Elizabeth Bowser of Sag Harbor died December 17 at Southampton Hospital.
Born in 1919, she lived in the Eastville area of Sag Harbor. “She loved history, but lived for today” is the way Jonda Stilwell described her long life. She leaves friends, working colleagues, museum visitors, and students enriched by her knowledge and love of Native American, African American, and Colonial crafts and culture.
Ms. Bowser, known as Liz, continued on the path set by her forbears. Her grandmother was born to an enslaved Native American and a slave owner. Following the Civil War and freed from slavery, her grandmother, Carrie Smiley, came to Sag Harbor and was employed as the highly skilled seamstress of a captain’s wife living on Hampton Street. She made friends with the nearby Hempstead and Green families, and thus the connection with Eastville was set. Soon she was teaching her dressmaking craft to the young women in Eastville. A century later, her granddaughter would teach Native American crafts to today’s East Enders. Ms. Bowser felt that her own use of native crafts and textiles played back to her grandmother’s skills.
In the 1960s, Ms. Bowser honed her basketry and weaving techniques at Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead, and she began to lead craft programs for the Town of East Hampton, Guild Hall, and at the Shinnecock Reservation.
In 1978, she began cataloguing, through a federal grant, the nearly 10,000 items in the East Hampton Historical Society’s collection. Hugh King, with whom she worked at the Society, said of her work: “Her demeanor was so nice—never raised her voice so that you never knew just how much she was knowledgeable about. You had to ask. She was expert in textiles and basketry.” Through the society, she taught and produced programs on those historic arts for the community and schools. Ms. Bowser’s employment at the East Hampton Historical Society extended beyond the 1978 one-year grant, until an automobile accident in 2010 forced her to retire. Over those years she was a docent for many memorable tours of the Clinton Academy, Home Sweet Home, Hook Mill, and Mulford Farm.
During her early life she lived in Brooklyn and summered in Sag Harbor with her beloved grandmother, Carrie, and her grandfather T. Thomas Fortune. Mr. Fortune, who was born a slave and became a leading civil rights leader who fought for integrated schools, was an advisor and ghost writer for Booker T. Washington, and among other publications, he founded and edited the nation’s leading black newspaper, The New York Age, in 1887.
Carrie and Thomas’s daughter, Jessie, followed in her family’s path and worked for The New York Age and eventually taught in New York City schools. Jessie met and married Aubrey Bowser following his graduation from Harvard and his working for Thomas Fortune. Aubrey later taught at and became dean of New York Vocational High School.
Jessie and Aubrey named their sons after civil rights activists, so it may be assumed that Liz, Elizabeth Bowser, was named after Mary Elizabeth Bowser, the house servant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who conveyed Confederate war plans to the Union.
Ms. Bowser graduated from New York University fluent in French and Spanish. Starting her life of public service, she worked for the United Nations following World War II and lived in France as an interpreter for eight years. Back in the U.S., she worked for the State of New York as a social worker in New York City and the New York State Unemployment Office in Riverhead, from which she retired.
Retirement meant more time for excursions to Hallockville Farm in Riverhead to study basketry and weaving and then share her knowledge primarily through the East Hampton Historical Society and Eastville Historical Society in Sag Harbor.
For the Friends of John Jermain Memorial Library, she participated in the oral history project later published in Voices of Sag Harbor, which is recommended reading for her story and others.
Ms. Bowser was an excellent cook, but in her last years, she savored the meals prepared for her by Robert Pharaoh. She made good friends of all ages—the most loyal of them Robert Pharaoh. Although she had no children, from the day Robert was born, she affectionately called Robert her grandson. He, in turn, cared for her in her later years through the day she died.
on Jan 25, 2016