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A new public mural in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, honors Ona Judge, whose 1796 escape from George and Martha Washington—and lifelong fight to remain free—reshapes how public memory tells the early American story.
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Image via Smithsonian Magazine
When Ona Judge Chose Freedom—and Portsmouth Painted Her Into the Story
Smithsonian Magazine reported on a new public mural in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, honoring Ona Judge—an enslaved woman who escaped from George and Martha Washington in 1796 and managed, against long odds, to remain free for the rest of her life.
The piece centers on the mural’s core scene: Judge arriving in Portsmouth after her journey north from Philadelphia in May 1796. That date matters because it places her escape right in the middle of the early republic, when the nation’s leaders were publicly debating liberty while privately benefiting from slavery. The mural doesn’t treat her as a footnote orbiting the Founders; it puts her in the foreground as the main actor in her own story.
Smithsonian revisits the basics of who Ona Judge was and why her escape reverberated. Enslaved in the Washington household, she seized a narrow opening to leave, departing Philadelphia when the Washingtons’ attention was elsewhere. Portsmouth was a seaport with free Black residents and networks that could offer help, anonymity, and the possibility of a new life. Her escape wasn’t simply geographic—it was a legal and political act, because the Washingtons did not accept her freedom and pursued her return.
That pursuit is part of why Judge’s story has endured. Even after she reached New Hampshire, the forces aligned against her were enormous: the prestige of the Washington name, the reach of federal power, and legal mechanisms that made enslaved people vulnerable to capture far from where they were held. Yet Judge remained in New Hampshire and lived as a free woman until her death in 1848.
As framed in the article, the mural adds specificity to public memory by anchoring Judge’s story in a particular place and moment—her arrival in Portsmouth and the start of a freedom she had to defend for the rest of her life. By honoring her in a visible civic space, the artwork asks passersby to understand the early American story not only through presidential portraits and patriotic myths, but through the people who challenged the nation’s contradictions with courageous, personal decisions.
Read the full story at Smithsonian Magazine →
Until tomorrow, keep one eye on the headlines—and the other on the history hiding inside them.
— Time Capsule Editorial