By Carl McRoy

never mean… to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.” That’s what George Washington wrote to John F. Mercer on September 9, 1786, according to the book George Washington, the Christian, by William J. Johnson, (Abingdon Press, 1919).

This didn’t mean America’s first president adopted plans to abolish slavery on his own plantation. Washington desperately tried to recapture those escaping his tyranny. However, three got away.

Henry ‘Harry” Washington was born free near the Gambia River in West Africa around 1740, but found himself slaving in Washington’s stables in the 1770s. When the British offered freedom to the American enslaved for helping to repress the Revolution, Harry joined the “Black Pioneers” in 1776. (See more of his story detailed by Dr. Henry Louis Gates., Jr., http://www.pbs.org/) After the war, Harry Washington moved to the new, all-black settlement of Birchtown, Nova Scotia. Harry later immigrated to Sierra Leone and once again lived close to the Gambia River.

Ona “Oney” Maria Judge served as Martha Washington’s personal maid. When informed she would be given to Martha’s granddaughter as a wedding gift, Oney planned her escape. Philadelphia was not only the President’s residence at the time, it was an abolitionist stronghold and home to thousands of free blacks. With some help from free blacks, Oney escaped on May 21, 1796, while George and Martha ate dinner. Author Clarence Lusane’s The Black History of the White House (City Lights Books, 2011) traced her story. Abolitionists transported Judge to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she remained free, yet a fugitive, for 50 more years.

Lusane’s work also documents the life of the third Washington self-emancipated person—Hercules Posey. Posey served as Washington’s nationally renowned chef and highly trusted slave. With less than a month left of his presidency, Washington received a shocking 65th birthday present. That’s when he was told that Hercules absconded on February 22, 1797, and could not be found. Washington’s resulting dietary distress triggered a moral dilemma that he lamented on November 13, 1797, “The running off of my cook has been the most inconvenient thing to my family. . . I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by purchase, but this resolution I fear I must break.”

Carl McRoy serves as the Director of Literature Ministries for the Adventist Church in North America.