Mary Ryan

The Confederate Laboratory, a munitions manufacturing facility, where Mary Ryan was employed during the Civil War.

National Archives

A Munitions Mistake

Mary Ryan was eighteen years old when she died after an explosion at a Confederate munitions manufacturing facility on March 13, 1863, along with more than forty other workers.

Mary Ryan was born in Ireland, but by the 1860s, she lived in Richmond with her family on Byrd Street, not far from the Tredegar Iron Works and the industrial area along Richmond’s waterfront. During the Civil War, Ryan worked in the Confederate Laboratory on Brown’s Island along with many other women and girls, helping to support their families. At the Laboratory they prepared artillery and small arms ammunition, a vital part of the Confederate war effort. Most were paid one or two dollars a day. Ryan’s father Michael worked at the Tredegar Iron Works as a laborer and her mother Mary worked as a house servant. There were four other sisters and two brothers in the family. All were born in Ireland and all but Michael were illiterate.¹

The Laboratory was a massive complex, with several buildings on the eastern edge of the island. About half of its 600 workers were women and girls. It had the capacity to produce 200,000 small arms cartridges a day, as well as a great deal of artillery ammunition. There were minimal safety regulations in place, and there was little training in proper handling the explosives.²

Ryan was apparently careless, and was corrected at least once before the accident of March 13, 1863. That morning at around 11 o’clock, Ryan was working with friction primers, used to ignite the powder charges in cannon ammunition. She was loading primers and one became stuck in a wooden block that held them during the manufacturing process. She banged the block on the table to loosen the primer. There were about sixty people in the room with Ryan, many working with gunpowder and rifle cartridges. Ryan’s banging set off a spark, which ignited the powder in the room.

Ten were killed instantly, and a second explosion caused the roof to rise up, then crash down on the survivors. Dozens were severely wounded, with burns, cuts, broken bones, lacerations, and concussions. In all fifty would be killed or die of their wounds, making it the worst industrial accident of the war in the Confederacy.³

The Richmond Examiner reported that “The apartment in which the explosion occurred, about fifty feet in length and twenty in width, was blown into a complete wreck, the roof lifted off, and the walls dashed out, the ruins falling upon the operatives . . .”⁴

Severely burned, Ryan was taken to the nearby home of a friend, Emily Timberlake, on Byrd Street. Another victim, Elizabeth Young, was also brought there to recover. Here Ryan was interviewed by investigators about the accident, and admitted her actions. She noted that she banged the primers on the table three times, then it exploded. Ryan passed away three days after the accident, on March 16. Her funeral was held the next day at the Ryans’ home.⁵

Her father Michael secured a plot in Hollywood Cemetery and here Mary Ryan was buried on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. A snowstorm had struck the day before and the ground was covered in snow and frozen. Ryan was nineteen years old. For 150 years her grave was unmarked, and she finally received a headstone in 2013.⁶

¹1860 U.S. Census.

²Richmond Dispatch, January 2, 1863; David L. Burton, “Richmond’s Great Homefront Disaster,” Civil War Times Illustrated (October 1982), 39.

³Some sources indicate the number of victims in the 40s, the research of Park Ranger Bert Dunkerly indicates 50.

⁴Richmond Examiner, March 14, 1863.

⁵Richmond Dispatch, March 17, 1863.

⁶Hollywood Cemetery burial records.