Eliza Jumel

Eliza Jumel (née Bowen; April 2, 1775 – July 16, 1865), also known as Eliza Burr, was a wealthy American socialite. She was married to Aaron Burr and their divorce was finalized on the day of his death. Although she was born into poverty, an advantageous marriage to a wealthy merchant made her one of the richest women in New York at the time of her death. Early life Eliza Jumel was born Elizabeth Bowen in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 2, 1775 (she would later joke "that she had come near being an April fool"). She had two older siblings, John (born 1769) and Mary, called Polly (born 1772). Jumel's mother, Phebe Kelley Bowen, worked from a young age as an indentured servant. Her father, John Bowen, was a sailor. By the time Jumel was seven years old, she and her mother were living in a brothel along with five other women. By age 9, Jumel and her sister Polly were living in a workhouse, in 1784, because their parents were unable to support them. A year later, the sisters were again living with their mother in the house of Patience Ingraham, a widow who had previously been cited for "keeping a house of bad fame". Both Phebe Bowen and the widow Ingraham were arrested in 1785 "for keeping a disorderly house", and Jumel and her sister were again thrown in the workhouse. From there she was indentured to a sea captain and his family. Jumel's father died in 1786, when she was eleven. Her mother remarried in 1790 to an itinerant cobbler named Jonathan Clark, and they moved from town to town in New England, and then finally to Williamston, North Carolina. There they both succumbed to yellow fever in 1798, victims of an epidemic that may have also taken the life of Jumel's older brother.