Marion W. Vail: Confederate Mail Smuggler

   Near the time Hattie Snodgrass (last week's subject) and her companions were steam boating for Dixie in mid-May 1863, another St. Louis woman, Marion W. Vail, clashed with Federal authorities in the city for activities similar to those that had gotten Hattie in trouble a week or so earlier. Like Hattie, Marion Vail actively supported the Confederate war effort in Missouri despite having no close relatives fighting for the cause.
   A native of Kentucky, Marion Owens married New Jersey-born Corra O. Vail in St. Louis on October 25, 1849, when she was nineteen. Corra Vail went into the clothing store business, and by 1860, the couple had two children.
   Marion began her clandestine activities on behalf of the Confederacy at least as early as the spring of 1862. In late March, she visited Confederate soldier Absalom Grimes, whom she’d known before the war, at Myrtle Street Prison. He escaped a few days later, and she soon became involved in the Confederate mail running operation that ultimately made him notorious. Marion and other Southern-sympathizing women would gather letters from St. Louis citizens for delivery by Grimes to their loved ones in the Confederate Army and, upon Grimes’s return, they would distribute the letters he brought back that had been written by Rebel soldiers to their families in St. Louis. Marion earned a reputation, according to one Union officer, as “the worst rebel in town,” but she did not become the subject of an official investigation until the spring of 1863 when it was alleged that she had harbored Grimes after a second prison escape in the fall of 1862.
   Arrested on or before May 18, Marion was taken to the provost marshal’s office for interrogation. She admitted she had visited Grimes at the Myrtle Street facility during his first imprisonment but denied that she visited him at Gratiot Street Prison during the fall of 1862. Marion also denied harboring him after his escape, but she admitted involvement in his mail running operation and described the scheme in some detail. She said the only reason she wasn’t even more active in support of the Confederate cause was because of her husband, who did not share her Southern sympathies.
   After her interrogation, Marion was ordered to be banished to the South and to be committed to the McLure Female Prison on Chestnut Street pending execution of the sentence. After appealing to high-ranking Union officials, she was temporarily paroled to her home and was about to have the terms of her banishment further mitigated when a St. Louis woman came forward to accuse Marion of making disparaging remarks about Federal officers and of being a Rebel spy. Mrs. Vail was re-arrested and ordered to be sent south at first opportunity. Shortly afterwards, the matron of the female prison where Marion was being held, also testified against her, saying that Marion was one of the worst and “most rebellious and insulting prisoners” in her charge.
   On June 1, Marion Vail, sixteen other prisoners, and five family members who requested to go along were sent south aboard the City of Alton steamboat.
   Marion was allowed to return to St. Louis just a few months later after her husband applied to Union authorities for leniency. She spent the rest of the war free on parole, although the terms of her parole were changed several times. For instance, she at first had to stay at her home in St. Louis, but then was allowed to move with her children to nearby Warren County as long as she reportedly periodically by letter. In late May of 1864, Corra Vail again appealed to Union authorities on his wife’s behalf, this time seeking to have her parole extended to include the entire state of Missouri, but the request was denied after several people testified to Marion’s continued disloyal activities even after returning to Missouri from the South. Then, in early 1865, when Marion’s husband asked that she be allowed to come back to St. Louis so that the family could be together and the kids would have better educational opportunities, the request was again denied because of Mrs. Vail’s alleged activities on behalf of the Confederacy, including aiding and abetting guerrillas, while living in Warren County.
   Marion finally returned to St. Louis at the end of the war and lived there the rest of her life. Long after the Civil War had ended, Mrs. Vail remained an ardent supporter of the South. According to Grimes, “Until the day of her death at the age of eighty-two years she never realized that the war was over, as her spirit of patriotism and warm love for the South never waned and she was fond of relating war stories in her interesting way to her many friends of all ages.”

   Like my other recent posts, this one is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.

Hattie Snodgrass: Proud Spirit of a Southern Lady

   I’ve recently written on this blog about Addie Haynes and Lucie Nicholson, who were both banished from Missouri in May 1863. Another woman banished at the same time was twenty-eight-year-old Harriet “Hattie” Snodgrass of St. Louis. Hattie was a schoolteacher like the other women, and like Lucie, she had no close relatives in the Southern army, her closest kin being a brother-in-law. Yet, Miss Snodgrass, again like Lucie, was even more outspoken in her support of the Confederacy than most of the women of rural Missouri who were arrested primarily for feeding and harboring their loved ones in the bush.
   A native of Pennsylvania, Hattie moved to St. Louis with her family when she was a child. During the late 1850s and early 1860s she taught school in St. Louis.
   Hattie was living with her sister's family when her disloyal activities attracted the scrutiny of her neighbors in early 1863. One or more of her neighbors reported her to Federal authorities about the first of May, and officials began taking depositions against her. Lewis Vandewater testified, for instance, that he’d known Hattie for about eleven years and that, ever since the outbreak of the war, she had been “an open and avowed secessionist.” Vandewater said he’d heard Hattie hurrah for Jeff Davis and that he’d been told she kept a Secesh flag in her school room. 

