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Mary Bowser
Freed slave and American Civil War spy, born 1846
Mary Bowser
Mary Richards, also known as Mary Jane Richards Garvin and possibly Mary Bowser (born 1846), was a Union spy during the Civil War. She was possibly born into slavery in Virginia, but there is no documentation of where she was born or who her parents were. By the age of seven, she was enslaved by the household of Elizabeth "Bet" Van Lew, in Richmond, Virginia. The Van Lew family sent Richards to school somewhere in the north, possibly to be schooled by the Quaker community, and then to Liberia through the American Colonization Society. Richards returned to Richmond shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, where she was one of many black and white Richmond residents who collected and delivered military information to the United States Army under the leadership of Elizabeth Van Lew. Richards is often referred to as Mary Bowser. She was likely married to a Wilson Bowser at the start of the Civil War. A 1911 article about her in Harper's Monthly, which was based in part on the...
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