Mary Elizabeth Bowser
Mary Elizabeth Bowser (c.1839 – unknown) was an educated American freed slave who worked in connection with Elizabeth Van Lew as a Union spy during the Civil War. She worked as a servant in the home of Confederate President Jeff Davis where she gathered much useful information which was passed on to the northern intelligence.
Early life
Born in Richmond, Virginia around 1839, Bowser began her life as a slave on the plantation of John Van Lew, a wealthy hardware merchant. When Bowser was very young, her family members were traded away to other masters. John Van Lew died in 1851. His daughter Elizabeth, a strong abolitionist, freed Bowser and bought her family members. Bowser would stay with the Van Lew family until the late 1850s. Elizabeth Van Lew noted Bowser's intelligence and arranged her education at a Quaker school in Philadelphia, where she was studying as the Civil War began. Elizabeth Van Lew sent for Mary Elizabeth to return to Richmond to help her with her abolitionist efforts. Around that time she married a free African American man with the surname of Bowser. Nothing else is known of her husband.
Espionage work
Bowser’s espionage work began in 1863 when Elisabeth Van Lew, "Crazy Bet" (She was outspoken and rebellious, and appeared to be more than a little eccentric and became known as "Crazy Bet," which she used to her advantage as a cover for her espionage work). She enlisted Mary Bowser as a spy and convinced a friend to bring Bowser along to work as a servant for Varina Davis, the wife of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. She was eventually hired full-time. Jefferson Davis’ home was located in Richmond, where Bowser had grown up. She worked both in the home and in the Confederate White House. As a spy for the Union, Bowser read a number of military documents she had access to, including lists of troop movements, reports on moving Union prisoners, military strategies, and treasury reports. She also overheard important conversations in the dining room about troop movements and other confederate plans.
Bowser had many advantages as a spy. At Davis’ house, the servants were taught to be unobtrusive, so it was easy for her to gain information without being noticed. As a "slave", she was not expected to be able to read and write. However, thanks to her education, she was able to read military plans and retain the information due to her photographic memory. She would later write down her notes and pass them to Van Lew or to a Union agent named, Thomas McNiven, who worked out of a local bakery. When the bakery wagon came to Davis’ house, Bowser would meet it outside to give him her information.
Her colleagues in the Union intelligence operation praised her excellent memory for the information she discovered. She passed the information along to Van Lew and others in the Union intelligence operation.
Van Lew at first used the mail to send the information she gathered from Bowser and others. But as information increased and in fear of discovery, Van Lew became more sophisticated and created codes and messages. She also established contact with Union agents who slipped into Richmond on secret missions.
Van Lew also sent her loyal household servants—though she had freed the family's slaves, many of them chose to stay with her—northward carrying baskets of innocuous farm produce and Bowser's information. Each basket held eggs, one of which contained encoded messages from Bowser in place of its natural contents; or a serving tray loaded with food had messages concealed in its false bottom; wet laundry could be hung up in code, a white shirt beside an upside-down pair of pants meant "Gen. Hill moving troops to the west." And not many people would poke into the soles of muddy shoes worn by an "old colored man" on a horse.
Van Lew sent Bowser's information directly to Benjamin Butler as well as to General Grant through an elaborate courier system. It was so fast and effective that Grant often received flowers still fresh from his spy's large garden. Grant would later say of their efforts, "You have sent me the most valuable information received from Richmond during the war."
Disappearance and legacy
After nearly three years of spying, in January 1865, as the war was coming to a close, Mary Bowser fled from Richmond, never to be heard from again. Her sudden disappearance remains unexplained. Some think that her work was suspected. Before she left, Mary attempted to burn down the Confederate White House, but was unsuccessful. In 1865, the year that Mary Bowser disappeared, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.
Bowser kept a diary, but it was lost many years after her death when a descendant tossed it out so as not to upset her husband with tales of the Civil War. Her story was reconstructed from research into the Union intelligence operation in the Civil War, and from memoirs of her colleagues in the operation. In 1995 Bowser was admitted to the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. During the ceremony, her contribution was described as: “Ms. Bowser certainly succeeded in a highly dangerous mission to the great benefit of the Union effort. She was one of the highest placed and most productive espionage agents of the Civil War.” .
External links
All retrieved October 1, 2008.
- Biography of Mary Bowser at Gibbs Magazine website www.gibbsmagazine.com
- Account of Mary Bowser's espionage work www.npr.org
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