AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Never caught by dunbar11/18/2023 The June snow and Patsy’s death combined to create an eerie feeling of uncertainty. Patsy was moved to the bed, but there was very little anyone could do. Eleanor Calvert, Patsy’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, went to check on the young woman and found her seizing violently on the floor. ![]() Although sickly, Washington’s stepdaughter had been “in better health and spirits than she appeared to have been in for some time.” After dinner and quiet conversation with family, Patsy excused herself and went to retrieve a letter from her bedroom. Their faith was tested on June 19 when Patsy Custis and a host of invited family members were finishing up with dinner a little after four o’clock. Her parents had spent the last five years consulting with doctors and experimenting with unhelpful medicinal potions, diet, exercise modifications, and of course, deep prayer. The early discipline of medicine was far from mature, offering few options for cures outside of bleeding and purges. Plagued by seizures that began during her teenage years, “Patsy” Custis most likely suffered from epilepsy. The stepdaughter of George Washington, just seventeen, had long struggled with a medical condition that rendered her incapable of controlling her body. Sure enough, eight days after the snow fell, Martha Parke Custis, daughter of Martha Washington, fell terribly ill. As for what this snow portended, only time would tell. Things that were inconsistent with nature were interpreted as bad omens, commonly bringing drought, pestilence, and death. For the nearly 150 slaves who labored on the Mount Vernon estate in 1773, a mixture of superstition, African religious practices, and English beliefs in witchery must have intensified a sense of fear. ![]() The snow in June, then, could only be a sign of very bad things to come. To exacerbate matters, the selling of slaves frequently occurred at the beginning of the year, connecting the winter month of January to a fear of deep and permanent loss. Although the intense heat of summer brought its own difficulties, winter brought sickness, long periods of isolation, and heightened opportunities for the auction block. Shabby clothing and uninsulated slave cabins turned winter into long periods of dread for the enslaved men and women at Mount Vernon and across the colony of Virginia. The men and women who lived on George and Martha Washington’s estate must have marveled at the peculiar snow, but whatever excitement the unusual weather brought was most certainly replaced by concern. West, & Snowing.” His diary went on to note, “Memorandum-Be it remembered that on the eleventh day of June in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy three It rain’d Hail’d snow’d and was very Cold.” ![]() As he did most days, Colonel George Washington sat down and recorded the unusual weather, writing, “Cloudy & exceeding Cold Wind fresh from the No. Even more peculiar yet, on June 11, it snowed. Daytime temperatures fluctuated from sultry warmth to a rainy chill during the first few days of the month. In June of 1773, the unimaginable happened: it snowed in Virginia.ĭuring the first week of June, the typical stifling heat that almost always blanketed Virginia had not yet laid its claim on the colony. Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” ( USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. ![]() Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” ( The Philadelphia Inquirer).
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |