Nancy Hart’s story blends fact and legend. Born in Virginia in 1843, she moved with her family first to southwestern Virginia and then to Roane County by the mid-1850s, where she reached young adulthood and learned to ride and shoot skillfully. When the Civil War began, she favored the South and allegedly served as a guide and spy for Capt. Perry Conley’s Moccasin Rangers, a local Confederate guerrilla group. After Conley was killed early in 1862 in a Federal ambush, Hart moved to Nicholas County and spied for Confederate authorities while peddling eggs and vegetables in Union camps and observing troop positions. In Summersville, she watched two companies of Lt. Col. William C. Starr’s 9th West Virginia Infantry, but Starr discovered her activities and had her arrested and confined there. She is said to have escaped by tricking a young guard into letting her examine his pistol, shooting him, taking Starr’s favorite horse, and fleeing. A week later, on July 25, 1862, she allegedly returned to Summersville guiding Maj. Robert A. Bailey, the 22nd Virginia Infantry, and 200 cavalrymen. At dawn the Confederates stormed the town, captured Starr, three other officers, and an undetermined number of soldiers, burned three houses and two wagons, and carried off eight mules and a dozen horses. After the raid Hart became less active, married Confederate veteran Joshua Douglas in 1864, later lived in Webster County, and died in 1902.