George washington runaway slave book free#

Historian, and University of Delaware Professor, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, has written a wonderful book that sheds light on the experience of one of those who ran. So, imagine my excitement when I came upon a book about another brave soul.

I am committed to finding the answers and believe, in my heart, I will one day know more. Did she run north? How far north? Did she go farther than Virginia? Farther than New York? Farther than Ohio? Did she walk through the woods in total darkness? Did her children survive? Did she? If they all survived the war, are her descendants living close to me? Will I ever know what happened to her? To all of them? To any of them? These questions are constants for me. There are very few days in my life when I do not think of her. In my mind’s eye, Phibby is a very strong, loving woman, capable of running away from her enslavement with both of her children in tow during a time of war. I will never know what Phibby looked like, but I imagine her in my mind. She came alive that day and, for me, she is no longer a faceless, nameless, forgotten enslaved person. As I worked to breath life into a scribbled name, to turn that scribble into flesh and blood, I realized Phibby would always be a part of me, and she has been. Once, just a notation at the top of a page in an overseer’s journal, Phibby became a person, about whom, I wanted to learn everything. I have read about many enslaved people who ran away from their enslavers, but none have had the same impact on me as Phibby. For the first time, ever, I found someone and that someone became real to me. Reading Level: 7.Finding Phibby (see blog from July, 2011) changed my entire life as it relates to my desire to study history. '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.Īccelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 500185 / Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington's Courageous Slave Who Dared to R 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. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.

So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law.

George washington runaway slave book free#

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. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. 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. 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).