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    Never Caught
    Never Caught
    Never Caught
    Audiobook6 hours

    Never Caught

    Written by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

    When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.

    Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.

    “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.

    Editor's Note

    Escaping slavery…

    This book specifically details the life of a young woman, Ona Judge, who served the Washingtons as a slave in their homes in New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia, throughout George’s time in office. Based in part on Ona’s own interviews, Erica Armstrong Dunbar paints a clear picture of the era, including early efforts towards abolition and the many injustices of slavery. The reader gets to know Ona but also other enslaved men and women held by the president. Despite being highly skilled in her work and an invaluable resource to the first lady, Ona faced a grim future limited to enslavement by Martha Washington and her descendants. Instead, Ona ran.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateFeb 7, 2017
    ISBN9781442394506
    Author

    Erica Armstrong Dunbar

    Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, was published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her second book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a winner of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Award. She is also the author of She Came to Slay, an illustrated tribute to Harriet Tubman, and Susie King Taylor and is the co-executive producer of the HBO series The Gilded Age.

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    Reviews for Never Caught

    4/5

    225 ratings23 reviews

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    • 3/5
      It’s a very interesting story. However, there is so much speculation that it might as well be fiction.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      A little thin on factual evidence, but that probably due to MS. Judge’s place in her society and her times. Still I did enjoy the author’s speculations on the probable motivations and forces that drove the story that could be told.
    • 5/5
      This book was short, simple, and precise. Factors that are worthy of a good book/audiobook. I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Good book ngl. Really inspiring to hear about slavery ngl
    • 5/5
      Very informative and interesting. I'm glad I read this book.
    • 4/5
      Interesting. Her mix of history and knowledge of ona judge was enlightening
    • 5/5
      What a spectacular story, what an amazing woman Ona Judge was. Born a dower slave to Martha and George Washington, Ona escaped from slavery at the age of 22 when she learned that she was to be given to the Washingtons' granddaughter and her new husband. Like the title says, despite all his attempts, Washington never caught Ona and she gave two interviews in her 70s to abolitionist newspapers at the end of her life, telling her story.

