March 26, 2012 • 18 mins
Belle Starr is often remembered as a notorious outlaw who spent her free time carousing in saloons. But new accounts suggest that, while she wasn't a saint, she also wasn't the "female Jesse James" some biographers made her out to be. So what's the truth?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from houtof
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to blame in chalk reboarding and I'm fair douting. And
when you're researching history, as we often do, of course,
it can get difficult sometimes to distinguish between mere legend
(00:23):
in fact mad trapper exactly, And that's why you'll often
hear us say things like sources disagree or offer up
to possible versions of events rather than just giving you one.
Sometimes this simply comes down to how sources have come
by their information. Did they use primary sources or things
like newspaper articles and other publications as their sources. Other times,
(00:46):
myths originate with people close to the subject, and sometimes,
as we saw with free to Carllo advertising her own
birth date as being three years later than it actually was,
the discrepancies actually originate with the subjects some elves. Who
can you trust? Who can you trust? Regardless of how
these come about, though perhaps nowhere are these sorts of
(01:07):
discrepancies more apparent than they are with the story of
Bell Star, a notorious nineteenth century outlaw of America's Wild West.
At least that's how people think of her, though. Descriptions
of Bell Star from so called biographies and contemporary newspaper
accounts and were recently in pop culture paint her as
a bandit queen, this beautiful leader of a band of
(01:28):
outlaws who held up stage coaches, cleaned out crooked poker games,
six shooters, smoking at her sides, and spent all of
her free time in saloons hanging out with shady characters.
It's quite a romantic picture. But more recent accounts of
Bell's life contradict a lot of these points and suggests
that while Bell was certainly no saint, she also wasn't
(01:50):
necessarily the female Jesse James as some sources made her
out to be. In fact, she might have been a
devoted wife, loving mother, and a pretty good neighbor. At times,
she might have been even law abiding. So in this episode,
we're going to take a look at bell Stars life
and try to get it her real story, or as
close as possible, and also examine why she got her
(02:13):
wild outlaw reputation in the first place. She was born
Myra Maybel Shirley on February five, eight and her father,
John Shirley, had been kind of a black sheep of
a wealthy Virginia family. He moved around a lot, and
he was married and divorced twice before meeting and marrying
Eliza Pennington, who was a hat Field of Hatfield and
(02:33):
McCoy fame. The couple settled initially in southern Missouri, so
John Shirley started out farming in that area to make
a living in Myra Maybel and her two brothers, one
older one younger were born while he was doing just that,
but the kids were still young when in the eighteen fifties,
John sold the farm, which had been pretty successful along
(02:55):
and moved the family to the county seat of Carthage, Missouri,
And once they were there, he used the money from
the sale of the farm to buy up some land
in the city, build a tavern, stable, blacksmith shop, and
most notably, a hotel, and through all of those combined
ventures he became pretty wealthy, actually very wealthy, and was
considered one of the most, if not the most prominent
(03:18):
resident in Carthage. And as his daughter, Myra Maybel, grew
up with a lot of advantages. She attended the Carthage
Female Academy, where she learned everything from grammar and arithmetic
to Latin Greek and Hebrew and her father, who actually
I think worked with neighbors to have that school set
up for her so that she would get an education.
He also paid for her to learn the piano, because
(03:41):
of course, no proper Southern girl could get by without
learning to play the piano, or so this family believed
at least. And Myra Maybel wasn't oblivious to her status
as a little rich girl either. She loved to show off,
especially for guests at her parents hotel, but she wasn't
exactly the perfect little lady either. Piano playing aside, she
was a bit the tomboys. She loved riding horses. She
(04:02):
was quite skilled at it. She'd go for these long
rides with her older brother Bud, whom she really adored,
and he taught her how to shoot a pistol and
a rifle too. According to Belle of the West, The
True Story of Bell Star by Margaret Row, Young Mara
may Bell was known for galloping wildly down Carthage's main street,
randomly popping off bullets from a pistol that she carried
(04:25):
with her. People apparently thought this was kind of an
endearing trade. They were amused and good natured about it
maybe because Carthage was such a frontier town. It was
kind of fun to see this well bred girl riding
her horse down main street shooting, though you probably couldn't
do this in a in an established southern town. But
she always carried her pistol with her, and later in
(04:47):
life she even started referring to it as my baby.
