Mary Elizabeth Bowser (Born in the 1840s-?) 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.

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.

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.