She was allowed to return as a postal clerk in Richmond, where she served from 1883 to 1887.Īfter the Reconstruction, Van Lew became increasingly ostracized in Richmond. Van Lew modernized the city's postal system and employed several Blacks until new President Rutherford B. On Grant's first visit to Richmond after the war, he had tea with Van Lew, and because of the merit of her work, appointed Van Lew Postmaster General of Richmond for the next eight years. forces in April 1865, Van Lew was the first person to raise the United States flag in the city. She developed a cipher system and often smuggled messages out of Richmond in hollow eggs. Ulysses S Grant fresh flowers from her garden and a copy of the Richmond newspaper. Her spy network was so efficient that on several occasions she sent Lt. Van Lew also operated a spy ring during the war, called "Richmond Underground," including clerks in the War and Navy Departments of the Confederacy and a Richmond mayoral candidate. She even helped hide escaped Union prisoners and Confederate deserters in her own mansion. Recently captured prisoners gave Van Lew information on Confederate troop levels and movements, which she was able to pass on to Union commanders. She aided prisoners in escape attempts, passing them information about safe houses and getting a Union sympathizer appointed to the prison staff. When Libby Prison was opened in Richmond, Van Lew was allowed to bring food, clothing, writing paper, and other things to the Union soldiers imprisoned there. Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, Van Lew began working on behalf of the Union with her mother, caring for wounded soldiers. For years thereafter, Elizabeth's brother was a regular visitor to Richmond's slave market, where, when a family was about to be split up, he would purchase them all, bring them home, and issue papers of manumission. In the depths of the 1837–44 depression, Elizabeth used her entire cash inheritance of $10,000 (equivalent to $256,100 in 2019) to purchase and free some of their former slaves' relatives. Many of the emancipated slaves continued as paid servants with the family, including the young future Union spy Mary Bowser. When her father died in 1843, Van Lew and her mother freed the family's slaves. Her family sent Van Lew to Philadelphia for her education at a Quaker school, which reinforced her abolitionist sentiments. Her father came to Richmond in 1806, at the age of 16 within 20 years, he had built up a prosperous hardware business and owned several slaves. She was a white-American abolitionist and philanthropist.Įlizabeth Van Lew was born in Richmond, Virginia to John Van Lew and Eliza Baker whose maternal grandfather was abolitionist Hilary Baker, mayor of Philadelphia from 1796 to 1798. *Elizabeth Van Lew was born on this date in 1818.
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