      Erica Dunbar Armstrong is a strong storyteller. As a Canadian, I have only general knowledge of American history and Never Caught was extremely enlightening for me. I think she does a very good job of balancing the background of slavery in the United States with Ona's story, keeping an eye always that the reader understands the nuances of Black womanhood and how it would have affected Ona and other enslaved women. While the book is very clearly deeply researched (it's too easy to imagine the author poring over microfiche in darkened archives) Dunbar Armstrong does a really good job of keeping the formal and difficult academic language out of the text.
    • 2/5
      70. [Never Caught] by Erica Armstrong Dunbar If ever a book was written to appeal to earnest book club mavens, this is it. From its tabloid-style subtitle to the author's fanciful imaginings of Ona Judge's feelings (which often have a distinctly 21st century sensibility somehow) this is a sorry excuse for a historical narrative. (And it somehow became a National Book Award finalist, fer sobbin' out loud!) There's non-fiction, and then there's historical fiction. This is a a mish-mash of those things, and the author makes no excuse for what have to be fabrications of detail. I've rated it 2 stars for some interesting and presumably factual information about George and Martha Washington and circumstances of his presidency that I somehow never encountered before, but I may be talking myself out of one of those stars as I write this. Ona Judge was one of the enslaved women included in the Custis Estate---Martha Washington's property during her lifetime, as a result of her first husband's death. Martha could sell Ona or give her away to a family member, but she could not (even had she wished to) emancipate her. Ona traveled with the Washingtons as part of Martha's household staff when they left Mount Vernon for New York, and later for Philadelphia as the new nation's capitol transitioned from one city to the other. When Martha's granddaughter, Eliza, was about to married, Martha made plans to gift Ona to her. In Philadelphia at the time, any enslaved person who had resided there for a period of six months was entitled to request their freedom. The Washingtons made sure to pack up the household, including all the servants, to return to Mount Vernon periodically, thereby "resetting the clock" on their servants' residence. Just before Eliza's marriage and one of those trips back to Virginia, Ona Judge took the opportunity to walk away from the Executive Mansion on High Street in Philadelphia, into the sheltering care of the local free black community, which managed to spirit her out of Pennsylvania to New Hampshire where she lived for the rest of her life, always technically a fugitive slave. The "relentless pursuit" referred to in the subtitle consisted of 1) the usual runaway slave advertisement published in 2 Philadelphia newspapers, describing Ona Judge and offering a $10 reward for any person who would "bring her home"; 2) an attempt, nearly 4 months after Judge's escape, by Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, to persuade her to return to Mount Vernon with him. (The President had learned of Judge's whereabouts through Senator Langdon of New Hampshire, whose daughter knew Ona by sight and happened to see her on the street in front of the Langdon residence in Portsmouth) and 3) another attempt at persuasion at George Washington's request in 1799, three years after Ona's escape. In each case when a representative of the Washingtons approached Ona Judge with a proposal that she return to their household with a promise of eventual freedom, she emphatically refused to go with the emissary, insisting that she preferred her freedom now, thank you. No attempt to restrain, retain or remove her by force from her home was made by either of the individuals involved, even though they had Federal law on their side---the Fugitive Slave Act which has been signed into effect by none other than President George Washington himself. The word "relentless" apparently means something entirely different to Erica Armstrong Dunbar or her publisher than it means to me.This is a fascinating story, without doubt. The background against which it played out is made clear in [Never Caught], but the documentary evidence to establish the detail is fairly limited, and simply cannot support the type of narrative non-fiction Dunbar attempted here. There are extensive notes at the end of the text, but unfortunately they never answer the screaming question raised in my mind over and over as I was reading, namely "How do we KNOW this?" I have to conclude that we DON'T know most of what the author presents to us as fact about Ona Judge's actions, feelings, expectations, and thought processes. I can appreciate an unreliable narrator in a work of fiction; in a text offered as History, I call Major Shenanigans. Not recommended (oh, is that redundant?)
    • 4/5
      I'm torn between appreciating George Washington's uncertainty about slavery in the end, and disgust for his participation in the subterfuge needed to keep his slaves enslaved when living in Philadelphia by moving them back & forth between Philly and Virginia every 6 months to keep them. HIs adjustment of his will to allow his wife to keep his slaves after his death even though he emancipated them. It is a disappointment that there isn't more about Ona and an enlightenment; there just isn't much information & help in tracing Black family members because of their enslavement. This was well written and an important story. As one reviewer said, You'll never look at the Washington's the same after this.
    • 5/5
      It must be really hard to etch out a history of a person who wanted to stay hidden and was, heck, not even considered a full person back then. Giving that, this is an excellent book... tries to give possible scenarios for time lapses, bases some theories on how others thought at that period, yet never claimed exact knowledge. Loved it. Audiobook narrator: excellent
    • 4/5
