![]() Judge was known to be an excellent seamstress. She and Martha spent many hours engaged in Martha’s favorite leisure activity, sewing. Accompanying her to many social events, she listened to Martha’s queries, complaints, and personal confessions. Ona Judge assisted Martha in the most intimate details of her life: helping her bathe, dressing her, and doing her hair. When Martha first left Mount Vernon to assume her role as the president’s wife, she brought with her a slave girl, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, to act as her personal attendant. The incident that is most revealing about Martha’s attitude toward slavery involves the escape of a slave named Ona (or Oney) Judge. When the slave returned, his or her clock would start anew and the slave would have no basis on which to claim freedom. He and Martha decided that before a six-month period elapsed, they would find some pretext on which to send their slaves out of the state and back to Virginia. Pennsylvania had passed a law stating that slaves would become free after residing for six months in the state.Īlthough Washington did not believe the law pertained to him, since he was not a permanent resident of the state, he did not want to take any chances. The national capital moved from New York to Philadelphia in late 1790. This was an especially delicate issue during Washington’s presidency. However, neither George nor Martha was willing to free their slaves during their lifetimes. Both George and Martha believed that slaves should not be punished without sufficient cause, and then, only in proportion to the misdeed. The fact that Charlotte thought Martha would be willing to listen to her complaint indicates a certain level of trust and expectation about the treatment she routinely received. Afterward, she threatened to complain to Mrs. In 1793, a slave seamstress named Charlotte received what she considered to be an unfair beating from an overseer. It was said that when Martha left Mount Vernon to join her husband in New York in 1789, many of the older slaves wept in sorrow at her departure. Martha had a reputation as a fair, and even as a kind, mistress. While considered members of the Washington “family,” the slaves’ status as property was never in doubt: they could be sold, exiled to less-desirable jobs, or punished on Martha’s command. Although Martha was responsible for supervising the household, the domestic slaves actually did most of the chores: preparing the food, serving the meals, cleaning the house, and making, washing, and ironing the clothes. A dozen or so African Americans worked in the Washington home. In her daily life, Martha had the most constant contact with house slaves, rather than those who worked in the fields. He was not allowed to sell or manumit the Custis slaves, and was responsible for making sure that their rightful owners would eventually receive their full inheritance. He was, however, always aware of the distinction between his slaves and the Custis slaves. When Martha remarried, George Washington took over the task of managing all the slaves-the fifty or so he brought to the marriage, her dower slaves, and those of the Custis children. These were the so-called “dower slaves.” After her death, these slaves, and their progeny, were to be distributed among the surviving Custis heirs. The remaining one third of the slaves (totalling more than eighty) were for Martha’s use during her lifetime. Custis’s untimely death meant that his and Martha’s eldest male child, who was at that time a minor, would inherit two-thirds of the slaves when he became an adult. ![]() ![]() ![]() In the Virginia society in which she lived, slaves provided the most crucial source of labor in the economy, a significant portion of a person’s wealth, and a visible symbol of a family’s social status.Īlthough her father owned only fifteen to twenty slaves, her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, owned nearly three hundred, making him one of the wealthiest men in the Virginia colony. It is impossible to understand Martha Washington without appreciating the importance of slavery in her life. ![]()
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