Belle Boyd

Living in Martinsburg, Virginia, Belle Boyd passed information on Union army activities in the Shenandoah area to General T. J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson). Belle Boyd was captured and imprisoned -- and released. Belle Boyd then went to England, followed by a Union officer, Capt. Samuel Hardinge, who had guarded her after an earlier capture. She married him, then in 1866 when he died, leaving her with a small daughter to support, she became an actress.

Belle Boyd later married John Swainston Hammond and moved to California, where she gave birth to a son. Fighting mental illness, she moved with Hammond to the Baltimore area, had three more sons. The family moved to Dallas, Texas, and she divorced Hammond and married a young actor, Nathaniel Rue High. In 1886 they moved to Ohio and Belle Boyd began to appear on stage in a Confederate uniform to talk about her time as a spy.

Belle Boyd died in Wisconsin, where she is buried.

Her book, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, is an embellished version of her exploits as a spy in the American Civil War.

• Belle Boyd: "Belle Boyd, Cleopatra of the Secession"
• Belle Boyd - from The Handbook of Texas Online
• La Belle Rebelle
• Belle Boyd Bibliography - an extensive list of books and articles available at the West Virginia State Archives Library
• Belle Boyd to Abraham Lincoln - Boyd writes to the President, offering to suppress the publication of her autobiography if he will release her imprisoned husband.

More women's history biographies, by name:

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P/Q | R | S | T | U/V | W | X/Y/Z