Hart lived with her family in West Virginia until the outbreak of the Civil War, at which time she developed great sympathy for the Southern cause.

For nearly two years Hart worked for the Moccasin Rangers as a spy and a scout, posing as a farm girl to gather intelligence.

In early 1861, after a contingent of Union troops passed through her town, Hart's sympathy for the Confederacy prompted her to leave home and join the Moccasin Rangers, led by the infamous Perry Conley.

Conley died in the summer of 1862, and with his loss the Moccasin Rangers disbanded, although Hart continued to spy on Union movements.

Hart became so famous and such an enigma for Union forces in West Virginia that a reward was offered for information leading to her capture in 1862.

Shortly thereafter, she and a female friend were captured by Union troops led by Lt. Col. Starr and taken prisoner in Summersville, West Virginia.

Civil War telegrapher Marion H. Kerner, an officer who befriended Hart at the encampment, later made her story famous in the magazine, Leslie's Weekly.

[2] That same night, Hart escaped from the Union camp on Starr's horse and joined a regiment of about 200 Confederate soldiers led by Major R. Augustus Bailey (the Moccasin Rangers had been disbanded since the death of Perry Conley).

Marion Kerner was also captured, but due to the kind treatment he had given Hart during her own imprisonment, she convinced the Confederate officers to release him.

The students got the date of Nancy's death from Boyd Stutler's account of her life in his 1963 book West Virginia in the Civil War.

In 1992, Susan Matthis Johnson's musical drama "Bury Me By Nancy Hart" was produced in Richwood, West Virginia by the Mill Whistle Players.

The musical drama retells the story of Nancy Hart's capture and escape in the early years of the Civil War.

Ivan Morgan Hunter was a Southern sympathizer who had become enamored of Nancy's memory while working in a fire tower over her grave.