The Story of Kate Warne, America's First Female Private Detective

The young woman smiled as she met her brother at a train station in Philadelphia on the evening of February 22, 1861. Her sibling was tall but stooped over and covered in a shawl, rendering his facial features difficult for passerby to discern. To anyone who asked, she explained that her brother had taken ill and needed some breathing room.

On the sleeper car of the passenger train, the woman slipped cash to the conductor, urging him to avoid placing anyone else at the rear of the car. Accompanied by three other men in addition to her sibling, she settled in for a long night’s train ride.

It was no ordinary trip, however. The woman had lied when she said the man was her brother. In fact, he was president-elect Abraham Lincoln, traveling through a hotbed of secessionist activity on his way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. Her name was Kate Warne—and she was the first female private detective in America.

Given her status as a pioneer in law enforcement, surprisingly little is known about Warne’s past. No verified photos of her are known to exist, and she left behind no comprehensive chronicle of her landmark work. Then again, adopting various guises in the pursuit of intelligence meant that obscuring her true history was often a matter of professional obligation.

Warne was born in Erin, New York, in 1830 or 1833. Coming from a family of modest means, she had only a limited education. She was interested in becoming an actress, but her family opposed the idea and she soon abandoned that ambition. While she later described herself as a widow, there are no details about her marriage or the fate of a husband, who reportedly died in an accident. Warne’s life seemed to begin in 1856, when the 23-year-old walked into the Pinkerton National Detective Agency offices in Chicago and declared that she would like to become a detective.

Pinkerton was named for and run by Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant who worked as a deputy sheriff and for the Chicago police department. In the 1850s, he opened a private agency that soon had offices in several major cities. The Pinkerton name became renowned for its diligent approach to complicated matters that perplexed local law enforcement.

Pinkerton had high standards, but he was also prey to the gender biases of the era. Female police officers or detectives were virtually unheard of at the time, and Pinkerton assumed the young woman in front of him—whom he later described as “slender, graceful in her movements, and perfectly self-possessed in her manner” with “eyes filled with fire”—was looking for secretarial work.

Warne corrected him. She pointed out that he had placed an ad looking for new hires and that she had come to Pinkerton for the express purpose of becoming a private detective. She explained that his force lacked a key component when it came to gathering intelligence—being able to assume the role of a woman’s confidante. By ingratiating herself, she said, she would be likely to discover information about crimes plotted by husbands, who tended to make their wives privy to schemes that involved enriching the family’s coffers. And she would also be able to take advantage of the fact that men tended to brag when women were around.

Pinkerton was not wholly convinced. It took several meetings with Warne before he decided to ignore convention and hire her. Later, Pinkerton would describe her as one of the five best agents he had ever employed.

A compelling dossier of cases followed. In 1858, Warne was tasked with obtaining a lead on a case involving the theft of $10,000 from the Adams Express Company railroad. The agency suspected a man named Nathan Maroney, the manager of the company’s Montgomery, Alabama, offices, since he was believed to be the last employee to see the money before it disappeared. Warne was dispatched to Montgomery, and when she arrived, she quickly charmed Mrs. Maroney. She soon divulged that her husband had not only taken the cash, but that she knew where to find it—hidden in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Nathan Maroney was convicted, and all but a few hundred dollars recovered.

On another occasion, Warne thwarted a plot to poison a wealthy Captain Sumner by posing as a fortune teller. Pinkerton rented out a space for her to ply her trade—which she quickly learned from books on the subject—and hosted Sumner's sister, Annie Thayer. Thayer was impressed by Warne's knowledge of her life, which had been prepared by the Pinkterton agents. Trusting that Warne had a real gift for divination, she eventually disclosed that she was under the direction of a lover named Mr. Pattmore to assist in the murder of Pattmore's wife and her own brother, Captain Sumner, so they could enjoy his fortune. (Pattmore was convicted of his wife's murder and spent 10 years in prison; the pair were caught before they could murder Sumner.)

