CHARACTER NAME: Maria Isabella
Boyd
BIRTH PLACE: Martinsburg,
Virginia
BIRTH DATE: May 4, 1844
EDUCATION: Mount Washington
Female College of Baltimore, age 12 to 16.
FAMILY BACKGROUND: Belle was
from a typical Southern family. Father Ben was a store merchant and
grocer. Several brothers died before the Civil War. Belle's father joined
the Virginia Cavalry. Belle was left with her sister Mary Jane, age
10, her brother Bill, age 4, her mother and grandmother.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
1861. Soon after the start of the Civil War, Belle was organizing parties to visit the troops. At that time she also shot and killed a Union soldier who had pushed her mother. She was acquitted of the crime. Shortly thereafter, she became a courier for Generals Beauregarde and Jackson, carrying information, delivering medical supplies and confiscating weapons. Belle made a few heroic rides through battle fields in order to get her "secrets" across the lines to the South.
During the War she was imprisoned three times. In 1862 she was imprisoned in old Carroll Prison in Washington, D.C. for one month.
In 1864 she went to England carrying information for the confederates. There she married a Union naval officer.
PLACE OF DEATH: Kilbourne
City, Wisconsin now known as Wisconsin Dells,Wisconsin. She is buried
in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Wisconsin Dells.
DATE OF DEATH: 1900
WEB SITES:
- Timelines of the Civil War:
- The History Place U.S. Civil War 1861-1865
- Library of Congress American Memory Time Line of the Civil War, 1861-1865
- Belle Boyd biography from The Home of the Civil War
- The Belle Boyd House
- "Remember The Ladies" Spies
- Belle Boyd biography from Women in American History
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