      It’s very hard to write history of people who were deliberately kept out of history/only reported on by the people who had a vested interest in disrespecting their humanity. Dunbar has to do a lot of speculating about what Judge would have seen and felt, but it’s still a powerful story, emphasizing that the Washingtons not only enslaved people but specifically schemed to ensure that bringing their enslaved people to Pennsylvania—a free state—would not lead to their freedom. And George Washington used his power as President, then former President, to continue to search for Judge and try to get local officials to help bring her back.
    • 5/5
      Everyone should read this book.
    • 4/5
      Professor Dunbar has dipped into her deep knowledge of late colonial and Federalist slavery to produce a remarkable book about an escaped slave: Ona Judge, ladies maid to Martha Washington. Using archive resources and two published interviews with Ona, the author shows how the early republic’s attitude towards slavery and the emerging abolition movement created the opportunity for a determined enslaved woman to escape.Although Judge was resistant to name those who helped her, Professor Dunbar shows how the communities of free blacks in Philadelphia and Providence could provide material help to their enslaved brethren. Dunbar is also able to use Ona Judge as an illustration of slave catching methods in the early Republic. Although she describes the Washingtons’ pursuit of Judge as relentless, to a casual reader their efforts seem rather tame. Indeed, Judge had protectors, including a prominent Rhode Island politician who tipped her off to an attempt to kidnap her back to Virginia.For anyone interested in the Washington family, in slavery at the time of the Revolution and the Federalist period, this is a most interesting book, well-written, well documented and suitable for the general reader.
    • 4/5
      Ona Judge was a woman born into slavery around 1773 at Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia.  Mount Vernon is, of course, famous as the home of George Washington, soon to be commander of the Continental Army and later the first President of the United States.  Ona would become lady's maid to Martha's Washington in her mid-teens, and in that role would travel with the Washington to the new United States' capital in New York City, and then to Philadelphia when the capital shifted there in 1790.Living in Philadelphia provided Judge with new opportunities, including free time while Mrs. Washington was entertaining, and even the opportunity to attend the theatre.  More importantly she became acquainted with Philadelphia's growing free Black community and abolitionists. Judge's legal status was in question due to Pennsylvania's Gradual Abolition Act which provided that slaves brought into the state by new residents from out of state would be eligible for emancipation after six months.  It was an open question of whether this law applied to the President, but nevertheless, the Washingtons arranged to rotate their slave staff back to Mount Vernon every six months.In 1796, Washington announced he would not run for reelection and Martha Washington informed judge she would be given as a wedding gift to her granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis Law.  Faced an uncertain future Judge made the decision to run away.  Abolitionists put Judge on a ship to Portsmouth, NH where she attempted to make a new life for herself as a free person.  Washington had a local customs officer, and later his nephew, attempt to capture Judge but in both cases the growing abolition sentiment meant that she couldn't be captured without drawing unwanted publicity to Washington.   Washington freed many of his slaves in his will when he died in 1799.  Judge, however, was legally considered still a slave of Martha Washington, and even after Martha's death in 1802, Judge's ownership status reverted to the Custis estate.  Judge lived until 1848, enjoying her freedom, but always a fugitive.  Despite freedom, her life was still full of struggle.  She married a free black sailor, Jack Staines, in 1797, but he died in 1803, and Ona Judge Staines would also outlive her three children.  Ona Judge Staines' story is drawn from interviews she gave to abolitionist newspapers in the 1840s.  But as with many stories of enslaved African Americans, Dunbar has to piece together the history from sources of the white masters, such as the papers of the Washingtons and runaway slave ads.  It's a compelling narrative, and one that focuses on the often overlooked nature of 18th-century slavery (compared with the 19th-slavery), the emergence of abolitionism, and popular conception of someone like Washington who represents liberty to so many Americans, but held Ona Judge and many others in perpetual bondage.
    • 4/5
      In January of 2018, a review of a new book featuring George Washington and his runaway slave named Ona "Oney" Judge caught my attention. I picked up a copy to review for Black History Month in 2019.NEVER CAUGHT - The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge is a narrative non-fiction. The book is heavily footnoted and supplemented with a lengthy bibliography and index. In a twist from most historical works on Washington that focus on his evolving beliefs about the concept of slavery, Never Caught flips the script. Erica Armstrong Dunbar examines what it means to be born a free person into a world where you are trapped in slavery. A world where every effort is taken to strip you of your humanity and rights as a human being. In narrating the unearthed facts of Ona Judge Staines life, Dunbar exposes the raw facts of slavery -man's inhumanity against man.