biography
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1833–93)
|
| biography:
| Actress and spy, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Of Spanish and French descent, she was raised in a frontier settlement with Indian children. She joined the New Orleans ‘Varieties’ (1851) and by 1852 had come to New York City where she gained some reputation as an actress. She joined a travelling show in Kentucky (1863) and, though secretly working for the Federal espionage branch, she pretended to be sympathetic to the South. This allowed her to move about and observe Confederate troop movements. During the Tullahoma, TN campaign (Jun 1863) she was caught with compromising papers on her, was court-martialled, and sentenced to be hanged, but was saved by the arrival of Union troops. To capitalize on her notoriety, she began to lecture wearing a Federal uniform. She eventually returned to acting, but her life was unhappy; she had been married three times, and she killed herself by taking an overdose of morphine. |
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