Belle Boyd Room

Belle Boyd’s espionage career began by chance. On the fourth of July, 1861, a band of drunken Union soldiers broke into her home in Martinsburg, intent on raising the U.S. flag over the house. When one of them insulted her mother, Belle drew a pistol and killed him. A board of inquiry exonerated her, but sentries were posted around the house and officers kept close track of her activities. She profited from this enforced familiarity, charming at least one of the officers, Captain Daniel Keily, into revealing military secrets. “To him,” she wrote later, “I am indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and a great deal of important information.” Belle conveyed those secrets to Confederate officers via her slave, Eliza Hopewell, who carried the messages in a hollowed-out watchcase.

Then, one evening in mid-May, General James Shields and his staff conferred in the parlor of the local hotel. Belle hid upstairs, eavesdropping through a knothole in the floor. She learned that Shields had been ordered east, a move that would reduce the Union Army’s strength at Front Royal. That night, Belle rode through Union, using false papers to bluff her way past the sentries, and reported the news to Colonel Turner Ashby, who was scouting for the Confederates. She then returned to town. When the Confederates advanced on Front Royal on May 23, Belle ran to greet General Stonewall Jackson’s men. She urged an officer to inform Jackson that “the Yankee force is very small. Tell him to charge right down and he will catch them all.” Jackson did and that evening penned a note of gratitude to her: “I thank you, for myself and for the army, for the immense service that you have rendered your country today.”

She was awarded the Southern Cross of Honor.