But we'll see kind of that affection for her weapon
and talk about that more later on. One of her
biggest faults was her quick temper. She was always ready
to brawl if she got into a disagreement someone, and
we mean by brawl, we don't just mean getting an argument,
we mean physically physically started with girls or boys. So
when the Civil War started in eighteen sixty one, Myra
(05:09):
Maybell put that wild, quick tempered side of hers to you.
So just to give you a little bit of background
on the situation. At the time, Missouri was kind of
a land divided. People who had settled in the northern
part of the state supported the North, while those who
had settled in the southern part of the state sympathized
with the South and the Confederacy. The relations between Jasper County,
(05:32):
which is where the Shirley family lived in neighboring Kansas
had also been pretty bad. Even in the years leading
up to the war. Bands of raiders who were known
as Jayhawkers who supported the Union, would come over and
destroy Missouri communities, and meanwhile, rebel raiders known as Bushwhackers
would retaliate. We've talked about this a little bit in
previous episodes, but one of the most famous of these
(05:54):
guerrilla rebel groups was led by William Clark Quantrill, who
led his Confederate Raiders across that Missouri Kansas line. Yes,
actually Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, all of
whom would of course later become famous Outlaws, were part
of this group. John Shirley was also a big supporter
of Quancholl's Raiders, and when the war broke out, Myra
(06:16):
Maybel's brother Bud became one, working his way up to
the rank of captain. According to an article by Richard
d Arnutt in Wild West, Bud was actually so good
at what he did. Union soldiers were always out to
get him, but he always managed to evade them too,
And my Ra Maybell, who was in her teens at
that point, played a big part in that. For one thing.
(06:36):
She was pretty, she was small, she had a nice complexion,
she had long black hair and dark eyes, and she
would flirt with Union soldiers to get information from them,
so very bell boyd esk if you remember that episode
about the Confederate not just the same in name alone, No,
not just in name alone. She would use her feminine
wiles as much as bell Boy did to get information.
(06:58):
She'd learned things like the out of an enemy ammunition train,
or the location of a new Union camp, or if
there were specifically trap set for Bud and his gang.
And according to Row's work, many wives and sisters of
raiders were doing this sort of thing, but in Myra
Maybel's case, her spine became part of her bandit queen's
story later on, because of her later career, some writers,
(07:21):
for example, suggest that Myra Maybel had her own band
of girls even or that she was actually a part
of Quantrill's group, but historical records don't really support either
of those ideas. That's not to say that she didn't
get her hands sturdy either. One account that Raw relates
describes Myra Maybel being held captive by a Union major
so that she wouldn't run off and warn her brother
(07:43):
Bud that soldiers were on their way to ambush him.
