Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Author:Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

Whipple spent the next several weeks searching for the president’s fugitive. He would have started his investigation down by the Portsmouth docks, asking ship captains and dockworkers, merchant friends and small shopkeepers if they had seen a young woman with freckles and bushy hair. He would have been discreet, mentioning nothing about her status as a runaway nor her connection to the president.

Like Washington, Whipple came up with subterfuge to lure Judge into his sights. He told his acquaintances that he was looking for a good servant, a woman, who would be able to help his wife, Hannah, with traditional domestic work, knowing that the grapevine would spread the word. If he were smart, just to be sure, he would have asked free blacks—those who served as maids and waiters to his friends—if they knew of anyone who needed work.

Ona Judge learned that the customs collector was in need of a domestic, and was immediately intrigued. Friends would have told her about Whipple and his relatively famous family, prompting Judge to remember that this kind of work was something to which she was accustomed. She certainly knew how to serve the rich and famous. The job would most likely be permanent, not a temporary position that always left black domestics vulnerable once their pay was discontinued with little to no notice. Most important, Judge’s friends would have told her that Whipple did not own slaves, another promising attribute about her potential employer. She knew enough after her three-month stay in Portsmouth that this might be the opportunity she so desperately needed: stable and solid employment.

With a mixture of optimism and caution, Judge agreed to meet with Whipple to discuss the position. Never forgetting her fugitive status, Judge was inevitably both reserved and alert, sizing up her potential employer as he asked questions about her cooking and sewing skills. She desperately needed this kind of work, but something seemed off about the customs collector—in fact, he was too nice to her. Whipple began to ask about her personal life, fair game for any white employer in eighteenth-century Portsmouth, but Whipple appeared to know more about Judge’s life than was appropriate. This, after all, was their first meeting. Whipple asked if she had a husband and then began to ask curious questions about her love life, odd questions that would make any young woman uncomfortable. The customs collector tried desperately to verify Judge’s identity without tipping her off, but he failed. Whipple’s charade quickly unraveled once he asked the fugitive about a French suitor. She denied a relationship with anyone, and it dawned on her that she’d been tricked. Readying her feet for a quick departure, Ona Judge grew quiet, and waited.

The moment she had dreaded was finally in front of her. Judge had been informed upon and now she stood before one of the president’s appointed officials, a white man, wondering how long it would take before she was sent back to slavery. But there was something that soothed her tightly wound nerves.

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