Elizabeth Van Lew - Infinite Women

Born: 25 October 1818, United States
Died: 25 September 1900
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.

Other women were participating in the U.S. Civil War, on both sides. The Union had Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia socialite whose education at a Quaker school in the north may have contributed to her anti-slavery beliefs and support for the Union later in life. While active in the Richmond social scene, she never married. Although her family owned enslaved people, Van Lew’s mother Eliza freed some of them after her father’s death, and Van Lew would spend her inheritance helping her family’s former slaves and on her espionage during the war. Working within the confines of Virginia’s complicated slavery laws, she and her mother did what they could, allowing the enslaved to live elsewhere and work for an income. They paid for one girl, Mary Jane, to receive an education in New Jersey and then become a missionary in Liberia. Maintaining this delicate balance between her morals and public sentiment would prove vital to Van Lew’s efficacy as a spy.
Born in 1818, Elizabeth Van Lew was in her 40s when tensions boiled over into war in 1861. Obtaining permission to take food and provisions to Union soldiers at Libby Prison in the name of charitable benevolence, mother and daughter worked with other sympathizers to pass messages in and out of the prison, get the men additional food and water, and help them escape, at great risk and expense to the women. Maintaining their pretense, they made sure to be seen publicly helping Confederate soldiers, including boarding the prison warden.
After hearing about the Van Lews’ work in December 1863, General Benjamin Butler recruited Elizabeth as a spy. She built a network of a dozen agents, both Caucasian and African American, including Mary Jane, who had returned from Liberia in 1860 and whose names included Mary Richards, Mary J. R. Garvin, Mary Denman, and Mary Bowser. Mary Jane worked as a servant for the family of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis in the Confederate White House, collecting information and passing it on to Van Lew and other spies.
Although Van Lew received acknowledgement from General Ulysses S. Grant and a small stipend after the war, her funds were depleted and her social standing forever ruined, her former friends branding her a spy and traitor, as well as “crazy,” “eccentric,” and “mad,” leading to the moniker “Crazy Bet.” During Grant’s presidency, she was made Postmaster of Richmond from 1869 to 1877, promoting suffrage and civil rights and hiring many African Americans and women. She also sponsored a library for African Americans, which opened in Richmond in 1876. From 1883 to 1887, she worked as a clerk in the postmaster’s office but quit after being demoted and paid less than men in equivalent positions. Eliza Van Lew died in 1875, aged 77, while her daughter lived until 1900.

The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Born to a prominent slave-holding Richmond family with Northern roots, Elizabeth Van Lew attended a Quaker school in Philadelphia, where she developed a strong attachment to the antislavery cause. Unlike other Southern Unionists, Van Lew did not get swept up in the initial tide of Confederate patriotism following Virginia’s secession in April 1861. She joined with other Richmond Unionists to create an underground network to hinder the Confederate war effort and give aid and comfort to captured Union soldiers. The infamous Libby Prison, which held scores of Union officers in deplorable conditions, was located only blocks from Van Lew’s home.
As the war ground on her aid mission to Union prisoners evolved into a full-fledged intelligence gathering operation. From Union prisoners Van Lew gathered information on Confederate troop strength and movements, which she passed on via couriers to Gen. Grant and his intelligence officer, Col. George H. Sharpe. Both officers later acknowledged both the quantity and quality of the information she provided to them. Van Lew also successfully operated a spy ring, which included clerks in the Confederate War and Navy Departments.
Four years after the war ended, President Grant appointed Van Lew postmaster of Richmond, a position she held until 1877. She was largely ostracized by Richmond society for her beliefs, including her involvement in Republican politics, women’s suffrage and African American rights. In her remaining years Van Lew relied on the largesse of her friends; she had spent the bulk of her inheritance on caring for her family’s former slaves and her espionage activities during the war. Dying penniless, the cost of her funeral was paid by the family of a Union officer she assisted. For her work on behalf of the Union army Van Lew was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.