Born in 1840 in Pontotoc, Mississippi, Isabella “Belle” Buchanan Edmondson was the eighth child of Mary Ann Howard and Andrew Jackson Edmondson.1, 2 Her father was a veteran of the War of 1812 and worked in numerous capacities over the years, including “as a surveyor during the wild days surrounding the cession of Indian lands in the 1830s…, Receiver of Public Monies and Recorder of Deeds in Pontotoc…, (and) clerk of the Chancery Court in Marshall County in the late 1840s.” By 1856 he was a farmer by profession. Belle attended Franklin Female College, an independent private high school. The family moved to a farm on Holly Ford Road2 Shelby County, Tennessee, three miles north of the Mississippi state line and eight miles from Memphis just before the Civil War.
The Edmundson family were staunch Confederates. During the war, two of Belle’s brothers served in the Confederate army while she worked as a spy and smuggler.
The Edmondson farm was located in a no-man’s-land, with parties of scouts from both armies patrolling constantly. Union pickets covered the roads, while Confederate lines were less than thirty miles south. According to her diaries and letters, Belle Edmondson became adept at smuggling information and supplies for the Confederates, carrying letters and money in her bosom and medicine and supplies under her petticoats. Returning from one visit to Memphis, she made a skirt of gray uniform cloth, pinned hats inside her hoops, and tied a pair of boots under her skirts, counting on the fact that Union officers were reluctant to search women.3
Belle’s correspondence included Captain Thomas Henderson of the Henderson Scouts whose letters requested “copies of Northern newspapers, as well as Belle’s reports on enemy activities in Memphis, details about local skirmishes and conditions in the camps, and her reports of activities on nearby battle fronts.”4
Belle’s many trips back and forth across the lines attracted Federal attention. After a warrant was issued for her arrest in 1864 because of her spying and smuggling activities, she remained mostly in Mississippi, primarily at Waverly Plantation in Clay County. Belle died in July 1873, two days after announcing her engagement to a “Col. H.”
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- “Edmondson/Bray/Williams/Stidham Collection, 1834-1987” Catalog Record Summary, National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), Library of Congress. Accessed March 8, 2021.
- Belle Edmondson Diary, January-November, 1864. summary. Accessed March 9, 2021.
- Holly Ford Road is now Airways Boulevard. The farm location would now be on or adjacent to Memphis International Airport and about 2 miles southeast of Graceland.
- Magness, Perre. “Belle Edmondson” Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennessee Historical Society, March 1, 2018. Accessed March 8, 2021.
- Galbraith, Loretta, and William Galbraith. “A Lost Heroine of the Confederacy: the Diaries and Letters of Belle Edmondson.” Amazon. Book description, University Press of Mississippi, 1990.