Eilley Bowers
Alison "
Eilley"
Oram Bowers (September 6, 1826 – October 27, 1903) was a Scottish American woman who was, in her time, one of the richest women in the United States, and owner of the
Bowers Mansion, one of the largest houses in the western United States. A farmer's daughter, Bowers married as a teenager, and her husband converted to
Mormonism before the couple immigrated to the United States. After briefly living in
Nauvoo, Illinois, she became an early
Nevada pioneer, farmer and miner, and was made a
millionaire by the
Comstock Lode mining boom. Married and divorced two times, she married a third time and became a mother of three children but outlived them all.
Her first two children died in infancy; then her husband; and the third child a few years after. With the collapse of the Nevada mining economy, Eilley Bowers became
bankrupt and destitute. Eilley reinvented herself as "The Famous Washoe Seeress", a professional
scryer and
fortune-teller in Nevada and California. She died penniless in a care home in
Oakland, California.
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