Women Spies

Elizabeth Van Lew, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, and Mary Elizabeth Bowser. These names don’t sound familiar, but all three were important women during the American Civil War. Without these women, the Civil War would have drug on longer than it did. These women helped uncover important information and made great contributions as spies in the War.

Elizabeth Van Lew turned her house into a hideout for escapees. She would use freed slaves to deliver her messages. Elizabeth supported the Union but lived in Virginia. She led her own ring of spies that contained African Americans and whites. She was 43 and still lived with her mother. He mother owned a mansion. She helped the union a lot but, she forfeited her social status and family fortune to do so. Her code name was Babcock. But she got the nickname crazy Bet, because some people say that she walked around in shabby clothes. After the war she was appointed by President Grant to be postmaster of Richmond. She passed away September 25, 1900.

Rose O'Neil Greenhow’s father was murdered by one of the families’ slaves.

When Rose was a child she was sent to live with her aunt because her mother had no money; her mother was a widow. When Rose grew up she married Robert Greenhow. He died 14 years later. Rose O'Neil was recuted for spy work. She didn't choose to be one. She worked for the

Confederacy. She charmed the secret information out of the Union officials. In August of 1861 she was put in jail without a trial for one year and nine months. But she also wrote in longhand. Because her secret messages were not very complex, when one of her notes was intercepted, it was decoded. As a result she was imprisoned for one month. She was a model prisoner. Rose sent her 16 ye...

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...ning off of the battlefield she was being shot at. How she got information the most often was to flirt with the officers. She was arrested six or seven times. She went to England after she got out of prison and stayed there for two years. That is where she wrote her memoirs. In 1869 she married John Swainston Hammond. After 16 years and four children she divorced him. Within two months she married Nathaniel High, Jr. She died of a heart attack in Kilburn. This is now Wisconsin Dells.

Antonia Ford was a Confederate Spy. She got information on Union soldiers who were in her hometown of Fairfax Court House. In March she was accused on spying.

Those are just a few of the courageous women that helped in the Civil War. There are a lot more and probably even ones we don’t know about. These women helped uncover secrets and made great contributions as spies in the War.