What do you know about Mary Elizabeth Bowser?

Question

Im doing a report on her. Tell me everything u can find..

Answer 1

One Article:

NAME: Mary Elizabeth Bowser

DATE OF BIRTH: c. 1840's

PLACE OF BIRTH: on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia

DATE OF DEATH: unknown

PLACE OF DEATH: unknown

FAMILY BACKGROUND: Mary Elizabeth Bowser was born as a slave to owner John Van Lew, the owner of a successful hardware business. Van Lew's daughter, Elizabeth and her mother freed her father's slaves after his death in 1851. Accounts record the Van Lew women buying members of their slaves families and then freeing them. Elizabeth married William or Wilson Bowser,a free Black man, while she worked at the Van Lew home.

EDUCATION: Bowser remained with the Van Lew family after she was freed and worked as a servant. The family had Mary educated in Philadelphia at the early time of the Civil War.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: During the Civil War, Mary Elizabeth Bowser served as a spy for Ulysses S. Grant. She operated as a servant in the home of Confederate President, Jefferson Davis; as he ate his meals she gathered important military information to pass on to the Grant administration.

Elizabeth Van Lew was a chief spy for the Union Army during the time of the Civil War. To escape suspicion, she pretended she was crazy and went by the nickname, "Crazy Bet." While acting this way, she nursed Union soldiers and later housed Union soldiers who escaped from prison in her home. While the soldiers were in her home they told her information overheard from their Confederate captors; Van Lew wrote the information in cipher code and passed it on through the Union lines to Grant and other officers.

To further the Union cause, she had Bowser return to Virginia and pose as a spy in Jefferson Davis' home. Bowser also pretended to be slightly crazy; she gathered information this way, passed it on to Van Lew who then wrote it as code.

Although Elizabeth Bowser recorded the details of her espionage in a diary, the diary is now owned by a Black family who will not release it.

Another article:

They thought she was dull-witted.
But Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a freed slave who was placed as a servant in the Confederate White House in Richmond, was as cunning as a fox.

While she cleaned the house and waited on Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his military leaders, she read war dispatches and overheard conversations about Confederate troop strategy and movement. She memorized details and passed them along to Union spies, who coded the information and sent it to Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Butler, "greatly enhancing the Union's conduct of the war," according to the account assembled by the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.
"Jefferson Davis never discovered the leak in his household staff," reads the account, "although he knew the Union somehow kept discovering Confederate plans."
The Confederate Whitehouse


In 1995 Bowser was inducted into the Hall at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The acknowledgment of her role in the ultimate success of Union forces read, in part:

"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."

Exact details about Bowser's life and death are sketchy.

According to several accounts, Bowser was born about 1839 on a plantation owned by John Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond hardware merchant. When he died (some records say he died in 1843, while others put his death at 1851), his wife and his daughter, Elizabeth, freed his slaves.

Elizabeth Van Lew, who had been educated by Quakers, was an ardent abolitionist. She noticed that Bowser was quite smart and sent her to Philadelphia to be educated. When war clouds gathered, Bowser returned to Richmond to work in the Van Lew household on Richmond's Church Hill and married William or Wilson Bowser, a free black.

Van Lew, who already was sending information to Union officials about Southern unrest, reportedly recommended Bowser for the servant's job in the Davis household.

What Bowser learned in the Confederate White House she would repeat or message to Van Lew or to Thomas McNiven, the Union's Richmond spymaster, who operated a bakery that became a major central exchange point for information.

Before his death in 1904, he told his daughter, Jeannette B. McNiven, about his experiences, which were written down in 1952 by her nephew, McNiven's grandson, Robert W. Waitt Jr. of Richmond.

As recorded by Waitt, Thomas McNiven credited Bowser with being one of the best sources of wartime 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. Unlike most colored, she could read and write. She made a point of always coming out to my wagon when I made deliveries at the Davis' home to drop information."

Specific details of Bowser's activities and the exact information she passed to Grant are unknown because after the war the U.S. government destroyed records on McNiven, Van Lew and her agents for their protection.

Nothing is known about where she went or what she did after the war. Her date and place of death are unknown.

Papers believed to have been Bowser's diaries were discarded inadvertently by family members in the 1950s. They said descendants rarely talked about Mary Elizabeth Bowser's work for fear of retaliation from lingering Confederate sympathizers.

Answer 2

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/bows-mar.htm

http://geocities.com/legal1two/bowser.html

Answer 3

DO YOUR OWN FREAKING HOMEWORK - I'm telling your teacher.

; )