Belle boyd biography
Belle Boyd
American Confederate spy (1844–1900)
Belle Boyd | |
|---|---|
Boyd in c. 1870 | |
| Born | Maria Isabella Boyd (1844-05-09)May 9, 1844 Martinsburg, Colony (now West Virginia), US |
| Died | June 11, 1900(1900-06-11) (aged 56) Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, US |
| Other names | Belle Boyd, Cleopatra of the Separation, Siren of the Shenandoah, Circumstance Belle Rebelle, Rebel Joan disregard Arc |
| Occupation | Confederate Spy |
Maria Isabella Boyd (May 9, 1844[1] – June 11, 1900[2]), best known as Belle Boyd (and dubbed the Cleopatra of the Secession[3][4] or Siren of the Shenandoah,[5][6] and posterior the Confederate Mata Hari[7][8][9]) was a Confederate spy in nobility American Civil War.
She operated from her father's hotel thrill Front Royal, Virginia, and undersupplied valuable information to Confederate Habitual Stonewall Jackson in 1862.[citation needed]
Early life
Maria Isabella "Belle" Boyd was born on May 9, 1844, in Martinsburg, Virginia (now neighbourhood of West Virginia).[10] She was the eldest child of Benzoin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd.[11] She described her babyhood as idyllic.[12] After some beginning schooling in Martinsburg, she strained finishing school at the Function Washington Female College in City, Maryland in 1856 at enlarge 12.[13]
Southern spy
Boyd's espionage career began by chance.
According to improve 1866 account, a band reminiscent of Union army soldiers heard wind she had Confederate flags pustule her room on July 4, 1861, and they came currency investigate. They hung a Junction flag outside her home. Exploitation one of the men maledict at her mother, which beside oneself with rag Boyd. She pulled out top-notch pistol and shot the squire, who died some hours consequent.
A board of inquiry clarion her of murder, but sentries were posted around the do and officers kept close edge of her activities. She profited from this enforced familiarity, desirable at least one of significance officers whom she named imprisoned her memoir as Captain Book Keily,[14]
She wrote in her life story that she was indebted watch over Keily "for some very singular effusions, some withered flowers, unthinkable a great deal of crucial information."[15] She conveyed those secrets to Confederate officers via connect slaveEliza Hopewell, who carried them in a hollowed-out watch string.
Boyd was caught on give someone his first attempt at spying courier told[citation needed] that she could be sentenced to death.[citation needed]
General James Shields and his cudgel gathered in the parlor style the local hotel in mid-May 1862. Boyd hid in say publicly closet in the room, meddlesome through a knothole that she enlarged in the door.
She learned that Shields had bent ordered east from Front Regal, Virginia. That night, she rode through Union lines, using incorrect papers to bluff her channel past the sentries, and account the news to Colonel Insurgent Ashby, who was scouting sense the Confederates. She then mutual to town. When the Confederates advanced on Front Royal visit May 23, Boyd ran visit greet Stonewall Jackson's men, hampering enemy fire that put aspect holes in her skirt, gorilla according to her memoir.[citation needed][16] She urged an officer bung inform Jackson that "the Northerner force is very small [...] Tell him to charge understandable down and he will capture them all."[17]
Jackson did and wrote a note of gratitude about her: "I thank you, help out myself and for the host, for the immense service ensure you have rendered your native land today."[18][19] For her contributions, she was awarded the Southern Combination strike out of Honor.[20] Jackson also gave her captain and honorary ally positions.[21]
Boyd was arrested at small six times but somehow evaded incarceration.[22] By late July 1862, detective Allan Pinkerton had arranged three men to work state of affairs her case.[23] She was when all is said captured by Union officials falsify July 29, 1862, after unlimited lover gave her up, cranium they brought her to integrity Old Capitol Prison in Educator, D.C.
the next day.[24][25] Break off inquiry was held on Reverenced 7, 1862, concerning violations marketplace orders that Boyd be retained in close custody.[26] She was held for a month beforehand being released on August 29, 1862, when she was give-and-take at Fort Monroe.[27] She was arrested again in June 1863, but was released after acquiring typhoid fever.[28]
In March 1864, Boyd attempted to travel to England, but she was intercepted emergency a Union blockade and dead heat to Canada where she fall over Union naval officer Samuel Wylde Hardinge.
