can see all of my travel blogs and things but

01:16:50.120 if you want if you're there and you want to stick around you're like oh you know what like i would

01:16:53.480 like to stick around here a bit more in a financial way if you pledge at least one dollar or more a

01:16:58.060 month you get early ad-free access to all episodes of vulgar history if you pledge five dollars or

01:17:03.660 more a month you get the early ad-free access as well as bonus episodes of vulgar peace theater

01:17:08.820 which are two to three hour long episodes where myself friends of the podcast allison epstein

01:17:13.400 and Lana Wood Johnson talk about various costume dramas our discussions get heated and it's always

01:17:20.000 a good time and there's going to be there's a really good archive of past episodes there but

01:17:24.020 also we're going to be doing new episodes soon TBD stay tuned I'm a little busy but once I have

01:17:31.300 time we're going to meet back up and do some more of those there's also episodes you can access at 0.97

01:17:35.460 that five dollar or more a month level so this asshole where I just talk about shitty men anyway

01:17:40.480 that's all happening at patreon.com slash ann foster writer and we also have if you're like but 0.98

01:17:45.660 while i'm listening to podcasts i like to wear beautiful jewelry guess what we're brand partners

01:17:49.800 with common era jewelry so common era jewelry is a woman-owned small business that makes beautiful

01:17:54.920 jewelry inspired by women from history and also from classical mythology they make beautiful 0.79

01:18:00.400 pendants they make beautiful rings they make them in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold

01:18:06.300 Vermeer. And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going

01:18:12.880 to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout. We're talking, I mean,

01:18:18.560 next week, I don't know, usually I like to tease, but I'm like literally telling you it's happening

01:18:22.260 next week. Next week, we're talking about Cleopatra. There's a Cleopatra pendant. There's

01:18:26.660 a Cleopatra, I think, ring you can get from Common Era. If you're so moved after listening

01:18:31.220 to that story. You just want to like, honestly, it's dangerous for me because dangerous in the

01:18:36.860 sense of like, whenever I revisit these stories, I'm like, God damn it. I love these women. 0.97

01:18:40.880 Um, then look up to be like, is there a common era necklace of that woman? And then I'm just

01:18:44.080 like, Oh, should I get it? Anyway, commonera.com slash vulgar or use code vulgar at checkout when

01:18:50.820 you're buying your beautiful jewelry from Tori, which is the name of the owner of that company.

01:18:54.720 You can also support this podcast by buying vulgar history merchandise. We've got t-shirts,

01:18:59.740 We've got stickers. We've got mugs. We've got travel mugs. We've got, in one design, an apron.

01:19:07.260 That's the Peg Plunkett design. Anyway, I went a little wild with choosing what options I wanted

01:19:11.820 for the Peg Plunkett because I just started imagining everyone in her establishment would

01:19:15.980 have this design on. And so I was like, yeah, the apron. Peg Plunkett's chef would wear one.

01:19:20.280 Anyway, you can get merch at, if you're in America, vulgarhistory.com slash store.

01:19:24.340 takes you to our TeePublic store, which is great. And you can choose which design you want on what

01:19:30.460 sort of thing and ship it to yourself in America for affordable shipping. If you're outside the

01:19:35.480 U.S., Redbubble is what I would recommend. So vulgarhistory.redbubble.com. And it's the same

01:19:40.660 thing. You just choose a design you like and decide what you want to put it on, like a pin

01:19:44.000 or a magnet or a sticker. Yeah. And we do have some season seven merchandise up there. We have

01:19:49.180 public universal friends catchphrase. The friend has need of these things on a tote bag. We also

01:19:55.180 have the Peg Plunkett design, the Irish pub theme design by Karen Moynihan, who was also our guest

01:20:00.060 for the Peg Plunkett episode. And if you have suggestions for other season seven merch, let me

01:20:05.160 know. I mean, the next part we're getting into France and I just think like there's going to be

01:20:10.340 some good ideas I bet you're going to have for some French themed, French revolutionary type

01:20:16.060 merchandise. You can get in touch with me. Um, if you have comments or feedback or suggestions or

01:20:22.180 whatever, if you go to vulgar history.com, there's a little button there where you can email me. Um,

01:20:27.360 and you can also send me a message. My DMS are open. I'm on Instagram and threads at vulgar

01:20:32.540 history pod. Anyway, I'm also, as you listen to this and doing a really fun trip and I'm excited

01:20:40.260 to tell you all about it on the podcast. When I get back anyway, until next time, all my friends

01:20:45.980 And next time again, Cleopatra coming at you. 1.00

01:20:49.920 Keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:20:54.740 Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne Foster. 1.00

01:20:58.460 That's me.

01:20:59.420 The editor is Christina Lumagi.

01:21:01.740 Theme music is by The Severn Duo.

01:21:04.420 The Vulgar History Show image is by Deborah Wong.

01:21:07.400 Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek.

01:21:09.440 Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

01:21:15.980 Legendary stories, awe-inspiring sound, and endless adventure.

01:21:26.900 Welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory.

01:21:33.140 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

01:21:37.840 the paranormal mysteries of Liminal London,

01:21:41.920 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

01:21:50.100 Fall in love with our core cast

01:21:52.880 or be awed by our incredible guests

01:21:55.880 from familiar shows like Oxventure,

01:21:59.200 Three Black Halflings,

01:22:00.880 and No Rolls Barred. 1.00

01:22:04.240 Ignite your imagination

01:22:05.540 and discover the realms of peril and glory today.

01:22:09.480 Go to RealmsPod.com

01:22:11.480 or search Realms of Peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

01:22:16.860 Do you love Disney? Do you love top ten lists?

01:22:23.320 Then you're going to love our podcast, Disney Countdown.

01:22:26.020 Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial.

01:22:28.000 And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Jarendell,

01:22:30.840 and we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown.

01:22:34.020 On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show,

01:22:36.720 we count down our top ten lists of all things Disney.

01:22:39.360 The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore, there is nothing we don't cover on our show.

01:22:46.120 Right, Jeremy?

01:22:46.880 Ooh, girl, you know we are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed,

01:22:52.500 but you definitely need in your life.

01:22:54.080 So if you are looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

01:23:00.140 Now, before you go hunting for something else to listen to, let me make it easy.

01:23:04.640 I'm Mike Carruthers, host of a podcast called Something You Should Know.

01:23:08.240 And I speak with experts about fascinating things that affect your life,

01:23:13.180 from human behavior, relationships, health, science, and everyday mysteries.

01:23:18.640 We've been downloaded millions of times because every episode teaches you something you'll be talking about later.

01:23:25.420 Open up Something You Should Know and give it one episode.

01:23:29.080 You might just find your new favorite podcast.

Vulgar History - August 21, 2024

American Revolution, part 9： Ona Judge： Escaping Slavery And The Washingtons (pt 2⧸2)

Episode Stats

Transcript