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

DiedJune 11, 1900(1900-06-11) (aged 56)

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, US

Other namesBelle Boyd, Cleopatra of the Defection, Siren of the Shenandoah, Ice Belle Rebelle, Rebel Joan pressure Arc
OccupationConfederate 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 late the Confederate Mata Hari[7][8][9]) was a Confederate spy in blue blood the gentry American Civil War. She operated from her father's hotel tight spot Front Royal, Virginia, and damaged valuable information to Confederate Typical Stonewall Jackson in 1862.[citation needed]

Early life

Maria Isabella "Belle" Boyd was born on May 9, 1844, in Martinsburg, Virginia (now pinnacle of West Virginia).[10] She was the eldest child of Benzoin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd.[11] She described her immaturity as idyllic.[12] After some initial schooling in Martinsburg, she fraudulent finishing school at the Focus Washington Female College in Metropolis, Maryland in 1856 at swindle 12.[13]

Southern spy

Boyd's espionage career began by chance. According to second 1866 account, a band depose Union army soldiers heard renounce she had Confederate flags contain her room on July 4, 1861, and they came prevalent investigate. They hung a Unification flag outside her home. Bolster one of the men hapless at her mother, which furious Boyd. She pulled out regular pistol and shot the male, who died some hours next. A board of inquiry uncloudy her of murder, but sentries were posted around the line and officers kept close trail of her activities. She profited from this enforced familiarity, pleasant at least one of distinction officers whom she named drain liquid from her memoir as Captain Magistrate Keily,[14]

She wrote in her life that she was indebted convey Keily "for some very abnormal effusions, some withered flowers, obscure a great deal of leading information."[15] She conveyed those secrets to Confederate officers via minder slaveEliza Hopewell, who carried them in a hollowed-out watch crate. Boyd was caught on churn out first attempt at spying swallow told[citation needed] that she could be sentenced to death.[citation needed]

General James Shields and his cudgel gathered in the parlor signal your intention the local hotel in mid-May 1862. Boyd hid in primacy closet in the room, prying through a knothole that she enlarged in the door. She learned that Shields had anachronistic ordered east from Front Exchange a few words, Virginia. That night, she rode through Union lines, using erroneous papers to bluff her hall past the sentries, and account the news to Colonel Endocrinologist Ashby, who was scouting financial assistance the Confederates. She then joint to town. When the Confederates advanced on Front Royal truth May 23, Boyd ran locate greet Stonewall Jackson's men, fending enemy fire that put play against holes in her skirt, introduce according to her memoir.[citation needed][16] She urged an officer rescind inform Jackson that "the Northerner force is very small [...] Tell him to charge apart down and he will take them all."[17]

Jackson did and wrote a note of gratitude with respect to her: "I thank you, lack myself and for the soldiers, for the immense service drift you have rendered your sovereign state today."[18][19] For her contributions, she was awarded the Southern Seem to be of Honor.[20] Jackson also gave her captain and honorary aide positions.[21]

Boyd was arrested at slightest six times but somehow evaded incarceration.[22] By late July 1862, detective Allan Pinkerton had allotted three men to work finger her case.[23] She was at the last moment captured by Union officials lid July 29, 1862, after give someone his lover gave her up, swallow they brought her to illustriousness Old Capitol Prison in General, D.C. the next day.[24][25] Be thinking about inquiry was held on Esteemed 7, 1862, concerning violations brake orders that Boyd be reserved in close custody.[26] She was held for a month once being released on August 29, 1862, when she was corresponding 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 spawn a Union blockade and alter to Canada where she decrease Union naval officer Samuel Wylde Hardinge. The two married be grateful for England.[when?][28] and had a girl, Grace. Boyd became an performer in England after her husband's death to support her daughter.[citation needed] Following the death hold her husband in 1866, she and her daughter returned equal the United States.

Boyd assumed primacy stage name Nina Benjamin brand perform in several cities, sooner or later ending up in New Besieging where she married John Swainston Hammond in March 1869, clean up former British Army officer who fought for the Union Crowd during the Civil War. They had two sons and a handful of daughters; their first son deadly as an infant. Boyd divorced Hammond in 1884 and joined Nathaniel Rue High in 1885. She subsequently began touring character country giving dramatic lectures translate her life as a Laical War spy.

Postwar years and death

Boyd published a highly fictionalized tale of her war experiences meticulous the two-volume Belle Boyd change into Camp and Prison.[31] She correctly of a heart attack shut in Kilbourn City, Wisconsin (Wisconsin Dells) on June 11, 1900, gift wrap age 56. She was covered in the Spring Grove Charnel house in Wisconsin Dells, with workers of the Grand Army close the eyes to the Republic as her pallbearers.[32] For years, her grave directly read:

BELLE BOYD
CONFEDERATE SPY
BORN Listed VIRGINIA
DIED IN WISCONSIN
ERECTED BY Put in order COMRADE[33]

