The Spy Who Died in the Dells
Hero of the Confederacy
Belle Boyd
Pencil sketch of Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy buried in Wisconsin. View the original source document: WHI 46160
After the Civil War Belle Boyd was as famous as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are today. Boyd was a Virginia teenager when the war broke out and her sympathies naturally lay with her homeland. Union troops soon occupied her town and tried to raise the stars and stripes over the Boyd family home. Her mother protested, and when one of the soldiers treated her rudely, 17-year-old Belle shot him dead.
Becoming a Spy
Her beauty and prowess allowed her to repeatedly gain the confidence of Union officers, whom she then successfully betrayed to the Confederates. She was captured by federal troops and imprisoned several times and even sent into exile. But Belle managed to carry on her espionage. All the while her fame increased, until she became a symbol of the Confederacy akin to how Wisconsin's war eagle Old Abe was a symbol of the Union. You can read her memoirs, written when she was only twenty-one, "Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison" online.
When the war was ending Boyd took to the stage. Over the next three decades she married, outlived or escaped from various husbands and traveled the nation as a celebrity. While performing in Wisconsin in 1900 she died and was buried in Wisconsin Dells.
Learn More
See more about Belle Boyd.