Maria Lewis

Maria Lewis, also known by the alias George Harris, was a Union Civil War soldier, and former slave, who gained distinction in the Eighth New York Cavalry.

Biography Lewis was born around 1846, in Albemarle County, Virginia, where she and her family were kept as slaves. At the age of seventeen, she emancipated herself from slavery by disguising herself as a "darkly tanned" white man, and joining company C of the 8th New York Cavalry. She adopted the name George Harris, after the character from Uncle Tom's Cabin, who similarly escaped by passing himself for a Spanish man. She originally planned to use the identity to travel North, she decided to stay with the army, after finding she enjoyed the freedom life as a white man brought her. Lewis remained with General Philip Sheridan's cavalry unit in the Shenandoah Valley for an additional eighteen months. Little is known about her life after the war.