Dubbed "La Belle Rebelle,"by a French war correspondent, she worked as a spy for the Confederacy and also served as a courier and scout for Col. John S. Mosby's guerrillas. Isabella �Belle� Boyd was born in Martinsburg, in what is now West Virginia. Like many women, she participated in many fund-raising activities at the outbreak of the Civil War to support the Confederacy. After Union troops occupied Martinsburg in 1861, however, Boyd was able to aid the Confederacy in ways that most women did not. Boyd operated as a Confederate spy, using her father�s hotel in Front Royal as a cover. She was especially useful during the Spring campaign of 1862, providing Generals Stonewall Jackson and Turner Ashby with valuable information. She had overheard Union officers discussing their plans to withdraw and destroy the town�s bridges. Jackson rewarded her loyalty by making her a captain and an honorary aide-de-camp. She continued to spy openly for the Confederate Army.

She was arrested on July 29, 1862 and held in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington DC for a month. Part of a prisoner exchange program, she was sent into exile to live with relatives upon her release. She was again arrested in June of 1863. Suffering from typhoid, she was released. Six months later the Confederacy sent her to Europe as a courier. She was to deliver letters from Jefferson Davis. The union captured the blockade runner before she could complete her mission. Union officer Samuel Hardinge, placed aboard as prize master, fell in love with Boyd. Following his discharge from the Navy for allowing the captain of the blockade runner to escape, they married in England in August 1864. Hardinge died in 1865, and Boyd continued to live in England until 1866. In England, she published her memoirs, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, and began a career as an actress and, later, a lecturer. She died in Wisconsin while touring on a speaking engagement.

Information obtained from several on-line sources