The major released her, though making a big mistake kind
of again reminded me of Bellboy people underestimating well, I
think part of it when she was throwing a fit
to the entire time. He kept her kind of locked
in a room and she was, you know, yelling at him,
and he was ready. He was like, Okay, you can
go now. But that was a mistake because he released
(08:04):
her kind of expecting that she wouldn't have time anyway
to catch up and warn her brother, except he didn't
realize how great she was on horseback. She leapt under
her horse, rode through the undergrowth, and taking this little shortcut,
she managed to reach her brother and warn him with
really time to spare, but unfortunately she couldn't always keep
(08:25):
him safe. Bud and a companion were eating at the
home of a Southern sympathizer in June of eighteen sixty
four when the house was surrounded by federal militia. He
tried to escape over a fence, but was shot and
killed in the process. Some accounts have Myra Maybell heading
off looking for revenge after the scuns ablazing, but again
(08:45):
there are no records that really support that she did that,
But this was sort of the start of bigger problems
for the Shirley family. Um After the war, the Shirley's
business was ruined. John Shirley was so upset by the
loss of its on that he relocated the family to Texas,
to a little settlement that was outside of Dallas. So
(09:06):
in Texas, John Churley went back to his original profession
farming again, and Myra Maybel went to a one room school,
but she was pretty bored because she was really ahead
of where everyone else was academically. She was also one
of the oldest people in class. Luckily, though, or maybe unfortunately,
she had plenty to distract her. Lots of local outlaws, Yes,
(09:30):
outlaws like Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger who
we mentioned earlier, Whomira Maybel used to associate with somewhat
when she was in Missouri and she got to know
them there. They would sometimes visit her family's home in
Texas to hide out there because many of the former
Confederate guerillas like them had become outlaws after the war,
in part because the government wouldn't offer them amnesty, so
(09:52):
they robbed banks and they held up trains, but because
of their history together, the Shirley's agreed to help them out.
And it's this continu and you'd association with people like
James and Younger that just added to Myra Maybell's reputation.
In fact, many people believed that Cole Younger and Myra
Maybel had an affair and that they had an illegitimate
(10:13):
daughter together, And this belief partially stems from something she
later said herself. She said, when Younger and his gang
were hiding out at her family's home, that was when
she became reacquainted with the first man she ever loved,
and people just assumed that this met Younger, But both
Rowse and Arnette's work say that she was referring to
the outlaw Jim Read so Meira Maybel had met Read
(10:35):
back in Missouri as well, where their families were friends,
and he also hit out at the Shirley's Texas farm
from time to time, and he and Myra Maybel rekindled
their relationship and got married in eighteen sixty six. Again,
though with Myra may Beel or Bell's life, you have
some real dramatized accounts that marriage even has been dramatized
(10:57):
by some writers who have said that Belle's parents didn't approve,
and that the couple eloped with their band of death
Barados and attendants, and that they were even married on
horseback by one of the gang members. However, it's not
quite as adventurous as that. There's an actual marriage license
from November one, eighteen sixty six that shows Jim and
(11:18):
Myra Maybell were married by the Reverend F. M. William,
So not on horseback as far as we know. Yeah, so, actually,
at first a fairly traditional marriage ceremony and at first
a very traditional marriage. Read tried his hand at farming
and other jobs like saddle making in Texas. But by
September eighteen sixty eight, when Myra Maybell gave birth to
(11:40):
her daughter, Rosie Lee, who they called Pearl, they were
living on the Read homestead back in Missouri. Myra Maybell's
younger brother Ed was shot and killed for stealing horses
not long after this, so it's likely that she and
Pearl made a visit to Texas. But other than that,
there's not too much documentation of her life around this time,
which of course has led to some rumors. Some biographies
(12:03):
have filled this space where we don't really know what's
going on about her, with stories of her carousing in
Dallas saloons. But Missouri neighbors actually refuted this and recalled
her attending church with her daughter and her and the
rest of the Reed family every week. So pretty standard stuff, absolutely,
very as we said, traditional, and not at all what
you would expect of an outlaw. Jim Reid, on the
(12:25):
other hand, though he wasn't much for the farming, church
going quiet life. He fell in with Tom Starr, a
Cherokee who had a whiskey and cattle wrestling business after
the war, and he took part in these shady activities
until he killed a man to avenge his brother Scott's death.
And so at this point Jim Reid is a fugitive
(12:46):
for both murder and the whiskey dealings, and so he
takes Myra Maybel and Pearl and heads for California in
eighteen sixty nine. So while they were there they expanded
their family a little bit. Myra Maybell gave birth to
their son, and James Edwin, whom they called Eddie. But
by March eighteen seventy one or eighteen seventy two, depending
on the source, read got into trouble again for passing
(13:09):
counterfeit money, and they had to flee again, this time
back to Texas. When they were there, Myra Maybel's parents
gave them part of their land to farm, you know,
again trying to set them up with this more stable life.
