Secrets of Black Philadelphia: Germantown

PERSON: Ona Judge

Right now, it's mostly historians and archaeologists who know the story of Ona Judge. But when word gets out about her extraordinary place in our nation's history, you have to think Halle Berry will be clamoring for the lead in the movie.

One of the nine Africans that George Washington enslaved to serve his household in Philadelphia, Judge also is one of the two who ran away.

(A cook named Hercules is the other, in case Denzel is reading.)

Historical research shows that Judge slipped out one evening in 1796 as George and Martha Washington sat down to dinner, then boarded a ship to New Hampshire — with the aid of our city's free black citizenry, according to Mary Jenkins, a park ranger and historian at Independence National Historical Park.

Judge, a favored handmaiden to Martha Washington, was charged with coiffing her hair and ironing her clothes. Judge once was taken to the circus as a special treat.

After she fled, the president tried to lure her back to privileged servitude. She said no. He then sent an emissary to New Hampshire to take her back by force. She hid until he gave up.

Judge was poor and her life in New England was hard. Her husband and three children died before she did. But when asked by a newspaper reporter in 1845 whether she had any regrets, she said, "No, I am free."

Besides working at the president's house in Old City, Judge, Hercules and two other slaves — Austin and Moll — accompanied the first family to the "Germantown White House" during the summer of 1794. When the historic home reopens this April after major renovations, Judge's story will be told there.

As part of the grand reopening of what's formally called the Deshler-Morris House (5442 Germantown Ave.), the National Park Service commissioned the illustration that you see here to depict what Judge might have looked like. Sadly, no artist of her day seems to have sketched her, so it's just a guess.


PLACE: Aces Museum

Ten years ago, a stranger on a plane showed Dr. Althea Hankins an old flier for a USO dance for black World War II soldiers. He wanted to know if she was familiar with the dance hall, Parker Hall, at 5801 Germantown Ave.

Hankins had never heard of it. But as wild coincidence would have it, she owned the building where the black USO hall had been. Her medical practice is on the ground floor.

Hankins and some helpers hammered through drywall that had hidden the stairs to the building's top floor and rediscovered the amazing space — now an official addition to historic Germantown's tourist sites.

She and her colleagues then added context by assembling facts and figures about blacks and other minorities in World War II, along with historic photos and a few period artifacts. They'll be offering tours of the assemblage — called the Aces Museum — on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 5 p.m. beginning Feb. 24.

The museum is on the shabby side, owing to limited funds. But the vast, airy dance hall is spectacular. Don't miss the wood-paneled lounge off to the side, where the coat-check tags from the soldiers' dates' minks still hang, a half-century after the last dance.

Admission by donation, with $10 suggested for adults and $7 suggested for children.


THING: Trapdoor, Johnson House Historic Site

The Johnson House, at 6306 Germantown Ave., is a well-kept secret. You can count on one hand the number of visitors, outside of school groups, who come during any given week.

That's a shame, because the house is one of Philadelphia's few intact stops on the Underground Railroad. Tour guide Jim Crichton says it's likely that more than a thousand freedom seekers slept in the Quaker household on their way from the slave states to Canada.

The most secretive spot in the house is the trapdoor in the attic above the kitchen. At least once, Crichton says, a group of Underground Railroad passengers climbed out the escape hatch and lay silently on the roof while a sheriff searched the house for them.

Along with its clandestine role on the Underground Railroad, the Johnson House was publicly a hotbed of the abolitionist movement. Luminaries like Lucretia Mott used to rabble-rouse in the downstairs drawing room. *

Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for seniors and children age 12 and older, and $2 for younger children. Open Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m.