RATING: 4 STARS
(Review Not on Blog)

I really enjoy reading books on history, especially North American history. I do believe that more we learn about the past, the more we can try to avoid similar mistakes. Learning, being the key word. I had not heard about Ona Judge before this, but had heard a bit of her story here and there. This book was really well-researched and written. While the book is not fast paced like a novel, I found it easy to read. I stayed up an extra few hours to finish Ona's story. I highly recommend this book to those that are interested in the subject and like nonfiction.

***I received an eARC from NETGALLEY***

This fascinating narrative of Ona Judge and what she was willing to risk to gain her freedom was very well researched and well written. I did not know anything about her prior to this book so it was interesting to learn more about this part of history.

First line: In June of 1773, the unimaginable happened: it snowed in Virginia.

Summary: Ona Maria Judge was born into slavery. She was owned by the Custis estate. She was raised to be a house slave. Her mother was a seamstress and maid to Martha Custis, soon to be Washington. When General George Washington became the first President of the United States, the couple moved to New York and Philadelphia. With them, they took several slaves including Ona. The slavery laws were slowly changing in the Northern states and with them came challenges for the new President and his household. Nearing the end of his second term Judge took her chance and escaped her master’s household. Not willing to let his “property” disappear, he pursued her.

Highlights: I really enjoyed the author’s writing style. For a nonfiction book, it read more like a fiction novel. The pacing was perfect and the background knowledge is sprinkled into the narrative to give the reader a sense of the period. I like that the book included actual newspaper clippings from the events. Ona is a person I have never heard of before reading this biography. She sounds like a brave and strong woman who lived in a time that was difficult for women, especially black women.

Lowlights: The first half of the book was mainly about the Washington’s life. While interesting it had very little to do with Ona since there is very little knowledge about what she was doing at the time. It described the politics and slavery laws that were enforced. A lot of the mention of Judge’s life at this point is guess work and she is a background character.

FYI: I have visited Mount Vernon and knew that Washington owned slaves. For some reason it never really clicked until reading this book. That the man who was the first President and very highly esteemed was a slave owner. He did seem to have a change of heart and had his doubts about the institution but it is still sad to see such a hero have such a big flaw.

ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. Atria. Hardcover, 272 pages, $26, SimonAndSchusterPublishing.com.
... anyone interested in American history should find this book fascinating. In 1796, a young female slave – property of President George Washington and First Lady Martha Washington – fled Philadelphia for freedom. The president used all his powers to catch the 22-year-old runaway, and Erica Dunbar delivers a powerful true story of a black woman’s fight for freedom in a new land.
Roundup Magazine, April 2017, published by Western Writers of America, in Book Notes, (www.WesternWriters.org).

What I Didn't Like:
Never Caught, sadly, suffers from coming in my reading directly on the heels of Victoria: The Queen, a subject of which there is so much information it took 600 pages to include it all. Of course, much less is known about the life of a slave in 18th-century America; it stands to reason that the book would be much shorter but it also stands to reason that much would have to be inferred about Judge, rather than based on known facts about her.

Throughout the book, Dunbar tended to use phrases like "we can assume that" or "she would probably have." It's a small thing but, for me, the book would have been stronger if Dunbar had simply given us the facts that led her to those conclusions then let readers draw their own inferences or simply said something like "this being the case, it's possible that" or "given those circumstances, this might be why..."

What I Liked:
I learned a tremendous amount about George and Martha Washington when I read Ron Chernow's Washington so I was not under any illusions that the Washingtons were progressives when it came to matters of slavery. But, let's face it, the majority of people are not delving into that 900 page behemoth; a bite-sized lesson like Never Caught is far more likely to be the way they will find out that although Washington treated his slaves better than many slaveholders, they were still his property and he was acutely aware of their value and his reliance on them.


When Ona Judge dared to leave them, they knew they ran the risk that if they did not capture her, their other property might get ideas into their heads as well, something they couldn't tolerate. Furthermore, they were the most famous couple in this new country and their reputation was at stake, both in the eyes of other slaveholders and in those of the people already fighting against slavery. Once Judge made her escape, Dunbar had much more information to base the book on, the ads the agents for the Washingtons posted, the letters Martha wrote, and Judge's own story which she told to a couple of reporters late in her life.

I had not been aware of how many people were already opposed to slavery eighty years before it was finally abolished, particularly in the city of Philadelphia. It would have been difficult for slaves to make the acquaintance of free blacks, but it was not impossible. The free blacks had a good system in place for assisting runaways and, although it was still not easy and extremely dangerous for all involved, many slaves made their way to freedom this way.

That guy we grew up believing was so honest he could not tell a lie? Yeah, he wasn't above using illegal methods to try to bring Judge back to Virginia. Fortunately for her, her own quick wits and some luck in the people that were hired to help Washington, Judge managed to elude her would-be captors. Even so, life for a free black was extremely difficult. This might go without saying; still, I learned a lot about the lengths they had to go to just to stay alive.


In the end, despite the terrible poverty she suffered most of her life after her escape, Judge still felt it was preferable to having remained a slave. That's a statement about slavery that's hard to ignore.

BookFilter Review: This is the sort of popular history that makes you sit up and say, "I can't believe I never heard about this before!" Just as he was nearing the end of his Presidency, George Washington found himself in a politically awkward, personally angering situation: one of his slaves had run away. Here's the story of Ona Judge, an enslaved woman who took the mighty risk of fleeing the home of the most powerful man in the United States and defiantly said she'd rather die than go back to a life under his thumb. Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar was lucky that Judge was brave enough to give two interviews to abolitionist newspapers towards the end of her life, just as Frederick Douglass' own narrative would become world famous as well. Combining Judge's personal testimony with the copious letters and personal journals kept by George Washington, Martha and many others, Dunbar is able to flesh out Judge's life and situation more fully than most people who managed to survive the horrors of slavery. She combines specific details with the historical record to show the world Judge lived in and the vagaries and psychological terror of life even under a "good" slave owner. Washington most assuredly saw himself that way and simply couldn't understand WHY Judge would be so ungrateful as to flee being his property. Dunbar vividly creates the layered reality of life in America for enslaved people, from Virginia (where Judge is surrounded by mostly black people in chains) to New York and Pennsylvania (where Judge sees free blacks outnumbering slaves at times and where the attitude of whites towards slavery is ever-changing). It's a fascinating story, from the reality of Judge's world to the clueless nature of slave catchers who must negotiate with Judge and are astonished she would talk back or refuse to do as she's told. Negotiate, you say? Yes, because Judge is in Pennsylvania, where abolition is dominating society and simply grabbing her would be politically radioactive. (Not that this stops Washington from violating the very law he enacted -- the vicious Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.) Judge takes the risk of a lifetime and succeeds, but at great personal cost. The ending of her story is poignant and striking, a testament to the yearning for freedom. Dunbar's occasional need for assumption and extrapolation when suggesting the mindset of Judge are modest and convincing. The lack of specific detail about her main figure is the only element that keeps this strong effort from being even more compelling. But it's an engaging, surprising account that breathes new life into the stock figure of slavery's victims. And it will strike a blow to any still insisting the Founder Fathers were gods among men, not to mention the even less favorable character of our nation's first First Lady. -- Michael Giltz

Dunbar' book about Ona Judge Staines is a great story, but also a terrific piece of American History. The author does an excellent job of revealing the intricacies of Staines' story, closely entertained with Martha and George Washington's lives. The book read like a novel. Dunbar's research was superlative, leaving no stone unturned to tell a thorough story of a woman whose story was told by letters, records, and public documentation.