But of course that couldn't really hold Read's attention for
very long. He kept getting mixed up with other outlaws,
and he and his band were even accused of murdering
(13:30):
a couple of people in addition to the man Read
had already murdered. So he and Bill ended up on
the run again, this time escaping to Indian Territory, leaving
the kids with her parents. And fortunately we've talked about
Indian Territory a little bit on earlier episodes and what
a great hideout it could be for bandits like that.
And again was in that Oklahoma sort of area. I know,
(13:52):
we've talked about that several times before, and people may
be tired of us going over the whole Indian Territory thing,
but just to give you an idea of where it was,
and when they went there, Read's crimes didn't stop. It
was almost as if that guerilla life he had lived
jewelry in the Civil War. He just couldn't let go. Yeah,
it was too exciting for him and he didn't want
(14:12):
to give it up. So eventually Bell started getting mixed
up in some of his crimes, at least by way
of rumors. For example, in late eighteen seventy three, Read
and two others robbed the family of What Grayson, a
judge in Indian Territory, and according to some rumors, Mayra
Maybel had helped in this dressed as a man. Grayson
(14:34):
himself later so that this couldn't be true, though, because
she was too petite, and he said that the guys
who had attacked him were large. I mean, I guess
it's one person's take on it. And if he was
in the middle of this, maybe he could have been
mistaken and he might not want to admit that a
woman helped draw him. That is also perhaps an aspect
of it. But eventually Myra Maybel did leave Jim Read
(14:56):
and moved back in with her parents. She kind of
got sick of that life of crime, and I could
imagine she just got sick of being on the run
all the time too, and being separated from her kids.
But it probably also had to do with the fact
that Reid had taken up with another woman and she
found out about it. Reid meanwhile kept ongoing his gang,
kept robbing people, stage coaches, stealing livestock, and by August
(15:20):
eighteen seventy four, there was a pretty considerable seven thousand
dollar bounty on his head. That August, he was traveling
with a supposed friend named John T. Morris, who had actually,
unbeknownst to him, been deputized to capture him, and when
they stopped for a meal together on August six, Morris
pulled a gun on him. Reid tried to escape and
(15:43):
was killed. There's another aspect here to Myra Maybel's legend, though, Yeah.
Legend has it that Morris immediately contacted Myra Maybel and
asked her to come and identify Jim Reid's corpse. I mean,
he was probably thinking there's no love lost between this two.
She knows about his affair, she's not happy with him,
(16:03):
so of course she she'll be happy to come and
identify his body. But when she showed up, she took
one look at the body and she said, quote, I
never saw him in my life before. And then she
turned to Morris and said, you will never get that bounty.
So that's our dramatic conclusion to this part one freeze frame.
You can imagine myra they're looking at the body. Yeah,
(16:26):
I mean, it's an interesting perspective to take on a situation, right,
I mean, she obviously was done with him, she was
furious with him for having an affair with another woman,
but at the same time, she still had this loyalty
to him to this outlaw didn't want his killer to
make any money off of his death. Yeah, and um,
(16:47):
you know, we will tell you a little bit more
about how Morris did make out in the continuation of
the story of Bell Star, and of course we'll go
into the rest of her life. Well she was later
exploit later exploits, and um, you know, talk a little
bit more about how this reputation of hers came about,
and finally go into her one and only experience in jail.
(17:11):
All right, So that is next time though, so you'll
have to stay tuned until then. In the meantime, if
you want to suggest, I know, you guys love these
Old West characters so much, if you want to suggest
more of your favorites to us, we could be inclined
to keep covering this, so feel free to email us
(17:32):
a history podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
Twitter at misst in history, and we're on Facebook. And
if you want to learn a little bit more about
some notorious troublemakers throughout history, we have a great article
on our website called ten Public Enemies and you can
look that up by visiting our homepage at www dot
how stuffworks dot com. Be sure to check out our
(17:56):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stupwork
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from houtof
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to blame in chalk reboarding and I'm fair douting. And
when you're researching history, as we often do, of course,
it can get difficult sometimes to distinguish between mere legend
(00:23):
in fact mad trapper exactly, And that's why you'll often
hear us say things like sources disagree or offer up
to possible versions of events rather than just giving you one.
