Born: 1840 Died: 1873 Isabella Buchanan Edmondson was born in 1840 in Pontotoc, Mississippi to Mary Ann and Andrew Jackson Edmondson.  As fate would have it, shortly before the Civil War she moved with her family to a farm south of Memphis (the current airport area) and actually lived on the very same road that is now called Airways Boulevard.  Her family was strongly aligned to the Confederacy.  Two of the Edmondson sons enlisted and the whole family eventually found themselves in the eye of the storm.

The location of the Edmondson farm was between the Union and Confederate lines.  At the time this location would have been about 8 miles south / southeast of the Memphis city limits.  Given the opportunity and the family loyalty to the Confederate cause it was a natural that a young woman in her early twenties would try to help.  From approximately 1862 to 1864 she smuggled goods and information to the Southern encampments and even once met with Generals Forrest and Chalmers.  Letters, medicine and money were frequently secreted away in her bosom and petticoats.

So many trips through enemy lines eventually attracted attention.  A warrant was issued for Miss Edmondson's arrest.  Hearing of this she fled to a plantation in Clay County Mississippi where she lived out the duration of the war.  Her frequent entires into her diary read less like a spy novel than like the journal of an ordinary woman living in extraordinary circumstances.  Miss Edmondson never married thought she was engaged three times.  The first two gentlemen withdrew their proposals while the third proposal was still fresh at the time of her untimely and sudden death in 1873. 

Belle Edmondson was only 33 years old when she died.  She is buried with her parents at Memphis in Elmwood Cemetery.  Her memory lives on in books, especially her own, “Diary of Belle Edmondson“.

Belle Edmondson is listed here as a heroine not because of the side she took in the Civil War, but because of the manner in which she acted upon her convictions with courage.