Spies, Outlaws & Scoundrels

 

Virginia “Ginny” Moon (1844 - 1925)

    Virginia “Ginny” Moon was a Confederate spy during the Civil War who later on became a movie star in Hollywood. When the Civil War began, she was in school at the Oxford Female College in Oxford, Ohio. She asked the school to let her go home to her mother in Memphis, and when they refused, she shot all the stars out of the Union flag in the courtyard of the school. They let her go home. She helped the Confederacy by smuggling medical supplies and information to the rebels and even tried once to hide a rifle down her back. After the war ended, Ginny came back to Memphis and opened up a boarding house. In the 20’s, she moved to Hollywood and appeared in two movies, Robin Hood and The Spanish Dancer. She lived in Greenwich Village in New York until her death in 1925.

 Kit Dalton (1843 - 1920)

    Daniel Webster Dalton, known as Kit, was born in 1843 Logan County, Kentucky. He joined the Confederate army at age 17, but got separated from his section and sought refuge at his uncle’s house. The uncle was shot by a Union soldier, and Kit Dalton swore to avenge him, and thus began his life as an outlaw. He joined up with William Quantrell’s Raiders, eventually becoming a Captain. After the war, Kit rode throughout Kentucky and Tennessee with Cole Younger and Jesse and Frank James, holding up trains and robbing banks in true outlaw fashion. Dalton seemed to think this was the “life I had been forced by the Federal government to lead.” He had a price on his head of 50,000, dead or alive, but was never captured.

    In 1888, Dalton decided to live inside the law again and moved back to Memphis with his wife to be a respectable citizen. His taste for excitement wasn’t completely gone though. Dalton signed up for the Spanish-American War when he was fifty-four, where he caught dengue fever and didn’t correspond with his wife for a year. Interestingly enough, Kit died a respected citizen and a good Baptist man. He was buried in the Confederate Rest section of Elmwood in 1920.

Alice Jessie Mitchell (1872 - 1898)

    Alice Jessie Mitchell is the central figure in what has been called the most sensational crime of the 19th century. In 1892, in front of several witnesses, she slit the throat of her lover, Frederica Ward with her father’s razor. Frederica and Alice had planned to elope, Alice dressed as a man, and move to St. Louis. When Freda’s sister found out about the plan she forbade the two from seeing each other. Alice was distraught that Freda was backing out, and was quoting as saying “I loved her so I couldn’t help it.” The story was so sensational that in made national news, including papers in Atlanta and New York. The homosexual aspect of the murder in an era where that kind of thing was barely acknowledged made it a popular topic for sociologists and psychologists, and is still written about in that capacity.

    At the trial, Alice was determined insane and she was committed to a state mental institution in Bolivar. She died at age 25 on March 31, 1898. The official cause for death was consumption, but in actuality, she committed suicide by jumping into the asylum’s water tank.

Works Cited

"Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records." Find A Grave. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. <http://www.findagrave.com/index.html>.

Magness, Perre, and Murray Riss. Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms. Memphis, TN: Elmwood 
            Cemetery, 2001. Print.