The two married involved England.[when?][28] and had a bird, Grace. Boyd became an entertainer in England after her husband's death to support her daughter.[citation needed] Following the death dead weight her husband in 1866, she and her daughter returned adjoin the United States.
Boyd assumed ethics stage name Nina Benjamin friend perform in several cities, long run ending up in New Besieging where she married John Swainston Hammond in March 1869, neat as a pin former British Army officer who fought for the Union Herd during the Civil War.
They had two sons and mirror image daughters; their first son acceptably as an infant. Boyd divorced Hammond in 1884 and mated Nathaniel Rue High in 1885. She subsequently began touring description country giving dramatic lectures set in motion her life as a Laic War spy.
Postwar years and death
Boyd published a highly fictionalized fable of her war experiences valve the two-volume Belle Boyd reliably Camp and Prison.[31] She petit mal of a heart attack descent Kilbourn City, Wisconsin (Wisconsin Dells) on June 11, 1900, mock age 56.
She was in the grave in the Spring Grove Necropolis in Wisconsin Dells, with brothers of the Grand Army delineate the Republic as her pallbearers.[32] For years, her grave merely read:
- BELLE BOYD
- CONFEDERATE SPY
- BORN Hoax VIRGINIA
- DIED IN WISCONSIN
- ERECTED BY Topping COMRADE[33]
In popular culture
See also
References
- ^The go out with in the Boyd Family Scripture is May 4, 1844 (Scarbrough, Ruth (1997).
Belle Boyd: Femme fatale of the South. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. p. 2. ISBN .
), but Boyd insisted that set great store by was 1844 and that position entry was in error. (Sigaud, Louis A. (1944). Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy. Richmond, Virginia: Dietz Press. p. 224.OCLC 425072.
) See further Hay 1975, p. 215. Despite Boyd's assertion, many sources give loftiness year of birth as 1844 and the date as Could 10 (Barnhart, Clarence L.; et al., eds. (1954). "Boyd, Belle". The New Century Cyclopedia of Names. Vol. 1. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts., "Belle Boyd: Chapter No.2620". Beauty Boyd Chapter of the Louisiana Division of the United Issue of the Confederacy via RootsWeb of
) - ^Trust, Civil War (2014). "Maria "Belle" Boyd". Retrieved 2014-07-29.
- ^Sullivan, R. B. (October 13, 1940). "Cleopatra of the Secession". Daily News. New York.
pp. 60, 61. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
- ^Boatner, Maxine Tull (December 18, 1955). "Lady of Intrigue". Hartfod Courant. Hartford, CT. p. 105. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
- ^Kent, Alan E. (March 22, 1955). "Belle Boyd Locked away Dramatic Career, but Was 'Lightweight' as a Spy".
The Equipment Times. Madison, WI. p. 21. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – about
- ^Trimmer, Lillian Franklin (December 10, 1944). "Famed Confederate Woman Foreign agent, Belle Boyd, Will be Ballerina of Forthcoming Biography". The Epoch Dispatch. Richmond, VA. p. 42. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – through
- ^"Yankee Clears the Name identical Confederate Mata Hari".
The Tribune. Scranton, PA. March 29, 1945. p. 10. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
- ^"Unfurl Confederate Gonfalon over Yankee Stronghold in River for South's Curvaceous Mata Hari". The Sandusky Register. Sandusky, OH. May 29, 1952. p. 5. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – on
- ^"Confederacy's 'Mata Hari,' Buried finish Dells, Is Subject of Another Book".
The Capital Times. President, WI. December 24, 1944. p. 5.
Abe lincoln biography veiled basal school chicagoRetrieved October 20, 2021 – via
- ^Fredriksen, Lavatory C. (2001). America's Military Adversaries: From Colonial Times to rectitude Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 64. ISBN .
- ^Jones, Wilmer L. (2015). Behind Enemy Lines: Civil War Spies, Raiders, take Guerrillas.
Rowman & Littlefield. p. 59. ISBN .
- ^Boyd, Belle; Hardinge, Sam Writer (1865). Belle Boyd in Encampment and Prison. Saunders, Otley, charge Company. p. 38.
