Photo illustration by Ryan Rich
When Virginia-born chef Edna Lewis asked, “What Is Southern?” in her posthumous essay, one of her answers — along with Brunswick stew, greens and Bessie Smith — was “a mint julep.” For 19th-century Virginians, this iconic cocktail made with bourbon, water, sugar, crushed or shaved ice, and fresh mint was a favorite way to beat the summer heat. And one of its most renowned makers was right here in Richmond.
In his 1859 essay “Corn-Field Peas,” Richmond journalist George William Bagby mused: “Where will you find a man to mix a julep equal to Lemuel Bowser’s?” A free man of color, Bowser was celebrated in 1850s Richmond as a caterer and bartender, earning the reputation as “the genius of juleps, the prince of all the bar-keepers,” according to the Richmond Daily Dispatch in 1859. Yet, his legacy has largely faded from history.
Bowser was part of a long tradition of Black bartenders who shaped the city’s drinking culture. Others include Jasper Crouch, a free man of color renowned in the 1820s for his juleps and punches as bartender for the Quoit Club; today, the signature drink appears on the menu at The Jasper, the Carytown cocktail bar named in his honor. In the 1850s, John Dabney, an enslaved man, earned acclaim for his cocktails at the Columbian Hotel, Ballard House and Exchange Hotel, and used his bartending earnings to purchase his wife’s freedom. Drinks like the Hailstorm Julep, made in Dabney’s style with brandy and a rum float, have helped honor their culinary contributions.
But the history of the mint julep tells another tale — one of the Black bartenders who crafted and perfected these libations. For many, both enslaved and free, bartending became an outlet for creativity and entrepreneurship that allowed some to build livelihoods and even generational wealth.
Bowser would continue the tradition of skill and influence behind Richmond’s bars. Born enslaved in Henrico County in 1818, Bowser was emancipated in February 1856 for his “good character and services.” By that year, he was working at the Columbian Hotel — considered by some to be the city’s finest — in downtown Richmond as “the popular bar keeper,” either alongside or as a successor to Dabney. In December 1856, he became the barkeeper at the Powhatan Saloon in the basement of the Powhatan House hotel on East Broad Street, a hub of the city’s political and business life.
Correspondence of the Richmond Daily Dispatch, 1859
Bowser also tended bar at Red Sweet Springs, a popular summer resort in Alleghany County where fashionable visitors came to “take the waters” and socialize. An 1854 article in the New York Daily Herald wrote that “Lemuel Bowser, Esq., (colored gentleman), beats the world in making juleps.” A Richmond paper noted in 1855 that he was “well known to all the lovers of good juleps in this vicinity,” and another in 1859 declared that, “Anybody who once tastes Lemuel Bowser’s juleps will drink too much. They can’t help it.”
After his emancipation, Bowser married Clara Boyd, who had been enslaved by Virginia Gov. Wyndham Robertson. The couple had five children and lived near Ninth and Clay streets. Bowser’s success in the hospitality trade allowed him to build stability for his family; in 1870, he made a deposit in a Freedman’s Bank account on behalf of his 9-year-old son, Hobson.
Bowser died that same year from gout at age 52, shortly before the birth of his youngest child. His obituary in the Daily Dispatch remembered him as widely respected: “There are but few colored men of Richmond who enjoyed more cordial esteem and universal respect than Lemuel Bowser did.”
While the respect Bowser earned through his work is well documented, his feelings about that success and the white people who praised him for it remain unknown.
Black culture-makers like Crouch, Dabney and Bowser make a case for the mint julep’s place in Southern food history that goes beyond cliches of moonlight and magnolias. Their craft brought financial success, community esteem and sometimes even freedom. So, the next time you lift a julep glass in the summer heat, raise it to Lemuel Bowser — the genius of juleps.
