President's House Site

This guide to the President's House Site in Philadelphia stands you on the foundations of America's first executive mansion, where George Washington governed for a decade while nine enslaved people, including a young maid named Oney Judge, lived and labored in full view of the new republic's lawmakers. Pennsylvania law freed any enslaved person who lived in the state six straight months, so Washington quietly rotated his household back to Mount Vernon or across the river before that clock could run out. You'll hear what Oney Judge did one evening while the family sat down to dinner, and what became of the president's cook, Hercules, not long after. The excavated walls before you were uncovered in digs finished in 2007.