Loreta Janeta Velázquez

According to her own account, Loreta Janeta Velázquez was born in Havana on 26 June 1842, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish official who owned plantations in Mexico and Cuba and had lost a ranch in the Mexican–American War, and of a mother of French and American ancestry. She learned English at school in New Orleans in 1849 and became estranged from her father after eloping with an American soldier.

Her 600-page memoir The Woman in Battle (1876), written to support her son, says that after her husband's accidental death she enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, fought at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff and Fort Donelson, was discharged when her sex was discovered in New Orleans, re-enlisted to fight at Shiloh, and then worked as a Confederate spy in male and female guise — and as a double agent reporting to the U.S. Secret Service. She married three more times and was widowed each time.

The Confederate general Jubal Early refused to accept the book as fact, and modern scholars note that most of its claims cannot be supported by documents and several are contradicted by them. The historian William C. Davis found that she died in January 1923, under the name Loretta J. Beard, after years in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington.

How the name is written

She wrote her name Velázquez and claimed kinship with both the painter and the conqueror of Cuba; she also used the names Alice Williams and, at her death, Loretta J. Beard.

Sources

Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English) · Wikipedia (Spanish)

More people named Velasquez — History & exploration

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar — Conquistador and first governor of Cuba, who chartered the expeditions that reached the Aztec Empire.
Juan Velázquez Tlacotzin — Cihuacoatl of Tenochtitlan and its first indigenous ruler after the conquest.
Juan Velázquez de León — Conquistador with Cortés in Mexico, kinsman of the governor of Cuba, killed on La Noche Triste.
José Velásquez Bórquez — Chilean artillery general of the War of the Pacific, deputy and Minister of War and Navy under Balmaceda.
José Velásquez — Soldier-explorer of the Californias who scouted the mission sites of El Rosario, Santo Domingo and San Vicente.

All 47 profiles and the pages about the name →

Profiles are compiled from public sources for general information. They are not affiliated with or endorsed by the people described. Corrections are welcome at carol@velasquez.info.