THE LOWE FAMILY LEGACY

Patriotism, Service, and the Woman

Who Became the Godmother of Edwards Air Force Base

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By Dr. Louis F. D’Elia

Custodian, Pancho Barnes Trust Estate

Patriotism in Her Blood

There is a thread running through Pancho Barnes’s life that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough, and it’s this: she was a deeply patriotic woman. Not the flag-waving, speech-making. Pancho would have found all that tedious. Hers was the kind of patriotism that shows up in what you do, not in what you say. It was in her bones, and it was, quite literally, in her blood.

Her grandfather, Professor Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, was one of the most remarkable figures of the Civil War era, a self-educated scientist, inventor, and balloonist who came from almost nothing. Lowe was born in 1832 in Jefferson Mills, New Hampshire, to a family of modest means. His father was the town cobbler. Lowe never completed his formal education, but the man had a mind that wouldn’t quit. By his mid-twenties he was touring the country demonstrating the science of lighter-than-air flight, and by his late twenties he was building one of the largest balloons ever constructed, with plans to fly it across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Civil War intervened. In the spring of 1861, just days after Fort Sumter, Lowe attempted a test flight from Cincinnati and was blown off course into South Carolina, where he was arrested as a Union spy. He talked his way out of it. The man could talk his way out of almost anything!  He then headed straight for Washington, D.C., with his balloon packed in crates and an idea that would change the course of military history.

In the summer of 1861, with the encouragement of Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, Lowe convinced President Abraham Lincoln that manned hydrogen balloons could provide aerial reconnaissance of Confederate troop positions. Think about that for a moment. The country was barely three months into a war that would nearly tear it apart, and a New Hampshire-born aeronaut talked his way into the White House and personally demonstrated for the President what a man floating five hundred feet above the National Mall could see with a telescope and a telegraph line. On June 18, 1861, Lowe sent the first telegram ever transmitted from the air, reporting to Lincoln that he could observe Union Army positions for fifty miles in every direction. Lincoln was sold on the spot.

He appointed Lowe Chief Aeronaut of the newly formed Union Army Balloon Corps, the very first military aviation organization in American history. Lowe never received a military commission. He served as a civilian because he loved his country, believed he could save lives and help preserve the Union, not because he wanted rank or a pension.

Lowe and his hand-picked team of aeronauts built seven specially constructed gas-filled silk balloons, developed portable hydrogen generators that could be transported by army wagons, and provided intelligence at Yorktown, Seven Pines, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and other major engagements of the Army of the Potomac. Confederate General Joseph Johnston complained that Lowe’s “infernal balloon” was making it nearly impossible to reposition troops without being observed. The Confederates posted a standing reward of one thousand dollars in cash (the equivalent of $480,000 in 2026) and a military promotion for any soldier who destroyed one of the observation balloons. Nobody ever collected. But they certainly tried. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum would later call Lowe “the most shot at man” of the Civil War, because every time he went up in that balloon he became an obvious target for Confederate sharpshooters and artillery.

Lowe was not content to operate only from land. Recognizing the strategic advantage of launching reconnaissance from the water, he applied for a vessel, a request that was referred to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who assigned him the USS George Washington Parke Custis, a coal barge built in the mid-1850s, about 122 feet long. Lowe directed naval carpenters at the Washington Navy Yard, then under the command of John A. Dahlgren, to remodel the barge for aerial service. The entire hull was covered with a flat deck that provided a large, level area where a balloon could be inflated and launched, with a gas-generating apparatus of Lowe’s own design and aeronauts’ equipment stowed beneath.

Early on the morning of November 10, 1861, the steamer Coeur de Lion towed the Custis out of the Navy Yard and down the Potomac. The next day, Lowe, accompanied by General Daniel E. Sickles and others, ascended in his trial balloon from the barge off Mattawomen Creek to observe Confederate forces on the Virginia shore some three miles away. He reported having a fine view of enemy campfires and watching the rebels constructing batteries at Freestone Point. What makes the Custis distinctive is that she was not just a ship somebody happened to launch a balloon from. She was specifically modified and dedicated to aerial operations: a flat flight deck, onboard gas generation, repair equipment. It’s the difference between parking your car in a field and calling it an airport versus actually building a runway. The Custis was the runway.

Under both FAA and international aviation definitions, balloons are classified as lighter-than-air aircraft, which means the George Washington Parke Custis was the first vessel in history purpose-built to launch aerial operations, a direct precursor to the aircraft carrier. The U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings has noted that today’s great carrier task forces must trace their heritage back to the Custis and the balloon pioneers of the Civil War. Pancho’s grandfather, in other words, didn’t just foreshadow one branch of American military air power. He foreshadowed both: Army aerial reconnaissance and naval aviation.

