Mary Bowser

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Mary Bowser was a freed slave who worked in connection with Elizabeth Van Lew as a Union spy during the Civil War.

[edit] Early Life

Mary Bowser was born in Richmond, Virginia around 1839, a time when slavery was very prominent in the south. She began her life as a slave on the plantation of John Van Lew, a wealthy hardware merchant. When Mary was very young, her family members were traded away to other masters. Mary's master, John Van Lew, died in 1851. Elizabeth Van Lew, his wife and daughter, was a strong abolitionist. She freed Mary and bought Mary’s family members. Mary would stay with the Van Lew family until the late 1850s. Elizabeth Van Lew noted that Mary was very smart and arranged her education at the Quaker School for Negroes in Philadelphia. This was where she was as the Civil War began.

[edit] Work

Mary Bowser’s work began in 1863, after the Civil War had begun. Elizabeth Van Lew convinced a friend to bring Bowser along to work as a servant for Varina Davis, the wife of the President of the Confederate Army, Jefferson Davis. She was eventually hired full-time. Jefferson Davis’s home, the capitol of Confederate army, was located in Richmond, Virginia, where Bowser had grown up. At the Confederate capitol, Bowser secretly served as a spy for the Union army. She read all of the military documents she had access to. While acting as an innocent slave, Mary received top-secret information, such as lists of troop movements, reports on moving Union prisoners, military strategies, and treasury reports. Mary had many advantages as a spy. At Davis’s house, the servants were taught to act invisible, 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, because she had been to school, she was able to read military plans. Thomas McNidden, one of her colleagues, claimed that she was the source of the most important information “as she was working right in the Davis home and had a photographic mind. Everything she saw on the Rebel president’s desk, she could repeat word for word.”

Mary Bowser was part of a network of Union spies in the south. This “spy ring” consisted of people of all races and genders, working at different jobs in plain sight. When Bowser received information from the Confederate Capitol, she would pass it on to a union informer. They would pass it on to a leader of the Union Army.

[edit] Disappearance

In January 1865, as the war was coming to a close, Mary Bowser fled from the Confederate Capitol, never to be heard from again. Her sudden disppearance still 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 13th Amendment abolished slavery.