With vivid prose and deep sympathy, Dunbar paints a portrait of woman whose life reveals the contradictions at the heart of the American founding: men like Washington fought for liberty for themselves even as they kept people like Ona Staines in bondage. Never Caught is the compelling story of Ona Judge Staines, the woman who successfully defied George and Martha Washington in order to live as free woman. Never Caught is a must-read for anyone interested in American history. 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. 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. Having interacted with Philadelphia's sizable free black community, Ona Judge risked everything she knew, leaving behind everyone she had known in her entire life, in search of freedom. Ona Judge, Martha Washington's chief attendant, figured out the subterfuge. Yet George Washington thought he could outwit and circumvent the law by sending his slaves south every six months, thereby resetting the clock. Indeed, there was even a Pennsylvania law requiring slaveholders to free their slaves after six months. The North was different for the entire household. They would serve as cooks and horsemen, as house servants and personal attendants. When the Washingtons moved from Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the seat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them.
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