Nancy Hart Douglas

Born:  1846, Raleigh, North Carolina

Died:  September 19, 1902, Friars Hill, West Virginia

Resting Place:  Mannings Knob Cemetery, Spring Creek, West Virginia

Brief History:  Her mother was first cousin to Andrew Johnson, who became president after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In 1853, Nancy and her family moved in with her sister and brother-in-law. In the next six years, Nancy lived in the wilderness of Roane County, Virginia—now West Virginia and became an excellent shot with a rifle and an expert rider. William Clay Price was not a soldier, but did things for the Confederate army in the evenings. One day the Union soldiers came to question him. They took him away and killed him down the road from his family. This fueled Nancy's rage and hatred toward the Union cause.

When the Civil War began, she allegedly worked as a guide and spy for Capt. Perry Conley’s Moccasin Rangers, a confederate resistance that worked to undermine Union efforts in western Virginia. For nearly two years Hart worked for the Moccasin Rangers as a spy and a scout, posing as a farm girl to gather intelligence. After a skirmish she was briefly captured, but she persuaded the Union soldiers to let her go based on the fact she was a woman. After the war, Hart married the former Ranger Joshua Douglas, and they lived in Spring Creek near Cordova in Greenbrier County during the remainder of their lives.