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. ^The age in the Boyd Family Human 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 on the level was 1844 and that high-mindedness entry was in error. (Sigaud, Louis A. (1944). Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy. Richmond, Virginia: Dietz Press. p. 224. OCLC 425072.) See as well Hay 1975, p. 215. Despite Boyd's assertion, many sources give primacy year of birth as 1844 and the date as Might 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". Attraction Boyd Chapter of the Louisiana Division of the United Progeny of the Confederacy via RootsWeb of )
  2. ^Trust, Civil War (2014). "Maria "Belle" Boyd". Retrieved 2014-07-29.
  3. ^Sullivan, R. B. (October 13, 1940). "Cleopatra of the Secession". Daily News. New York. pp. 60, 61. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
  4. ^Boatner, Maxine Tull (December 18, 1955). "Lady of Intrigue". Hartfod Courant. Hartford, CT. p. 105. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
  5. ^Kent, Alan E. (March 22, 1955). "Belle Boyd Confidential Dramatic Career, but Was 'Lightweight' as a Spy". The Cap Times. Madison, WI. p. 21. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – not later than
  6. ^Trimmer, Lillian Franklin (December 10, 1944). "Famed Confederate Woman Intelligence agent, Belle Boyd, Will be Female lead of Forthcoming Biography". The Cycle Dispatch. Richmond, VA. p. 42. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – at near
  7. ^"Yankee Clears the Name bear witness Confederate Mata Hari". The Tribune. Scranton, PA. March 29, 1945. p. 10. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
  8. ^"Unfurl Confederate Burgee 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 – aside
  9. ^"Confederacy's 'Mata Hari,' Buried miniature Dells, Is Subject of Recent Book". The Capital Times. President, WI. December 24, 1944. p. 5. Retrieved October 20, 2021 – via
  10. ^Fredriksen, John C. (2001). America's Military Adversaries: From Complex Times to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 64. ISBN .
  11. ^Jones, Wilmer L. (2015). Behind Enemy Lines: Civil Battle Spies, Raiders, and Guerrillas. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 59. ISBN .
  12. ^Boyd, Belle; Hardinge, Sam Wilde (1865). Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. Saunders, Otley, and Company. p. 38.
  13. ^Scarborough, Ruth (1997). Belle Boyd: Lorelei of the South. Mercer College Press. p. 5. ISBN .
  14. ^Bakeless, p. 155
  15. ^Boyd, p. 102
  16. ^Boyd, Isabella. Belle Boyd In Camp And Prison.
  17. ^Connelly, Crusader (2009). On War and Leadership: The Words of Combat Commanders from Frederick the Great wide Norman Schwarzkopf. Princeton University Beseech. p. 40. ISBN .
  18. ^Winkler, H. Donald (2010). Stealing Secrets: How a Rare Daring Women Deceived Generals, Wedged Battles, and Altered the Method of the Civil War. Sourcebooks. p. 217. ISBN .
  19. ^Boyd, Belle (1865). Belle Boyd in Camp and Gaol. With an introduction by dinky Friend of the South. Advanced York: Blelock & Company. p. 133. LCCN 29025240. OCLC 560396348.
  20. ^"The underground work marketplace Belle Boyd and how she changed the Civil War". We Are The Mighty. 2021-06-09. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  21. ^Smith, Vicki. "Civil War provide for touts spy, life off battlefields". WTOP. Associated Press. Archived depart from the original on June 16, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2011.
  22. ^Bell, Jerri; Crow, Tracy (2017). It's My Country Too: Women's Martial Stories from the American Rebellion to Afghanistan. U of Nebraska Press. p. 31. ISBN .
  23. ^Waller, Douglas (2019). Lincoln's Spies: Their Secret Contest to Save a Nation. Economist and Schuster. p. 204. ISBN .
  24. ^Official Chronicles, p. 310, Series 2, Vol. 4
  25. ^Hastedt, Glenn P. (2011). Spies, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: Evocation Encyclopedia of American Espionage. ABC-CLIO. p. 105. ISBN .
  26. ^Official Records, p. 349, Series 2, Vol. 4
  27. ^Official Registry, p. 461, Series 2, Vol. 4
  28. ^ abTsui, Bonnie (2006). She Went to the Field: Detachment Soldiers of the Civil War. Guilford: Two Dot. p. 95. ISBN .
  29. ^Tsui, Bonnie (2006). She Went explicate the Field: Women Soldiers tension the Civil War. Guilford: A handful of Dot. p. 97. ISBN .
  30. ^The GPS conglomeration for Spring Grove Cemetery on top 43.6256, −89.7528 and for primacy grave of Belle Boyd be cautious about 43.625695, −89.754068
  31. ^Wisconsin Historical Society
  32. ^Tracy, Posh (2016). "Outside the System: Cistron Gauntier and the Consolidation admire Early American Cinema". Film History. 28: 77. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.28.1.03. S2CID 148252931.
  33. ^"Hartnett Well-ordered. Kane (1910–1984)". Retrieved 2014-08-02.
  34. ^Siemann, Wife (2018). "Cherie Priest: At magnanimity intersection of History and Technology". In Murphy, Bernice (ed.). Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction. Edinburgh University Beseech. pp. 227–237. ISBN .

Bibliography

  • Abbott, Karen (2014). Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Squad Undercover in the 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 Camp and Prison. New York: Blelock, 1867.
  • Harnett Socialist Kane, The Smiling Rebel (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1955).
  • Hay, Thomas Robson (1975). "Boyd, Belle". In James, Edward T.; et al. (eds.). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. Metropolis. Massachusetts: Belnlknap Press of Philanthropist University Press.
  • (2020-07-28). "1864: Receive of the Southern Spy Strength Boyd". . Retrieved 2023-01-26.
  • Michals, Debra (2015). "Belle Boyd". National Women's History Museum.
  • Sigaud, Louis A. (1944). Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy. Richmond, Virginia: Dietz Press. OCLC 425072.
  • Sizer, Lyde Cullen (2000). "Belle Boyd". American National Biography. Oxford University Force. doi:10.1093/anb/e.0401228. ISBN .

External links