The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg

Directed by Sidney Olcott

Written by Gene Gauntier

Cast: Gene Gauntier as Nan, the Girl Spy

Released 1910

According to Moving Picture World Vol 7 #1, July 1910
The opening scene of our story shows a Union powder wagon making its way down the road convoyed by a company of mounted Union soldiers. The route of this wagon is reported to Confederate headquarters by one of its spies. Nan, a girl frequently employed by this department of the Confederate army is called to headquarters and instructed to secure the destruction of the enemy's ammunition train just departed. Nan is fitted out with a Union uniform, mounted on a fast horse, and sent on her journey, previously provided with a forged order supposedly signed by a Union general which authorizes her to pass through the lines. Nan succeeds in getting through Union lines and quickly joins the ammunition train taking up the march with them. When night arrives the convoy goes into camp, poses its sentinels for the especial fear of danger as they note they are well within the Union lines. Nan, however, watching her opportunity, slips up behind the sentry placed over the ammunition wagon and having renered him unconscious, drags him away from the wagon and takes his place. Watching her chance Nan plants a dynamite cartridge under the wagon, lights a fuse and makes a quick run out of the danger zone... A pursuing party is sent out after the daring spy who has [performed] such a daring deed. Closely pursued by Union soldiers Nan rushes through the underbrush on foot finally reaching a nearby river where she plunges in diving under water and remains there until the Union soldiers had retired from the scene...She quickly swims ashore and takes her way rapidly to ... headquarters where she reports the successful ending of her mission then on to her home to relieve her mother's anxiety.