Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy

On the very day the Battle of Front Royal was fought, an eighteen year old woman turned this town into the stage for one of the most famous acts of espionage in the Civil War. Her name was Maria Isabella Boyd, known to history as Belle Boyd, and the newspapers would later call her the Cleopatra of the Secession. Belle was staying at her aunt's hotel in Front Royal when Union officers gathered next door to plan their movements.

According to the story she told, she pressed her ear to a knothole in a closet wall and listened as they discussed the strength and disposition of the Federal forces. Then, as Jackson's army approached on the twenty third of May, eighteen sixty two, she ran out across the open fields between the two armies, waving her bonnet, while Union rifle fire tore the hem of her dress and punched holes in her skirts. She reached a Confederate officer and delivered what she had learned.

Jackson later sent her a note of thanks, writing that he was grateful, for himself and for the army, for the immense service she had rendered her country that day. He is said to have made her an honorary aide de camp. Belle Boyd was arrested six times and imprisoned during the war, and after it she became an actress and toured telling her own story.