Eilley Orrum Bowers: the real Queen of the Comstock

The real Eilley Orrum Bowers

Alison "Eilley" Oram Bowers was born in Forfar, Scotland, in 1826. Church records spell the family name Oram, Orum and Orrum; the series uses Orrum.

A new world

Eilley crossed the Atlantic and went west with the Mormon migration to the Salt Lake Valley. She divorced her first husband, Stephen Hunter, when he made the choice to embrace plural marriage.

In 1853 she married Alexander Cowan. In 1855 the church sent Cowan to its westernmost outpost, Mormon Station in the Carson Valley, and Eilley went with him, as most missionary wives did not. The next spring they took up a ranch in the Washoe Valley.

Alone in Nevada

In 1857 Brigham Young called the outlying settlers home to Salt Lake. Cowan went. Eilley stayed.

She moved to the Johntown mining camp and opened a boarding house, cooking and washing for the miners. When gold was found at Gold Hill early in 1859, she moved her business there and took up mining ground of her own. A court granted her divorce from Cowan, and with it half of the Washoe Valley ranch.

Silver

Eilley Bowers in 1863, at the height of her fortune: a studio portrait of a woman with curled hair, in a dark dress trimmed with lace and beadwork. Black-and-white photograph. — Eilley Bowers, 1863. Photograph by Dames and Butler, San Francisco. Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno (UNRS-P2000-06-0338). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Her ground lay beside that of Lemuel "Sandy" Bowers, a teamster from Illinois seven years younger than she was. In 1859 the Comstock Lode was found, and their claims sat on shallow silver. In August 1859 Eilley and Sandy married and joined their ground. Within months they were among the first millionaires of the Comstock.

The Bowers Mansion

They lost two infant children, John Jasper in 1860 and Theresa in 1861. In 1862 they sailed for Britain, visited Eilley's family in Scotland, and toured Europe buying furnishings for a grand house. Eilley asked to be received by Queen Victoria and was refused: the Queen did not receive divorced women. They came home in 1863 with an adopted baby girl, Margaret Persia. The Bowers Mansion was finished in 1864.

The losses

Sandy died at Gold Hill in 1868, aged 35. The shallow ore was running out, and in 1870 Eilley sold the mine. She opened the mansion as a resort for picnics and excursions, but the debts kept growing. In 1874 Persia died in Reno, aged twelve. In 1876 a court ruled for Eilley's creditors, and the mansion was sold at auction in front of the Washoe County Courthouse.

The Washoe Seeress

Eilley had long read fortunes. With the mansion gone, it became her living, and she billed herself as the Washoe Seeress, reading for clients across Nevada and later in San Francisco. She died in Oakland, California, on 27 October 1903, aged 77, and was buried on the hillside behind the Bowers Mansion, beside Sandy and Persia.

The mansion today

The Bowers Mansion in 1940, long after Eilley's time: a two-storey stone house with a patterned roof and dormer windows, a round fountain in front and bare trees around it. Black-and-white photograph. — The house in 1940, long after Eilley's time. Bowers Mansion, Washoe Valley, Nevada, March 1940. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress (fsa.8b19660). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Washoe County bought the Bowers Mansion in 1946. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to visitors as a county park, between Reno and Carson City.