Recovered Belle Boyd Confederate flag
sold for $50,000 at auction in Dallas

Northern newspapers described her as “The Siren of the Shenandoah” and the “Cleopatra of the Secession.”

Isabella Maria Boyd – more commonly known as Belle Boyd – was one of the Civil War’s most colorful characters. An ardent Southern patriot, the Virginia-born Boyd used her feminine wiles in the service of the Confederacy during the first two years of the War before being discovered and arrested as a spy after Union troops overran parts of Virginia.

When Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s troops occupied Front Royal, Va., and prepared to defend it in May 1862, Boyd supplied the general with valuable information about Union troop strength and reportedly even helped Jackson to plan his battle strategy. According to her memoirs, she played a prominent role in the fight, appearing on the front lines to cheer and encourage the Confederate soldiers.

When Federal troops took control of Front Royal that summer, Belle was quite the celebrity and it was then that she encountered a young Union captain named Frederick d’Hauteville. The precise nature of their relationship remains the subject of speculation, but she presented Frederick with a Confederate flag, an event recorded both in d’Hauteville’s own journal and in a letter to his wife.

The flag, likely hand-made by Boyd, showed up this fall in Dallas and was sold in September for $50,000 at Heritage Auctions. The five-foot by three-foot flag, which survived under remarkable circumstances, was recently discovered after being locked away for more than a century in Switzerland following the Civil War.

Boyd was arrested shortly after giving the flag to d’Hauteville on orders from U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. However, she was promptly exchanged and apparently returned to her old ways as she was rearrested the following year. She escaped custody and attempted to flee the country on a blockade-running vessel, but the ship was interdicted by a Union warship. Belle again was placed in custody, but her feminine charms were not lost on the vessel’s commander, who promptly fell in love with and proposed marriage. The two escaped together and traveled to England where Boyd would sit out the rest of the War.

D’Hauteville, who came from a wealthy family with roots in both the U.S. and Europe, left the army in 1863 and eventually moved to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life.

Belle’s flag itself has a circle of 11 stars in the canton on one side and a single star on the other. The circular pattern is typical of Confederate First National flags and the number of stars implies that this side of the flag was completed between July and the end of November 1861 when the Confederate states numbered 11. The 11-star side is actually the back of the flag, which suggests that the single star side was completed first.

This possibly was an expression of defiance by the maker as the earliest flag of the Republic of Texas had featured a single star, widely considered a symbol of independence.

Heritage Auctions is the largest auction house founded in the United States and the world’s third largest, with annual sales of more than $800 million and 950,000-plus online bidder members.