Never Caught

When the Washingtons moved from Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the sat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them.  They would serve as cooks and horsemen, as house servants and personal attendants.

The North was different for the entire household. Indeed, there was even a Pennsylvania law requiring slaveholders to free their slaves after six months. Yet George Washington thought he could outwit and circumvent the law by sending his slaves south every six months, thereby resetting the clock.  Ona Judge, Martha Washington's chief attendant, figured out the subterfuge and risked everything in search of freedom.

This is the story not only of the powerful lure of liberty but also of George Washington's determination to recapture his property by whatever means necessary.  Never Caught is an important new work on one of the world's most celebrated families, and is the only book that examines the life of an eighteenth-century fugitive woman in intricate detail.