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. https://amzn.to/3yGocBS
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