Sometimes this simply comes down to how sources have come
by their information. Did they use primary sources or things
like newspaper articles and other publications as their sources. Other times,
(00:46):
myths originate with people close to the subject, and sometimes,
as we saw with free to Carllo advertising her own
birth date as being three years later than it actually was,
the discrepancies actually originate with the subjects some elves. Who
can you trust? Who can you trust? Regardless of how
these come about, though perhaps nowhere are these sorts of
(01:07):
discrepancies more apparent than they are with the story of
Bell Star, a notorious nineteenth century outlaw of America's Wild West.
At least that's how people think of her, though. Descriptions
of Bell Star from so called biographies and contemporary newspaper
accounts and were recently in pop culture paint her as
a bandit queen, this beautiful leader of a band of
(01:28):
outlaws who held up stage coaches, cleaned out crooked poker games,
six shooters, smoking at her sides, and spent all of
her free time in saloons hanging out with shady characters.
It's quite a romantic picture. But more recent accounts of
Bell's life contradict a lot of these points and suggests
that while Bell was certainly no saint, she also wasn't
(01:50):
necessarily the female Jesse James as some sources made her
out to be. In fact, she might have been a
devoted wife, loving mother, and a pretty good neighbor. At times,
she might have been even law abiding. So in this episode,
we're going to take a look at bell Stars life
and try to get it her real story, or as
close as possible, and also examine why she got her
(02:13):
wild outlaw reputation in the first place. She was born
Myra Maybel Shirley on February five, eight and her father,
John Shirley, had been kind of a black sheep of
a wealthy Virginia family. He moved around a lot, and
he was married and divorced twice before meeting and marrying
Eliza Pennington, who was a hat Field of Hatfield and
(02:33):
McCoy fame. The couple settled initially in southern Missouri, so
John Shirley started out farming in that area to make
a living in Myra Maybel and her two brothers, one
older one younger were born while he was doing just that,
but the kids were still young when in the eighteen fifties,
John sold the farm, which had been pretty successful along
(02:55):
and moved the family to the county seat of Carthage, Missouri,
And once they were there, he used the money from
the sale of the farm to buy up some land
in the city, build a tavern, stable, blacksmith shop, and
most notably, a hotel, and through all of those combined
ventures he became pretty wealthy, actually very wealthy, and was
considered one of the most, if not the most prominent
(03:18):
resident in Carthage. And as his daughter, Myra Maybel, grew
up with a lot of advantages. She attended the Carthage
Female Academy, where she learned everything from grammar and arithmetic
to Latin Greek and Hebrew and her father, who actually
I think worked with neighbors to have that school set
up for her so that she would get an education.
He also paid for her to learn the piano, because
(03:41):
of course, no proper Southern girl could get by without
learning to play the piano, or so this family believed
at least. And Myra Maybel wasn't oblivious to her status
as a little rich girl either. She loved to show off,
especially for guests at her parents hotel, but she wasn't
exactly the perfect little lady either. Piano playing aside, she
was a bit the tomboys. She loved riding horses. She
(04:02):
was quite skilled at it. She'd go for these long
rides with her older brother Bud, whom she really adored,
and he taught her how to shoot a pistol and
a rifle too. According to Belle of the West, The
True Story of Bell Star by Margaret Row, Young Mara
may Bell was known for galloping wildly down Carthage's main street,
randomly popping off bullets from a pistol that she carried
(04:25):
with her. People apparently thought this was kind of an
endearing trade. They were amused and good natured about it
maybe because Carthage was such a frontier town. It was
kind of fun to see this well bred girl riding
her horse down main street shooting, though you probably couldn't
do this in a in an established southern town. But
she always carried her pistol with her, and later in
(04:47):
life she even started referring to it as my baby.
