Virginia Vignettes

Mary Elizabeth Bowser is a mysterious figure for historians. As the story goes, she was a slave belonging to Richmond’s wealthy Van Lew family. Freed through the efforts of the Van Lews’ abolitionist daughter, Elizabeth, she attended the Quaker Negro College in Philadelphia. During the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew worked as a Union spy, and many history books claim that she persuaded Jefferson Davis to hire Bowser as a servant in the Confederate White House. There, Bowser pretended to be illiterate and mentally ill, all the while collecting information and passing it on to Van Lew or other spies. (Legend has it that Van Lew also pretended to be crazy, lest her neighbours suspect her of espionage.) However, historian Elizabeth R. Varon has written of “the sheer improbability” of Bowser’s deeds, finding it doubtful that Davis would hire a servant on the recommendation of a local Unionist. Finding no documentary evidence of Bowser, Varon speculates that she was instead Mary Jane Richards, a freed servant who worked for Van Lew, not Davis, and spied for the Richmond underground. “She could write a romance from her experience,” a journalist gushed about Richards in 1867.

Further Reading:

Elizabeth R. Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy (2003)

This Vignette Provided By

Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia