Life behind enemy lines – the story of Newtown's American Civil War spy

It would be fair to say the life Pryce Lewis was expected to lead upon his birth on February 13, 1831 had not been his own expectation and he had migrated to America in 1856, aged just 25.

He had dreamt of a life far removed from his upbringing as a weaver.

Newtown in theh 19th century. Picture: Wikpedia.

He spent time in Chicago and had been about to join the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush when he was employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency - a role which saw him travel the breadth of the country.

Upon the outbreak of American Civil War in 1861, Pryce was entrusted as a Union spy in the rebel-held southern states, taking on the role of a touring English noble to avoid suspicion.

His next mission had seen him and fellow agent Sam Bridgeman ordered to Charleston in Virginia, impressing Colonel George Patton sufficiently along the way to be granted a full tour of his Confederate camp.

Pryce spied on the camp at Charleston but he was forced to cut short his observations after his colleague, pretending to be his driver, was embroiled in drunken altercations with Confederate troops.

Pryce Lewis. Picture Wikipedia/St. Lawrence University Library Collections.

Intelligence he relayed to the Union army led to the fall and capture of Charleston by the end of the month.

Pryce’s next mission had taken place in the Union-loyal city of Baltimore with the arrest of a spy ring which included socialite Rose Greenhow and Eugenia Phillips and Elizabeth Morton, the wives of US politicians.

However just a year later Pryce was commanded by Pinkerton to return to Virginia where two agents had seemingly gone missing in Richmond.

Pryce had insisted his cover as a federal agent would be exposed in a city full of deported Confederate sympathisers but had relented out of concern for his fellow agents, departing Washington on February 18, 1862.

Pinkerton spy Pryce Lewis at supper with Confederate captain. Picture by West Virginia University Library Collections.

Pryce and his partner, John Scully, discovered a bed-ridden Timothy Webster in a rented room in the city’s Monumental Hotel but he and his partner, Hattie Lawton, were being watched.

Among the Confederate officers was Chase Morton, son of Elizabeth, who had remembered Pryce from the Pinkerton raid in Baltimore less than a year earlier.

Despite his worst fears coming to pass, Pryce escaped from Henrico County Jail and got as far as the Chickahominy River and haven in the North when he was captured and sentenced to hang.

Two days before his planned execution Pryce had confessed Timothy Webster was a Union spy and himself a federal agent - an act which saw him and Scully reprieved but Webster executed.

Castle Thunder. Picture: Kalamazoo Public Library.

The pair were released a year later in a prisoner exchange.

Pryce and Pinkerton were embroiled in a furious altercation upon his return to Washington DC with the Welshman blaming his friend and employer for the poor judgement which had seen him captured.

In return Pinkerton accused Pryce of treachery for damning a fellow agent to death.

The two never spoke again and Pryce settled in Connecticut and returned to Britain for a short spell before marrying and starting his own detective agency in New York City around 1878.

However Pinkerton never forgave Pryce and in 1884 damned him in his book ‘The Spy of the Rebellion’ in which he accused Pryce of a romantic liaison with the daughter of a Virginia judge and confession which had damned Webster to death.

Pryce was outraged as the book destroyed his standing and business.

The New York World Building in 1911.

He began work on his auto-biography in 1888 but publishers universally rejected his manuscript.

Pryce was left a broken man upon the death of his wife and son within a few years of one another and on December 6, 1911 he ventured to the observation deck of the New York World Building and jumped to his death.

It was not until 2014, more than a century after his suicide, that this brave spy from Penygloddfa in Newtown was honoured with a marker on his grave which stands in Torrington in Connecticut.