But we'll see kind of that affection for her weapon
and talk about that more later on. One of her
biggest faults was her quick temper. She was always ready
to brawl if she got into a disagreement someone, and
we mean by brawl, we don't just mean getting an argument,
we mean physically physically started with girls or boys. So
when the Civil War started in eighteen sixty one, Myra
(05:09):
Maybell put that wild, quick tempered side of hers to you.
So just to give you a little bit of background
on the situation. At the time, Missouri was kind of
a land divided. People who had settled in the northern
part of the state supported the North, while those who
had settled in the southern part of the state sympathized
with the South and the Confederacy. The relations between Jasper County,
(05:32):
which is where the Shirley family lived in neighboring Kansas
had also been pretty bad. Even in the years leading
up to the war. Bands of raiders who were known
as Jayhawkers who supported the Union, would come over and
destroy Missouri communities, and meanwhile, rebel raiders known as Bushwhackers
would retaliate. We've talked about this a little bit in
previous episodes, but one of the most famous of these
(05:54):
guerrilla rebel groups was led by William Clark Quantrill, who
led his Confederate Raiders across that Missouri Kansas line. Yes,
actually Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, all of
whom would of course later become famous Outlaws, were part
of this group. John Shirley was also a big supporter
of Quancholl's Raiders, and when the war broke out, Myra
(06:16):
Maybel's brother Bud became one, working his way up to
the rank of captain. According to an article by Richard
d Arnutt in Wild West, Bud was actually so good
at what he did. Union soldiers were always out to
get him, but he always managed to evade them too,
And my Ra Maybell, who was in her teens at
that point, played a big part in that. For one thing.
(06:36):
She was pretty, she was small, she had a nice complexion,
she had long black hair and dark eyes, and she
would flirt with Union soldiers to get information from them,
so very bell boyd esk if you remember that episode
about the Confederate not just the same in name alone, No,
not just in name alone. She would use her feminine
wiles as much as bell Boy did to get information.
(06:58):
She'd learned things like the out of an enemy ammunition train,
or the location of a new Union camp, or if
there were specifically trap set for Bud and his gang.
And according to Row's work, many wives and sisters of
raiders were doing this sort of thing, but in Myra
Maybel's case, her spine became part of her bandit queen's
story later on, because of her later career, some writers,
(07:21):
for example, suggest that Myra Maybel had her own band
of girls even or that she was actually a part
of Quantrill's group, but historical records don't really support either
of those ideas. That's not to say that she didn't
get her hands sturdy either. One account that Raw relates
describes Myra Maybel being held captive by a Union major
so that she wouldn't run off and warn her brother
(07:43):
Bud that soldiers were on their way to ambush him.
The major released her, though making a big mistake kind
of again reminded me of Bellboy people underestimating well, I
think part of it when she was throwing a fit
to the entire time. He kept her kind of locked
in a room and she was, you know, yelling at him,
and he was ready. He was like, Okay, you can
go now. But that was a mistake because he released
(08:04):
her kind of expecting that she wouldn't have time anyway
to catch up and warn her brother, except he didn't
realize how great she was on horseback. She leapt under
her horse, rode through the undergrowth, and taking this little shortcut,
she managed to reach her brother and warn him with
really time to spare, but unfortunately she couldn't always keep
(08:25):
him safe. Bud and a companion were eating at the
home of a Southern sympathizer in June of eighteen sixty
four when the house was surrounded by federal militia. He
tried to escape over a fence, but was shot and
killed in the process. Some accounts have Myra Maybell heading
off looking for revenge after the scuns ablazing, but again
(08:45):
there are no records that really support that she did that,
But this was sort of the start of bigger problems
for the Shirley family. Um After the war, the Shirley's
business was ruined. John Shirley was so upset by the
loss of its on that he relocated the family to Texas,
to a little settlement that was outside of Dallas. So
(09:06):
in Texas, John Churley went back to his original profession
farming again, and Myra Maybel went to a one room school,
but she was pretty bored because she was really ahead
of where everyone else was academically. She was also one
of the oldest people in class. Luckily, though, or maybe unfortunately,
she had plenty to distract her. Lots of local outlaws, Yes,
(09:30):
outlaws like Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger who
we mentioned earlier, Whomira Maybel used to associate with somewhat
when she was in Missouri and she got to know
them there. They would sometimes visit her family's home in
Texas to hide out there because many of the former
Confederate guerillas like them had become outlaws after the war,
in part because the government wouldn't offer them amnesty, so
(09:52):
they robbed banks and they held up trains, but because
of their history together, the Shirley's agreed to help them out.
