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 Oline
- 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.
