Some people you find in research and you know immediately they’re going into a book. Sally Skull was one of those.

Born Sarah Jane Newman around 1817, she became one of the most notorious figures on the Texas frontier — a horse trader and rancher working the Rio Grande country in the roughest decades that border ever had.

She was an expert horsewoman and a crack shot, skills that were unusual for a woman of her era and lethal in her line of work. She dressed in men’s clothing, chewed tobacco, and spoke fluent Spanish. She carried a pistol and a bullwhip and was not shy about using either.

She married at least five times. At least two of those husbands died under mysterious circumstances, which fueled persistent rumors that she killed them. Nobody ever proved it. Nobody, apparently, pushed very hard.

During the Civil War, she ran cotton and supplies across the Mexican border — which made her a real player in Confederate smuggling operations, not a colorful sideshow. The cotton trade was one of the most consequential and least-discussed aspects of the war, and people like Sally Skull were the ones actually moving the goods.

She ran her own ranch, handled her own business, and commanded respect or fear from men who were not easily impressed by either.

She disappeared around 1867. Her fate is unknown. Murder is suspected, which would be a fitting end to that particular resume.

I put a fictionalized version of her on the page in the *Duty, Honor, Country* series, because when the actual historical record hands you a bullwhip-carrying, tobacco-chewing, five-times-married border smuggler with two dead husbands and an unsolved disappearance, you don’t leave her out.

This is one of 101 questions answered in The Civil War Little Black Book: Secrets, History, and Trivia of America’s Defining Conflict.

Get your copy here: https://amzn.to/4wEsnGZ

I’ve also written a novel about Sherman’s March to the Sea, Howl! WT Sherman’s Monster Hunters: https://amzn.to/40WYgfJ

And a trilogy going from West Point in the 1840s through the Mexican War and into the Civil War in the vein of HBO’s Rome miniseries; Duty, Honor, Country: https://amzn.to/3RgWbXa