Eliza Jumel

Eliza Jumel
Lithograph of Eliza Jumel, which she commissioned in 1852
Born	Elizabeth Bowen (1775-04-02)April 2, 1775 Providence, Rhode Island, British America
Died	July 16, 1865(1865-07-16) (aged 90) New York City, New York, U.S.
Other names	Eliza Burr
Spouse(s)	Stephen Jumel (m. 1804; d. 1832) Aaron Burr (m. 1833; d. 1836)

Eliza Jumel (née Bowen; April 2, 1775 – July 16, 1865), also known as Eliza Burr, was a wealthy American socialite. Born into poverty, through her own ingenuity and an advantageous marriage to a wealthy merchant, she was by the time of her death one of the richest women in New York.

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). Eliza's mother, Phebe Kelley Bowen, worked from a young age as an indentured servant. Her father, John Bowen, was a sailor.

By the time Eliza was seven years old she and her mother were living in a brothel along with five other women. By 1784 Betsy and her sister Polly were living in a workhouse, after their parents became unable to support them. However, 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 Betsy and her sister were again thrown in the workhouse. From there she was indentured to a sea captain and his family

Eliza's father died in 1786, when she was eleven. Her mother remarried in 1790, to an itinerant cobbler named Jonathan Clark, and together they moved from town to town throughout 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 Betsy's older brother.

After her parents' deaths, the ambitious young Eliza moved to New York, changing her name to Eliza Brown. There she became an extra in the local theater, and during her early years in the city she may have also found work as a domestic servant. Eliza's sister later joined Eliza in New York, changing her name to Maria Bowne and in 1805 marrying William Jones, three years later giving birth to a daughter she named Eliza Jumel Jones in honor of her sister.

Possibly through her performing career, or the close proximity of their addresses in New York, Eliza met and later married the wealthy French-Haitian merchant Stephen Jumel in 1804. Stephen and Eliza may have found a common bond in their humble origins and ambitious nature: born Êtienne Jumel in France in 1765, Eliza's future husband grew up in a merchant family, emigrating to the American Colonies on the eve of the French Revolution and, like Eliza, changing his name to better fit his new life. The newly-rechristened Stephen Jumel married Eliza Brown on April 9, 1804.