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Mary Richards, also known as Mary Jane Richards Garvin and possibly Mary Bowser (born 1846), was a Union spy during the Civil War. [1] She was possibly born enslaved from birth in Virginia , but there is no documentation of where she was born or who her parents were.
Van Lew also operated a spy ring during the war, which included clerks in the War and Navy Departments of the Confederacy, as well as free and enslaved African Americans, including Mary Richards Bowser. [1] [9] Mary Jane Richards, aka Mary Elizabeth Bowser, was reputedly a formerly enslaved maid in the Van Lew household, and was sent by the ...
The second agent, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, was part of a Union spy ring known as "the Richmond underground," directed by Elizabeth Van Lew, whose family was well respected and well connected socially in Richmond. While not hiding her Union loyalties, Van Lew affected behavior that made her appear harmless and eccentric to Confederate authorities.
On October 16, 1977, a memorial plaque was installed honoring Mary Bowser, a black woman from the American south who worked as a spy for the Union army during the Civil War. Bowser, pretending to be illiterate, worked as a domestic servant for Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Confederate General Robert Lee said "The chief source of information to the enemy is through our negroes." [31] In a letter to Confederate high command, Confederate general Patrick Cleburne complained "All along the lines slavery is comparatively valueless to us for labor, but of great and increasing worth to the enemy for information. It is an ...
Belle Boyd (age 21), Confederate spy (circa 1865). Boyd's espionage career began by chance. According to her 1866 account, a band of Union army soldiers heard that she had Confederate flags in her room on July 4, 1861, and they came to investigate. They hung a Union flag outside her home. Then one of the men cursed at her mother, which enraged ...
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Alexander Keith, Jr. Annie Jones [citation needed]; Antonia Ford; Belle Boyd; Confederate Signal Bureau; David Owen Dodd; Dr. William Joseph Heacker [3]; Henry Thomas Harrison; James Dunwoody Bulloch