And it's this continu and you'd association with people like
James and Younger that just added to Myra Maybell's reputation.
In fact, many people believed that Cole Younger and Myra
Maybel had an affair and that they had an illegitimate
(10:13):
daughter together, And this belief partially stems from something she
later said herself. She said, when Younger and his gang
were hiding out at her family's home, that was when
she became reacquainted with the first man she ever loved,
and people just assumed that this met Younger, But both
Rowse and Arnette's work say that she was referring to
the outlaw Jim Read so Meira Maybel had met Read
(10:35):
back in Missouri as well, where their families were friends,
and he also hit out at the Shirley's Texas farm
from time to time, and he and Myra Maybel rekindled
their relationship and got married in eighteen sixty six. Again,
though with Myra may Beel or Bell's life, you have
some real dramatized accounts that marriage even has been dramatized
(10:57):
by some writers who have said that Belle's parents didn't approve,
and that the couple eloped with their band of death
Barados and attendants, and that they were even married on
horseback by one of the gang members. However, it's not
quite as adventurous as that. There's an actual marriage license
from November one, eighteen sixty six that shows Jim and
(11:18):
Myra Maybell were married by the Reverend F. M. William,
So not on horseback as far as we know. Yeah, so, actually,
at first a fairly traditional marriage ceremony and at first
a very traditional marriage. Read tried his hand at farming
and other jobs like saddle making in Texas. But by
September eighteen sixty eight, when Myra Maybell gave birth to
(11:40):
her daughter, Rosie Lee, who they called Pearl, they were
living on the Read homestead back in Missouri. Myra Maybell's
younger brother Ed was shot and killed for stealing horses
not long after this, so it's likely that she and
Pearl made a visit to Texas. But other than that,
there's not too much documentation of her life around this time,
which of course has led to some rumors. Some biographies
(12:03):
have filled this space where we don't really know what's
going on about her, with stories of her carousing in
Dallas saloons. But Missouri neighbors actually refuted this and recalled
her attending church with her daughter and her and the
rest of the Reed family every week. So pretty standard stuff, absolutely,
very as we said, traditional, and not at all what
you would expect of an outlaw. Jim Reid, on the
(12:25):
other hand, though he wasn't much for the farming, church
going quiet life. He fell in with Tom Starr, a
Cherokee who had a whiskey and cattle wrestling business after
the war, and he took part in these shady activities
until he killed a man to avenge his brother Scott's death.
And so at this point Jim Reid is a fugitive
(12:46):
for both murder and the whiskey dealings, and so he
takes Myra Maybel and Pearl and heads for California in
eighteen sixty nine. So while they were there they expanded
their family a little bit. Myra Maybell gave birth to
their son, and James Edwin, whom they called Eddie. But
by March eighteen seventy one or eighteen seventy two, depending
on the source, read got into trouble again for passing
(13:09):
counterfeit money, and they had to flee again, this time
back to Texas. When they were there, Myra Maybel's parents
gave them part of their land to farm, you know,
again trying to set them up with this more stable life.
