Belle Boyd was born on May, 4th. 1844 in Martinsburg, Virginia. Bella was born with the name of Isabella Marie Boyd by her parents Maria Isabella Boyd and Benjamin Reed. Both of her parents were store owners and her father was a tobacco plantation owner. She was the eldest of her two siblings, Bill Boyd and Mary Rebecca Boyd. As a teenager everyone knew Belle as a fun-loving debutant. At the age of seventeen Belle became an expert at using secret codes and supplying information about the northern troop movements. On July, 4th. 1861 a group of union soldiers broke into her home with the intention on raising the US flag over her house. When one of the soldiers hit her mother, Belle got her fathers gun and killed him. From then on , no matter what Belle always protected her home, mother, father, and siblings from danger. Between 1856 and 1860 Belle began studying at Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore. After college Belle decided to take up an acting career because she loved to talk in front of an audience. Soon enough in 1867 Belle performed in New York City in an onstage production called, "The Honeymoon". A year later Belle gave up acting and joined a stock company in Ohio and Texas.