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🌾📚 PRAIRIE & PAGES with Kit Sergeant: Hattie Lewis Lawton

They barely noticed her. That was their first mistake.

Of all the women I researched for Underground, Hattie Lewis Lawton may be one of the most mysterious. 🕵️‍♀️

Even the details of her early life and her name are difficult to pin down. Hattie Lewis is believed to have been her real name, while Hattie Lawton was an alias she used during her work as a detective and spy.

Hattie was also believed to have been mixed-race and light-skinned enough to pass as white. During the Civil War, when race could determine where a person could travel, whom they could associate with, and whether they attracted suspicion, that ability would have given her access to places and people that might otherwise have been closed to her.

And Hattie knew how to disappear into a role.

She became one of the earliest female detectives associated with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and eventually worked in Union intelligence during the Civil War.

Her most dangerous assignment took her behind Confederate lines with Union spy Timothy Webster, where the two posed as husband and wife while gathering intelligence in Richmond.

Their cover eventually collapsed.

Webster was captured and executed as a Union spy. Hattie was arrested and imprisoned before eventually being exchanged and returned to the North.

And then, remarkably, Hattie largely disappears from the historical record.

👩‍🏫 QUESTION OF THE DAY: What fictional character would you most like to sit down with and hear their entire story—from their point of view?

#PrairieAndPages #HattieLawton #WomenSpies #CivilWarHistory #KitSergeant
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