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DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 50 having lived in New York and Pennsylvania and thus being familiar with the Gradual Abolition Act, ran away rather than be sent back to Virginia. In May of 1796, during the day’s festivities, the 22-year-old Judge walked out of Washington’s mansion in Phila­delphia and onto a ship that would take her to New Hampshire. She lived in New England, albeit often uncomfortably, rather than allow the Washingtons to re-enslave her. Several assets were used to tell this story, most of them not directly centred upon escape, though the historical record is replete with runaway ads. On the banner, for example, we placed a copy of the runa­way advertisement for Marcus, a young house ser­vant who served breakfast at Mount Vernon. This illustration provides some tension for the discussion of foodways in the Washington household because, despite constant references to the slaveholders’ sup­posed benevolence, the advertisement serves as a reminder that no enslaved person wanted to be in servitude. Consequently, the aim of these assets was to illustrate and highlight the tensions between Black realities about freedom and slaveholders’ propagan­distic narratives of enslavement as beneficial and kind. Also on the banner are a picture of famed chef, Hercules, images of genteel serving dishes, random calendar date entries, and finally, the image of the enslaved woman servant to mirror and bookend the opening banner. The display case accompanying banner 6 also con­tained several assets from the Mount Vernon collec­tion, including a shaving razor, a grease skillet, a me­tal canister, a sugar bowl with lid, and other genteel dining ware, as well as two books from the NLM— Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation by J. M. Toner(1888) and A Treatise on Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, and Choco­late by Simon Pauli(1746). I will briefly explain the Fig. 10: Runaway advertisement for Marcus, a young house servant who served breakfast at Mount Vernon.“Marcus”, Philadelphia Gazette , 16 May, 1800. Fig. 11.1, 11.2: A shaving razor, grease skillet, and metal canis­ter were among the assets used to create an ironic point of view about slavery and freedom.