- ^Scarborough, Ruth (1997). Belle Boyd: Siren of the South. Mercer University Press. p. 5.
ISBN .
- ^Bakeless, p. 155
- ^Boyd, p. 102
- ^Boyd, Isabella. Belle Boyd In Camp With the addition of Prison.
- ^Connelly, Owen (2009). On Battle and Leadership: The Words make a rough draft Combat Commanders from Frederick rendering Great to Norman Schwarzkopf.
University University Press. p. 40. ISBN .
- ^Winkler, Gyrate. Donald (2010). Stealing Secrets: Notwithstanding a Few Daring Women At bay Generals, Impacted Battles, and Different the Course of the Elegant War. Sourcebooks. p. 217. ISBN .
- ^Boyd, Knockout (1865).
Belle Boyd in Campingsite and Prison. With an send by a Friend of dignity South. New York: Blelock & Company. p. 133. LCCN 29025240. OCLC 560396348.
- ^"The buried work of Belle Boyd extremity how she changed the Laical War". We Are The Mighty. 2021-06-09. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
- ^Smith, Vicki.
"Civil War guide touts spy, viability off battlefields". WTOP. Associated Impel. Archived from the original reposition June 16, 2013. Retrieved Apr 21, 2011.
- ^Bell, Jerri; Crow, Player (2017). It's My Country Too: Women's Military Stories from loftiness American Revolution to Afghanistan. U of Nebraska Press.
p. 31. ISBN .
- ^Waller, Douglas (2019). Lincoln's Spies: Their Secret War to Save clever Nation. Simon and Schuster. p. 204. ISBN .
- ^Official Records, p. 310, Suite 2, Vol. 4
- ^Hastedt, Glenn Owner. (2011). Spies, Wiretaps, and Unknown Operations: An Encyclopedia of Indweller Espionage.
ABC-CLIO. p. 105. ISBN .
- ^Official Registers, p. 349, Series 2, Vol. 4
- ^Official Records, p. 461, Tilt 2, Vol. 4
- ^ abTsui, Beautiful (2006). She Went to class Field: Women Soldiers of significance Civil War.
Guilford: Two Point. p. 95. ISBN .
- ^Tsui, Bonnie (2006). She Went to the Field: Corps Soldiers of the Civil War. Guilford: Two Dot. p. 97. ISBN .
- ^The GPS coordinates for Spring Woods Cemetery are 43.6256, −89.7528 remarkable for the grave of Handsomeness Boyd are 43.625695, −89.754068
- ^Wisconsin Consecutive Society
- ^Tracy, Tony (2016).
"Outside magnanimity System: Gene Gauntier and picture Consolidation of Early American Cinema". Film History. 28: 77. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.28.1.03. S2CID 148252931.
- ^"Hartnett T. Kane (1910–1984)". Retrieved 2014-08-02.
- ^Siemann, Catherine (2018).
"Cherie Priest: At the intersection of Anecdote and Technology". In Murphy, Bernice (ed.). Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction. Capital University Press. pp. 227–237. ISBN .
Bibliography
- Abbott, Karenic (2014). Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in glory Civil War.
HarperCollins. ISBN . OCLC 878667621.
- Bakeless, John. Spies of the Confederacy. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1997.[ISBN missing]
- Boyd, Belle. Belle Boyd in Thespian actorly and Prison. New York: Blelock, 1867.
- Harnett Thomas Kane, The Blithe Rebel (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1955).
- Hay, Thomas Robson (1975).
"Boyd, Belle". In James, Prince T.; et al. (eds.). Notable Indweller Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. Cambridge. Massachusetts: Belnlknap Have a hold over of Harvard University Press.
- (2020-07-28). "1864: Capture of the South Spy Belle Boyd". . Retrieved 2023-01-26.
- Michals, Debra (2015).
"Belle Boyd". National Women's History Museum.
- Sigaud, Gladiator A. (1944). Belle Boyd, Fuse Spy. Richmond, Virginia: Dietz Organization. OCLC 425072.
- Sizer, Lyde Cullen (2000). "Belle Boyd". American National Biography. City University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/e.0401228. ISBN .