But of course that couldn't really hold Read's attention for
very long. He kept getting mixed up with other outlaws,
and he and his band were even accused of murdering
(13:30):
a couple of people in addition to the man Read
had already murdered. So he and Bill ended up on
the run again, this time escaping to Indian Territory, leaving
the kids with her parents. And fortunately we've talked about
Indian Territory a little bit on earlier episodes and what
a great hideout it could be for bandits like that.
And again was in that Oklahoma sort of area. I know,
(13:52):
we've talked about that several times before, and people may
be tired of us going over the whole Indian Territory thing,
but just to give you an idea of where it was,
and when they went there, Read's crimes didn't stop. It
was almost as if that guerilla life he had lived
jewelry in the Civil War. He just couldn't let go. Yeah,
it was too exciting for him and he didn't want
(14:12):
to give it up. So eventually Bell started getting mixed
up in some of his crimes, at least by way
of rumors. For example, in late eighteen seventy three, Read
and two others robbed the family of What Grayson, a
judge in Indian Territory, and according to some rumors, Mayra
Maybel had helped in this dressed as a man. Grayson
(14:34):
himself later so that this couldn't be true, though, because
she was too petite, and he said that the guys
who had attacked him were large. I mean, I guess
it's one person's take on it. And if he was
in the middle of this, maybe he could have been
mistaken and he might not want to admit that a
woman helped draw him. That is also perhaps an aspect
of it. But eventually Myra Maybel did leave Jim Read
(14:56):
and moved back in with her parents. She kind of
got sick of that life of crime, and I could
imagine she just got sick of being on the run
all the time too, and being separated from her kids.
But it probably also had to do with the fact
that Reid had taken up with another woman and she
found out about it. Reid meanwhile kept ongoing his gang,
kept robbing people, stage coaches, stealing livestock, and by August
(15:20):
eighteen seventy four, there was a pretty considerable seven thousand
dollar bounty on his head. That August, he was traveling
with a supposed friend named John T. Morris, who had actually,
unbeknownst to him, been deputized to capture him, and when
they stopped for a meal together on August six, Morris
pulled a gun on him. Reid tried to escape and
(15:43):
was killed. There's another aspect here to Myra Maybel's legend, though, Yeah.
Legend has it that Morris immediately contacted Myra Maybel and
asked her to come and identify Jim Reid's corpse. I mean,
he was probably thinking there's no love lost between this two.
She knows about his affair, she's not happy with him,
(16:03):
so of course she she'll be happy to come and
identify his body. But when she showed up, she took
one look at the body and she said, quote, I
never saw him in my life before. And then she
turned to Morris and said, you will never get that bounty.
So that's our dramatic conclusion to this part one freeze frame.
You can imagine myra they're looking at the body. Yeah,
(16:26):
I mean, it's an interesting perspective to take on a situation, right,
I mean, she obviously was done with him, she was
furious with him for having an affair with another woman,
but at the same time, she still had this loyalty
to him to this outlaw didn't want his killer to
make any money off of his death. Yeah, and um,
(16:47):
you know, we will tell you a little bit more
about how Morris did make out in the continuation of
the story of Bell Star, and of course we'll go
into the rest of her life. Well she was later
exploit later exploits, and um, you know, talk a little
bit more about how this reputation of hers came about,
and finally go into her one and only experience in jail.
(17:11):
All right, So that is next time though, so you'll
have to stay tuned until then. In the meantime, if
you want to suggest, I know, you guys love these
Old West characters so much, if you want to suggest
more of your favorites to us, we could be inclined
to keep covering this, so feel free to email us
(17:32):
a history podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
Twitter at misst in history, and we're on Facebook. And
if you want to learn a little bit more about
some notorious troublemakers throughout history, we have a great article
on our website called ten Public Enemies and you can
look that up by visiting our homepage at www dot
how stuffworks dot com. Be sure to check out our
(17:56):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stupwork
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The house Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.