History often remembers George Washington as the father of the United States, but far fewer people know the remarkable story of Harry Washington, one of the men he enslaved. Harry's life became an extraordinary journey across three continents in search of something the American Revolution promised but denied him: freedom.
Born around 1740 near the Gambia River in West Africa, Harry was captured during regional warfare and forced into the Atlantic slave trade. After surviving the brutal Middle Passage, he was sold into slavery in colonial Virginia. In 1763, George Washington purchased Harry along with several other enslaved people. Harry initially worked in the Great Dismal Swamp before being brought to Mount Vernon, where he cared for Washington's horses and worked on the estate.
His First Attempt at Freedom
Harry was determined to escape. In 1771, he fled Mount Vernon for the first time, but his freedom was short-lived. Within weeks he was captured and returned to slavery.
Most people might have given up after such a dangerous failure.
Harry did not.
When the American Revolution erupted a few years later, an unexpected opportunity appeared.
The British Offered What the Patriots Would Not
In November 1775, Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering freedom to enslaved men owned by Patriot rebels if they escaped and joined the British military.
For Harry, the decision was clear.
In 1776 he escaped Mount Vernon once again—this time successfully. Leaving George Washington's plantation forever, he crossed into British-controlled territory and enlisted with the British forces. It was a remarkable twist of history: while George Washington commanded the Continental Army fighting for American independence, one of his own enslaved workers was fighting on the opposite side for his own personal liberty.
Harry first joined Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment before serving with the Black Pioneers, a corps of Black Loyalists who supported British military operations through engineering, construction, logistics, and fortification work. His leadership and reliability earned him promotion to corporal, and some records later identify him with the responsibilities of a sergeant, an extraordinary achievement for a man who had begun the war as enslaved property.
A New Beginning in Canada
When Britain lost the Revolutionary War, thousands of formerly enslaved Black Loyalists feared they would simply be returned to their former owners.
Instead, the British honored their promise.
Harry's name was entered into the famous Book of Negroes, the official register documenting formerly enslaved people who had earned their freedom through British service. In 1783, he sailed from New York to Birchtown, Nova Scotia, becoming part of one of the largest free Black communities in North America.
Life in Nova Scotia, however, was far from the paradise many had imagined. Black Loyalists faced bitter winters, poor farmland, broken promises of land grants, and persistent racial discrimination. Although legally free, many struggled to build prosperous lives.
Harry married another formerly enslaved woman named Jenny, but he still believed a better future awaited elsewhere.
Freedom Led Him Back to Africa
In 1792, Harry joined nearly 1,200 Black Loyalists who accepted an offer to establish a new colony in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa.
For Harry, the journey was deeply symbolic. Decades after being kidnapped from Africa as a young man, he returned—not as a slave, but as a free man helping build an entirely new community.
The settlers founded what would become Freetown, one of the first British colonies established specifically for formerly enslaved Africans and African Americans. Harry planned to become a farmer, using agricultural techniques he had learned while enslaved at Mount Vernon.
Still Fighting for Justice
Even in Sierra Leone, Harry's pursuit of liberty was not over.
The colony was controlled by the Sierra Leone Company, whose officials imposed taxes and exercised tight control over the settlers. Many believed they had simply exchanged one form of oppression for another.
In 1800, Harry became one of the leaders of a rebellion demanding greater self-government and fair treatment. The uprising was eventually crushed by colonial authorities with the assistance of Jamaican Maroons who had recently arrived in the colony. Harry was tried, convicted, and permanently banished across the Sierra Leone River to Bullom Shore.
He died there not long afterward, still living as a free man but never ceasing to challenge injustice wherever he found it.
Harry Washington's Remarkable Legacy
Harry Washington's story stretches across continents and revolutions. He survived capture in Africa, endured slavery in Virginia, escaped twice from George Washington, fought for the British during the American Revolution, helped establish one of North America's earliest free Black communities in Nova Scotia, and became one of the founders of modern Sierra Leone.
His life also highlights one of the great contradictions of the American Revolution. While the Patriots fought for liberty from British rule, thousands of enslaved people found that the British—not the revolutionaries—offered them their first realistic path to personal freedom.
Today, Harry Washington is remembered as one of the most remarkable Black Loyalists of the Revolutionary era. His journey reminds us that the fight for freedom took many forms, and that history is often far more complicated than the stories found in most textbooks.
Harry Washington never became a president, a general, or a household name. Yet few people of his era traveled farther—or sacrificed more—in pursuit of the simple right to live free.