Warne’s success in these efforts was due in large part to her demeanor, which Pinkerton would later describe as being warm and affable. People seemed eager to share secrets with her, even if those secrets were incriminating. But part of it was also Warne’s unique place among law enforcement officials. Early on, no one could suspect her of being a detective because it was considered impossible that a woman would be occupying that role.

As successful as Warne was, it was her efforts on behalf of Abraham Lincoln that became the highlight of her career.

Shortly before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, railroad magnate and Lincoln ally Samuel Morse Felton realized that the secessionists stirring against the new president were growing more dangerous by the minute. There were even rumors they might interfere with railroads to and from Washington to disrupt Lincoln's entry into office. In the absence of a Secret Service, which had yet to be conceived, Felton wrote to Pinkerton for assistance.

Though Felton didn’t yet know it, the secessionists planned on more than just blocking Lincoln’s travels from Springfield, Illinois: Lincoln was also receiving death threats involving everything from a knife to a spider-filled dumpling.

Felton and Pinkerton met in Philadelphia. Pinkerton advised that any true threat against the president was likely to materialize in Baltimore, the only major slaveholding city on Lincoln's itinerary aside from Washington, as well as an inevitable stop—all potential routes to the inauguration involved a stop there. Worse, Lincoln planned to arrive at one train station and then depart from another one mile away. There would be ample opportunity for a person or persons to commit an assault.

Pinkerton dispatched several agents to investigate, including Warne, who posed as a southern ally complete with an accent and a cockade, or a knot of ribbons that signaled Southern sympathies. It was a routine she had already practiced during the train robbery investigation. Pinkerton himself also went to Baltimore to investigate, posing as a stockbroker.

Collectively, the Pinkerton agents assembled a portrait of conspirators who were planning to intercept Lincoln as he changed trains in the city. The plan had been concocted by one Cypriano Ferrandini, who transferred his love of Italian revolution to the Southern cause. The idea was that a mob would surround Lincoln while others created a distraction to draw police away from the scene. Beforehand, the secessionists would draw ballots to determine who would shoot Lincoln dead. (In fact, several men drew the fatal red ballot in a dark room, fulfilling Ferrandini’s desire to have several would-be assassins hunting for Lincoln during the stopover.)

Lincoln, when he was debriefed on the plot, was reticent to change his touring plans. Eventually, though, he relented. Pinkerton formulated a scheme, one that involved bringing Lincoln to Baltimore in advance of his expected arrival and cutting off telegram lines so his would-be assassins couldn’t be easily tipped off. Covering Lincoln in a shawl and declaring him frail, Warne, Pinkerton, and two others—Pinkerton lieutenant George Bangs and Lincoln's friend Ward Lamon—got him on board the train in Philadelphia without incident.

As they traveled through the night, Warne gripped a pistol she carried, wondering if Lincoln’s rivals would force her to use it.

When they got to Baltimore, Warne, no longer needed to pose as a sibling, departed. Thanks to a noise ordinance, the sleeper car had to be unhitched from the train and carried by horse through the city until it reached the station with the Washington-bound train. Once there, the men spent a few nervous hours inside their sleeper car waiting for the connecting train. But Lincoln stayed unnoticed. The president-elect went on to his eventual destination of Washington, safe for the moment.

The next day, Lincoln asked the agents to visit him so he could thank them, including Warne, for protecting him. “I am sensible, ma’am, of having put you in some inconvenience—not to speak of placing you in danger,” he told her.

Warne continued to work for Pinkerton through the Civil War, sometimes posing with Allan Pinkerton as a couple. Pinkerton himself was appointed head of the Union Intelligence Service, the forerunner of the Secret Service, and gathered information during the Civil War. Warne eventually became superintendent of the agency’s bureau for women, training a growing number of female detectives.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t live to see the ranks continue to expand. Warne died in 1868 at the age of 35 (or perhaps 38) of pneumonia. It’s a testament to her mysterious background that she wasn't delivered back to family, if indeed Pinkerton knew of any. Instead, she was buried in Pinkerton’s family plot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Today, her headstone is worn to the point that it reads “Kate Warn.” If time winds up taking more of her name from her final resting place, there’s little doubt that history will remember it in full.

Additional Sources: The Spy of the Rebellion.