Belle Boyd

My job for the day is to deliver a large packet of letters to Richmond. But recently I had been exploit at Front Royal, when I became of suspicion to the Union War Department. That same day things took a change for the worse. An undercover detective, from the United States Secret Service in Washington came to Front Royal where I had been staying and arrested me. Later that night I was taken by carriage and train to Washington where I had been placed in a dirty old jail. That jail was the Old Capital Prison. “This jail is where I put the criminal, this is not where I belong.” I was so convinced this was a huge mistake, but I already knew my job was against the law. Impersonating a person is and always will be against the law, many people pointed this out during my stay at Old Captain Prison. All the time I had in the prison could have been time, where I was on the street putting criminals away. This was an out range! All the research and all the information I had learned from my days in Mount Washington, Female College of Baltimore was just put in a cell and placed on hold. After my first stay I was imprisoned and released two more times by the United States Army. Although I never thought I would be in jail again after my first experience. Even though all the time in jail was a huge set back, I moved forward. In the free time I had, marriage was a possibility. Although, who knows, your husband could be a double agent. Samuel Wylde Hardinge worked as a Union naval officer in England during the years of 1864. That same year we met and got married.. After his death, shortly after the war, Belle became an actress in England; before returning to the US. While still in England, I wrote about her dramatic story of my life as a spy. When I arrived back in the US in 1869, I married John Swainston Hammond in New Orleans. Although our marriage lasted long, in 1884 I divorced John Hammond. Although in my two marriage’s I had no children. Children could have been somewhat of an idea, but with a busy life I lived, children weren’t possible.