   On Saturday, May 9, Hattie was ordered to report to the provost marshal’s office in St. Louis, where she was interrogated about the activities her neighbors had accused her of. Hattie admitted her sister’s husband, Joseph Clayton, was in the Southern army, but she started getting testy after that, refusing to answer certain questions or giving deceptive answers. When asked whether she ever kept a Rebel flag in her home, for instance, she replied no, because she “did not think it worthwhile" to correct her examiner and tell him it was a Confederate flag. She ended the interview by refusing to sign the examiner's deposition.
   A day or two after the interview, a letter Hattie had written to a Confederate soldier fell into Union hands, adding to the evidence against her. Accused of being a “rebel mail agent,” she was arrested and imprisoned at the former home of Margaret McClure to await banishment. McClure and Hattie had taught school together, and both were Southern sympathizers. McClure’s home on Chestnut Street had been confiscated by the Union and turned into a female prison because of Mrs. McClure’s disloyal activities. On May 13, Hattie was sent south with Lucie Nicholson, Addie Haynes, and company. Hattie’s sister Teresa Clayton accompanied Hattie at her own request. Others making the trip included Hattie’s former colleague Margaret McLure.
   Despite her banishment, Union authorities had not quite heard the last of Hattie Snodgrass. On June 23, 1863, Hattie wrote a letter from Mobile, Alabama, to Colonel John Q. Burbridge, who was somewhere in Arkansas. The letter, in which Hattie expressed some decidedly disloyal sentiments, fell into the hands of Union authorities when Burbridge was taken prisoner later in the year.
   As for Hattie, she slipped back into St. Louis in the summer of 1864, in defiance of the banishment order against her, bringing news and letters from Confederate soldiers to their loved ones in Missouri. Another reason for her visit was to see her aged mother, Jane Snodgrass. However, she intended to return south, and she recruited two other Southern ladies who wished to accompany her.
   Hattie adopted an alias, calling herself Miss Miller, but she was so well known in St. Louis that she still had to delegate certain errands to the other women for fear of being recognized on the streets. Prior to the trip, the women packed letters, gold, and other contraband into trunks. 
   During the trip south, Hattie acted as “captain” for the party of three women, as they made their way down the Mississippi. On more than one occasion, the three barely escaped detection, but they managed to get beyond the Federal lines mostly through Hattie’s duplicitous aplomb.
   Near the end of the war, Hattie traveled to Washington, DC, where she got her banishment order revoked and was allowed to return to St. Louis. After her mother died post-1880, Hattie moved to Texas and lived with her brother for a number of years, but she eventually returned to St. Louis. In 1911, her wartime adventures were briefly recounted in the History of St. Louis County. Hattie apparently died shortly afterward, having never married and having never forsaken her proud Southern spirit.
   This is a greatly condensed version of a chapter from my latest book, Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.

Lucie Nicholson: A Mighty Pretty Girl

   Born in Maryland 1827, Lucie Nicholson came to Missouri with her family in the mid-1830s and settled in Cooper County a few miles from Boonville. As a young woman, Lucie was known as “the belle of Boonville” and “a mighty pretty girl.” Shortly before the Civil War, she became engaged to David Herndon Lindsay, a recent widower and principal of the Saline Female Institute in Miami, Missouri, but the couple decided to postpone the wedding because of the unsettled state of the country.
   From the very beginning of the war, Lucie was active in support of the Southern cause. After the Battle of Boonville in June 1861, she set up a field hospital near her hometown and tended to the needs of the wounded Southern soldiers. Shortly after the fight at Boonville, David Lindsay, Lucie’s fiancé, joined Price’s army, and he was later commissioned a major.
   In the fall of 1861, Lucie traveled to Osceola to rendezvous with General Sterling Price, bringing morphine and other drugs. She then accompanied his army to Springfield, where she and other young women sewed clothing for the soldiers. In early 1862, Lucie headed back to Cooper County, where she was arrested and held prisoner for eight weeks.
   After her release in the spring of 1862, Lucie taught school near Rocheport in Boone County. She was still there when she wrote a letter to her sister Gettie (Gertrude) on April 25, 1863, which would land her in a heap of trouble. Lucie expressed strong Confederate sympathies and told her sister of her service to Price’s army.
   She assured Gettie she was being very careful so as not to get their mother in trouble, but almost immediately after writing the letter, Lucie made a terrible blunder. Very near the time she wrote her letter to Gettie, she also wrote to a Boone County resident held prisoner at Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, and she inadvertently placed each letter in the wrong envelope. Gettie’s letter, mailed to the prisoner, was intercepted by Union authorities in St. Louis, and Lucie was arrested because of its contents. She was brought to St,. Louis and lodged the Gratiot Street Prison in early May.
   Charged with being “a volunteer in the rebel army,” Lucie was interrogated on May 5. She readily admitted that she had written the letter in question, and she further admitted helping Price’s army in the fall of 1861. A few days later, Lucie was transferred to Chestnut Street Female Prison. On May 13, she and ten other women were put aboard the Belle Memphis steamship and sent down the Mississippi River, banished to the South. In an article announcing the banishments, a St. Louis newspaper reprinted Lucie’s letter to her sister.
   In Arkansas, Lucie rendezvoused with Major Lindsay, and they were married on July 22, 1863. Lucie remained in the South throughout the rest of the war. When the conflict ended, she and her husband went to his native state of Kentucky, and Lindsay resumed his career as a schoolmaster. In 1876, the couple returned to Missouri and settled in Clinton County, where Lindsay was a prominent citizen for many years. After his death in 1902, Lucie lived with her daughter for several years. About 1912, she gave an interview to a woman who was collecting stories of Missouri women during the Civil War for the Daughters of the Confederacy. Around 1920, Lucie moved to St. Louis to stay with her sisters, and in 1923, the sisters’ house caught fire. One of Lucie’s sisters perished in the blaze, and Lucie, now ninety-five, died at a hospital a few hours later from her burns. Lucie’s body was taken back to Clinton County and buried in the Lathrop Cemetery beside her deceased husband.
   This post is a greatly condensed version of a chapter in my latest book, Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.

