Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History Read Online Free PDF Page A

wade through dark, waist-high swamps teeming with water moccasins andalligators. No, Judge simply walked out of her master’s Philadelphia mansion on High Street as he and his family ate supper. She had even packed a suitcase. But by stepping through the white-columned doorway and into the bustling city, America’s capital at the time, Judge became one of the earliest and boldest pioneers of the Underground Railroad.
    In the May 24, 1796,
Pennsylvania Gazette
, a notice announced Judge’s disappearance. “Absconded,” it declared,
     … a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair. She is of middle stature, slender, about 20 years of age and delicately formed.
    She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently recollected to be described—As there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her design is.…
    Ten dollars will be paid to any person who will bring her home, if taken in the city, or on board any vessel in the harbour;—and a reasonable additional sum if apprehended at, and brought from a greater distance, and in proportion to the distance.
    The exact day that Judge left Philadelphia aboard a northern-bound sloop named
Nancy
and landed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, isn’t known. She had no family or friends there but assimilated quickly into the town’s free black community. Judge herself, however, was in no way free; because of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, she lived in constant fear that at any moment she could be snatched up by slave hunters. Within two months of her escape, that threat became all the more imminent.
    “Oney!” a voice called out as Judge was walking in Portsmouth’s Market Square. She turned and there was Bets Langdon, the teenage daughter of Senator John Langdon, an old family friend of Judge’s master. Her identity was revealed.
    “Why, Oney,” Bets asked, knowing that slaves rarely traveled alone, “where in the world did you come from?”
    “Run away, missis.” Judge saw no point in lying.
    “Run away! And from such an excellent place! Why what could induce you? You had a room to yourself, and only light, nice work to do, and every indulgence—”
    “Yes—I know—but I wanted to be free, missis.”
    Judge knew that word of her whereabouts would quickly get back to Philadelphia, and she could only brace herself for the consequences.
    “Are you allergic to poison ivy?” Vicky Avery asks me as we tramp through a wooded area between the intersection of Dearborn Road and Martin Brook in Greenland, a small town that borders Portsmouth. I look down and notice clusters of a three-leafed plant brushing against my bare ankles.
    “I had a pretty bad case as a kid,” I reply with some concern. “Doesn’t everyone get a rash if they touch it?”
    “Only certain people. Well, I guess you’ll know later,” Vicky says, moving briskly ahead of me.
    A local historian who’s lectured and written extensively about Judge and other slaves in the region, Vicky is also a busy mom raising three young girls (she drives her fourteen-year-old daughter four hours, every weekday, to dance with a ballet company in Maine). And yet she’s gone out of her way to educate me about Ona Judge and is interrupting a packed schedule to show me spots relevant to Judge’s life in Portsmouth and Greenland.
    As we’re walking, I explain to Vicky that, in all of my preparations for this cross-country trip, few stories have intrigued me more than fugitive-slave accounts. To set out alone, as thousands did, often carrying with them nothing at all, knowing they would be hunted, entrusting their lives to strangers along the way, and recognizing that if caught they risked a savage beating, if not death, represents a courage beyond all measure.
    Those who fled did not just fly impulsively into the night. Theyplotted and planned, some devising clever