“I met Ona Judge Staines in the archives. . . I was conducting research. . . about nineteenth-century black women in Philadelphia and I came across an advertisement about a runaway slave. . . called "Oney Judge". She had escaped from the President's House. . . How could it be that I never heard of this woman.” (Erica Armstrong Dunbar)Quick. Tell me the first ten things that come to mind about the first president of the United States of America. Bet they include: He was married to Martha. Lived in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Had false teeth (ivory not wood). Was trained as a surveyor. Fought in the American Revolution. Became our first President. Never lived in Washington D.C. because it didn't exist in his lifetime. Never told a lie (that is a lie). Served two terms in office. We celebrate a national holiday on his birthday.What? No mention that George at the tender age of eleven, following his father's untimely death, inherited a 280-acre farm with ten slaves? By the time he married Martha, he personally owned over 100 slaves. Martha Parke Custis, widow of Daniel Park Custis, brought 84 dower slaves from the Custis estate to Mount Vernon upon her marriage. Dower slaves are part of an estate and can only be inherited by members of that estate. George and Martha controlled them but did not own them and could not set them free. Upon Martha's death, the dower slaves would be passed along like fine china or an heirloom chair to living members of the Custis estate.George Washington was reputed to be a "kinder" slave owner which meant he fed and provided for his slaves somewhat better than others. His hot-temper has been sanitized in history and ask the slaves that were housed in the smoke house in the new capital if they had five-star accommodations.A favorite dower slave of Martha's, known only as Mulatto Betty, gave birth in 1773 to a daughter named Ona Marie and fathered by Andrew Judge, a white indentured servant. Ona's "carefree" childhood ended when she was nine years old. She was sent to work full-time in the mansion to become Martha Washington's personal servant and to receive training as a seamstress from her mother. She excelled at both tasks earning her a "most favored slave" status.As our first President-elect headed north to New York and the nation's new capital, he knew slavery laws in the northern states were unraveling; the early smells of manumission and freedom floating in the air. He hand-picked slaves he thought he could trust not to run away if they learned that freedom was a possibility - Ona Judge, now in her teens, was high on that list.Ona played her part carefully. She yearned for freedom. Yearned for a life where her safety and wellbeing wasn't subjected to the whims of a trigger tempered slave owner. For safeties sake she outwardly projected submission and affection for the Washington family; a family riddled with grief, misery, and poor health. Perhaps in some way she believed the Washington's had special feelings for her; they did allow her more liberties to travel within the northern city unaccompanied. It is more likely allowing her to dress nicely was meant to reflect more on their social status than on her well-being.She learned the truth about her place in their lives when the national capital moved to Philadelphia. Pennsylvania law "required emancipation of all adult slaves who were brought into the commonwealth for more than a period of six months." The President, financially strapped back on the plantation feared the lost property value of freed slaves. To protect his investments, Washington devised a shifty system of uprooting his Philadelphia slaves and rotating back to Mount Vernon before the six months deadline.What the others thought about their repeated uprooted lives we do not know. We do know that Ona knew of the progress toward freedom around her. She guardedly watched for that one split second in time where she could chance leaving. When Ona learned that she would be given as a wedding present to Washington's volatile granddaughter during the next rotation back to Virginia, she knew it was now or never. Taking her life in her hands, she reached out to the free blacks in Philadelphia for help and fled. Ona, now twenty-two-years old and illiterate, headed out into the scary world alone as a fugitive willing to face death or capture.Her harrowing journey took her to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She found menial labor and despite the back-breaking work, enjoyed her veiled freedom. One can only imagine the horror she felt the day she was recognized on the street by a friend of Washington. Once notified she had been located, Washington put on a full court press, illegally using the power of his office, to have a local government official convince her to return of her own volition. After failing at that attempt, Washington repeatedly sought to locate and physically return her. His tiny slave outwitted him at every turn.Ona fled to Greenland, New Hampshire and stayed out of the grasp of capture for over fifty years. She married, had children, kept a low profile and missed her biological family still back at Mount Vernon.Shortly before her death February 25, 1848, Ona, nearly 80 years old and still a fugitive slave of the Custis estate, gave interviews with two abolitionists newspapers. Both interviews appear in the appendix. They are believed to be a unique opportunity to view life as a slave in the Washington presidency."When asked if she is not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since, than before, her reply is 'No, I am free, and I have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means'".Highly recommend reading for young adults and those interested in history. A chance to look behind the curtains of the first First Family. A chance to learn about a young black woman determined to be remembered as a human being and a child of God.
    • 5/5
      A well researched and written about a female slave (Ona Judge) who runs away from George and Martha Washington when they are in the North in the final days of his presidency. What inspires her to leave is seeing many free Blacks in the North coupled with the Washington's girting Ona to their granddaughter who she does not like. She eventually makes it to New Hampshire where she marries and spends the rest of her life. George and Martha make several attempts through agents and newspaper ads to recapture her but fail. An inspiring study about a here to for little known woman.
    • 3/5
      The research is commendable, and the story one that needed to be told. Ona Judge is as great an American hero as George Washington, her slaveholding “master.”