Addie Haynes: A Presumptuous Rebel

   In the spring of 1863, St. Louis resident Addie Haynes was accused of sending, receiving, and delivering Rebel mail, and she was banished to the South. Born Ada "Addie" Howard in Ireland in 1834, Addie came to the United States with her family in 1847 and married Christopher Haynes of St. Louis a couple of years later. The couple had three children, but Haynes died around 1855, about the same time the youngest child was born. Addie went back to live with her mother, and she supported herself and her family teaching in the St. Louis schools. She started corresponding with her brothers and other Confederate soldiers early in the Civil War, but it was not until early 1863 that she was finally arrested for her alleged disloyal activities.
   On May 13, 1863, Addie was among the first group of women shipped south from St. Louis during the Civil War for their disloyalty. Union authorities had previously been reluctant to be seen as "making war on women," but by the middle part of the war, it had become clear that, especially in border states like Missouri, women were an integral part of the resistance to Federal authority. 

   Addie and her fellow exiles were placed aboard a steamboat bound for Memphis, and after disembarking there, Addie eventually made her way to Mississippi and Alabama. While in the South, Addie heard from a third party that her children were suffering in her absence, and she wrote letters seeking permission to return to St. Louis to attend to them. When she received no answer to her letters, she determined to make the trip anyway, even though returning without permission was considered a serious offense.

   She made her way through Federal lines without being intercepted and reached St. Louis on March 28, 1864. She reported to the provost marshal's office the next day seeking permission to stay in St. Louis, but instead she was arrested for not abiding by the conditions of her banishment. Examined on April 1, exactly a year after she'd been interrogated on suspicion of being a Rebel mail agent, she said she still felt concern for her brothers in the Confederate army but otherwise cared nothing for the South or the Southern cause. She explained why she had come back to St. Louis and said she would strictly abide by the conditions of a parole if she were released upon taking an oath.
   Instead, she remained in the St. Charles Street Female Prison in St. Louis for the next three and a half months. In mid-July she was banished again, this time to New York City. In January 1865, her mother, Catherine Howard, wrote a letter to Union authorities asking them to allow Addie to return to St. Louis, and the request was granted. Addie came back home and lived the rest of her long life in St. Louis. She died there in 1924.

Very Good Rebels: Augusta and Zaidee Bagwill

   Early in the Civil War, James Bagwill of Macon County, Missouri, got into trouble with Union authorities and was arrested for allegedly killing a Federal soldier, but, despite the serious accusation against him, he was soon released. Later in the war, however, his wife and his daughter ended up suffering worse consequences for actions that were deemed disloyal but were far less grievous than murder.
   After Bagwill's brush with Union authorities, the family moved to St. Louis, and in early 1863, a number of letters written by Augusta and Zaidee Bagwill to Confederate soldiers and/or written by Rebel soldiers addressed to the two women were intercepted aboard a steamer on the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The women expressed various disloyal sentiments throughout the letters they had written. For instance, in one of Augusta's letters, she referred to Union soldiers as "Yankee vandals," and Zaidee called them "black-hearted villains" in one of her letters. Although the women denied writing the most incriminating letters and denied involvement in delivering Rebel mail, they were arrested and charged with corresponding with the enemy and encouraging rebellion against the United States.
   Both Augusta and her stepdaughter were found guilty at their trials by military commission in April 1863. Zaidee was sentenced to confinement at home for the duration of the war under oath and bond, while Augusta was sentenced to be banished to the South. The sentences were soon amended to allow Augusta to go to Canada instead of to the South and to allow Zaidee to accompany her. Imposition of the sentences was delayed because Augusta was ill, and before they could be imposed, they were amended again to allow both women to stay in Missouri under oath and bond.
   This post is greatly condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.