ISABELLA MARIA BOYD ,CONFEDERATE SPY BORN 1844 MAY 9 - 1900 JUNE 11
ISABELLA MARIA BOYD ,CONFEDERATE SPY BORN 1844 MAY 9 - 1900 JUNE 11 Isabella Maria Boyd (May 9, 1844[1] – June 11, 1900[2]), best known as Belle Boyd (or as Cleopatra of the Secession[citation needed] or Siren of the Shenandoah[citation needed]), was a Confederate spy in the American Civil War. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson in 1862. Early life Isabella Maria Boyd was born on May 9, 1844 in Martinsburg, Virginia (now part of West Virginia).[3] She was the eldest child of Benjamin Reed and Mary Rebecca (Glenn) Boyd.[4] She described her childhood as idyllic.[5] After some preliminary schooling in Martinsburg, she attended finishing school at the Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1856 at age 12.[6] Southern spy Boyd's espionage career began by chance. According to her highly fictionalized 1866 account, a band of Union army soldiers heard that she ...