      Given that there is not much direct testimony from Ona, it is understandable that the author felt the need to speculate and invent feelings. This, however, makes for a much less satisfying book. I grew weary of “she must have felt” and “she would probably” as substitute for facts.

      Still, a worthwhile book to read, if for no other reason as a curative to the still vicious lie that black slaves were happier and better off as slaves. Along with Ona, almost all would “rather die than be a slave.”
    • 3/5
      A fascinating account of a young slave woman's flight into freedom from America's most famous founding father. The patriarchal view of slaveholders throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and their subsequent displeasure and feelings of betrayal continues to be felt even today.
    • 4/5
      I won this in a GOODREADS givaway - a well written novel; I predict this will be an excellent resource book for future student essays!
    • 4/5
      An interesting and well researched account of one of George Washington's slaves who escaped. He made repeated efforts to get her back, but she went on to live a full, free life.
    • 4/5
      Dunbar delves into the private life of the Washington family and their relationship with enslaved workers. Ona Judge is the private slave of Martha, creating her clothing and doing errands Martha demands. But when serving as president the Washingtons live in New York City and later Philadelphia, both northern cities that were working to abolish slavery. The Washingtons had to rotate their slaves to bypass the 6 month rule in Pennsylvania regarding freedom for slaves. But the breaking point came when Ona found out that she was to be given to Martha's granddaughter upon her marriage.Dunbar had the difficulty of working with very few primary documents and only an interview of Judge late in life. The book outlines the differences in slavery in the north and in the south and Washington's complicity in the practice. This is not the book you want to read if you hold the Washingtons in the highest regard. They don't come off very well, as it should be, and it shows politicians in the poorest of light.
    • 5/5
      I found out about this book from an NPR interview with the author, Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Using all the resources she can muster, she fleshes out the story of Martha Washington's personal slave Ona Judge, who escapes and goes to Portsmouth, NH. Much of the book is about Judge's and other slaves' lives with the Washingtons in New York and Philadelphia (where they had to send their slaves home every 6 months or they would be freed), and about the president's attempts to get his wife's slave back. The book made me think about how challenging it is to put one's feet in the shoes of either a black or a white person in that time period. What was it like to be a slave when there were free blacks in the same town? What did it mean about you as a white person living in that society if you owned slaves, when you believed the (specious of course) arguments that they were better off with you than not? While I wish Dunbar had been able to tell more of the lives of people in Portsmouth (towards the end of the story, I found it an interesting and engaging read.
    • 5/5
      I went to a reading last night at the Harvard Bookstore to hear this historian and scholar discuss her book. She stumbled across the protagonist, Ona Judge, while researching "free Blacks" in Philadelphia, her hometown. On Ona hangs such a tale! Why did she run? Why were the First President and his wife so determined that Ona be captured? Where and how did she go? Dunbar has pieced together a story largely based upon two interviews Ona Judge gave in the 1840s, when she was in her 70s. Every element of this history was new to me: the persistence of slavery in the North, the fact that Black men took to the dangerous life of a seaman so frequently, once they were free, how the enslaved women were always at the mercy of the sexual urges of each white man in their household, and how being a "house slave" put NO ONE on easy street. If anyone white ever stupidly says to you, "Well, my family never owned any slaves", just give them this riveting chronicle. If it doesn't wake them up, let them go.