Antonia Ford (1838-1871)

DOSSIER:
Antonia Ford, daughter of Edward R. Ford and Julia Franklin, was born on 23 Jul 1838 in Fairfax, VA. She died on 14 Feb 1871 in Washington, DC.

On 10 Mar 1864 she married Maj. Joseph Clapp Willard with whom she had three children.

CODE NAMES:
None Known

As Union forces occupied the Fairfax region in mid-1861, Antonia circulated among the officers and garnered valuable intelligence about troop strengths and planned movements, which she passed along to Brigadier General J.E.B. Stuart, in whose artillery her brother served. She also spied for John S. Mosby, a noted partisan ranger. Stuart, grateful for her service and appreciate of the information he had received, designated her as an honorary aide-de-camp on 7 Oct 1861.

In early 1863, Antonia was betrayed by a Union counterspy named Frankie Abel, whom she had befriended and shown the document bearing Stuart's signature. Ford was subsequently arrested on 13 Mar and incarcerated in Washington, DC at the Old Capitol Prison. She was accused of playing a prominent role in the capture of Union general Edwin H. Stoughton, but Colonel Mosby and others later denied her complicity, and no evidence of her guilt could be found.

Old Capitol Prison

She was released and exchanged seven days later. However, she was arrested in Fairfax by Major Joseph Willard (1820–1897) and sent back to Old Capitol Prison. She took the Oath of Allegiance and subsequently married her captor.

Antonia Ford Willard died in Washington, DC in 1871 as an indirect result of health issues stemming from her captivity. Her husband (who later became Lieutenant Governor of Virginia) never remarried.

The 2007 made-for-television docudrama, Now & Forever Yours: Letters to an Old Soldier, artistically recounts the courtship of Antonia Ford and Major Joseph Clapp Willard. In the film, Ford and Willard recount from an ethereal netherworld the events of their two-year affair. This narrative is dramatically illustrated with scenes of the courtship filmed in and around Fairfax, Virginia where the actual romance took place. The dialogue between the lovers was taken directly from the couple’s surviving letters.