Because of his founding role in establishing military aerial reconnaissance for the United States, Thaddeus Lowe is widely recognized as the father of American military aviation, and, by direct extension, the grandfather of the United States Air Force. In an era when the Space Force traces its own lineage back through the Air Force, that heritage extends even further.

Pancho knew of her grandfather’s military achievements and was immensely proud of it. When the Air Force tried to take her ranch by eminent domain in the early 1950s and offered what she considered insultingly low compensation, one of the central arguments she brought before the court was simple and powerful: “My grandfather founded the United States Air Force.” The court found in her favor, providing her with fairer compensation for the loss of her property and business.

Thaddeus Lowe was not short on nerve or for his love of his country, and his granddaughter inherited every drop of it. It’s worth pausing on that connection, because it tells you something profound about who Pancho Barnes was and where her loyalties lay. Her grandfather had served the nation in its darkest hour, floating above battlefields in a silk balloon while soldiers on both sides shot at him. He did it not for rank. He never received a military commission. He did it because he believed he could save lives and help preserve the Union. That same impulse, that same fierce, practical, no-nonsense brand of patriotism, ran straight through Pancho. When she fed test pilots, kept their spirits up, gave them a place to unwind after days of risking their necks in experimental aircraft, she wasn’t just running a business. She was doing what the Lowe family had always done: serving the people who served the country.

The Godmother of Edwards

In the late 1960s, after the wounds of the eminent domain battle had begun to heal and Pancho reconnected with the Edwards community, the Air Force began referring to her as “the Mother of Edwards Air Force Base.” The officer’s dining room was rechristened the Pancho Barnes Room. In 1964, the Flight Test Center formally declared her “The First Citizen of Edwards.” These were genuine honors, and they were earned. But I’ve come to believe, after years of studying her life and managing the archive and Estate, that the title “Mother” doesn’t quite capture what Pancho actually was to Edwards and the men and women who served there.

A mother raises her children. She is present from birth. She shapes the institution from the inside, is part of its official structure, and has formal authority over it. Pancho did none of those things. She was never on the Air Force payroll. She held no rank. She sat on no committees. She was, technically, a civilian neighbor, a private businesswoman operating on her own land adjacent to the base. And yet her influence on the culture, morale, and human well-being of the people at Edwards was incalculable.

What Pancho was, I would argue, was the Godmother of Edwards Air Force Base. Think about what a godmother does. She is not the parent. She does not live under the same roof or answer to the same chain of command. But she takes responsibility, voluntarily, out of love and loyalty and for the welfare of people who are not, strictly speaking, hers to care for. She watches over them. She feeds them. She provides a refuge when the pressures of life become too much. She comforts them, keeps their spirits up. She celebrates their achievements and mourns their losses. She is the person you go to when the official structure can’t give you what you need.

That was Pancho to the letter. The men and women stationed at Edwards were living in one of the most remote, austere, and psychologically demanding assignments in the United States military. They were testing aircraft that had never been flown before, pushing machines and their own bodies to the edges of human endurance. Some of them died doing it. The ones who survived came back from those flights needing something the Air Force couldn’t provide through official channels: a cold drink, a hot meal, a dance floor, the sound of live music, the company of people who understood what they had just been through without needing it explained. Pancho gave them all of that, night after night, year after year. She did it on her own dime, on her own land, and on her own terms.

A mother is part of the family by definition. A godmother chooses the family, and the family chooses her back. That is exactly what happened between Pancho Barnes and the Edwards community. She chose them, they chose her, and the bond that formed was powerful enough to survive even the bitter years of the eminent domain fight and the destruction of the Club by fire. When the Air Force finally welcomed her back in the 1960s, it wasn’t because anyone had to. It was because they missed her. Because the base was not the same without her. Because a godmother is not someone you replace.

So yes, “Mother of Edwards” is the title history has given her, and I don’t quarrel with the deep affection behind it. But if you want a word that more precisely describes the role Pancho Barnes played in the life of that base and the people who served there, the word is Godmother. She took responsibility for an entire community’s morale, welfare, and spirit, not because it was her job, but because it was her nature. And that, in the end, may be the most Pancho Barnes thing about her.

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Dr. Louis F. D’Elia is the custodian of the Pancho Barnes Trust Estate and a Trustee of the Flight Test Historical Foundation at Edwards Air Force Base. He is co-author, with Dana Kilanowski and Michael D. Salazar, of the forthcoming book “Voices from the Happy Bottom Riding Club.”

© Pancho Barnes Trust Estate. All rights reserved.