April 2, 2012 • 30 mins
After Jim Reed's death, Belle eventually married Sam Starr. Rumors circulated: Was Belle a barfly or a mom? In 1883, Belle and Sam served 9 months in prison for stealing horses. Tune in to learn how the Bandit Queen set out to turn her reputation around.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a choker boarding and I'm Scared Dowdy,
and we are picking up here again with the story
of Bell Star, one of the most notorious female outlaws
(00:22):
of the Old West, who has been called the bandit
Queen and the female Jesse James. And she's been credited
with robbing stage coaches, holding up branchers while dressed as
a man, and leading her own band of outlaws. But
as we discussed in the last episode, a lot of
these stories about her may have just come from the
public's desire for intrigue filled adventure tales of the Wild West. Regardless,
(00:45):
though these stories bled into a number of biographies and
so called official accounts of her life, it became true
almost but more recent accounts have contradicted a lot of
these stories. For example, we mentioned in the last episode
that some people have thought That's daughter Pearl was fathered
by the famous outlaw Cole Younger, and even sources like
Encyclopedia Britannica say that this is quote probable, But then
(01:09):
other works like Margaret Rouse biography, Bell of the West,
which have looked into letters and court records those sort
of things, say that that's most likely not the case.
So what we've been doing is recounting Bell's life and
some of those better known stories and the differing takes
on them, And what we're trying to do is look
into where some of the wilder ones came from, maybe
(01:30):
how they came about, And the hopes are that perhaps
by understanding her character and seeing what primary sources can
corroborate with some of these stories, you can at least
get close to what her real story truly is. So
we'll rehash part one a little bit. So far, we've
talked about her childhood, her work as a spy during
the Civil War, and her family's harboring of outlaws in
(01:52):
Texas and that tumultuous marriage to the outlaw Jim Read.
And what we've really seen from all of this is
that even if Bell herself wasn't a criminal, she was
always really spunky. She was an outspoken girl with a
quick temper, and she associated very closely with a lot
of outlaws. So already it's kind of easy to see
how her personality would have lent itself quite nicely to
(02:14):
this whole persona of the bandit queen. It makes sense.
And when we left off in part one, it was
August of eight seventy four, and we were getting another
taste of that spunk nous. A man named John Morris
had just killed Read and then asked Bell, who at
this point was still going by her given name Myra Maybel,
to come identified a body so that he could collect
(02:36):
the bounty. So Myra Mabel shows up, sure enough, but
she looks at Read's body and says that she's never
seen him before, and then told Norris, and you'll remember
this dramatic quote from the end, you will never get
that bounty. So something was going on here, maybe some
strange loyalty to Read or and us against out laws,
against the law exactly. So it's unclear if the story
(02:59):
is true, but either way, plenty of people could identify
Read for Morris. So Morris got his share of the
balanty after all, though not the full amount since he
didn't bring in Read's full gang. After Reid's death, though
Maira Maybel really did struggle for a while. Jim Steath
had left her pretty much broke except for that land
her father had given her, and it was hard for
a woman in those days to make a living on
(03:20):
her own too, and she had the kids to think about,
so she rented her farmland and briefly tried to push
Pearl into a stage career because she had seen other
children become quite successful that way. A little girl performers
in particular, were very popular in the frontier town, so
Maira Maybel took Pearl to Dallas and rolled her in
school and acting classes there, but Pearl ended up getting sick,
(03:42):
and so the doctor recommended she avoid the stress of performing.
In the meantime, though, Maira Maybel's father had passed away
and her mother sold the farm and moved to Dallas
with Eddie, so it really seemed like hard times for
the family. According to Row's work, some Bellstar biographers paint
the time in Dallas as a really wild time for her,
(04:02):
when she spent all of her time guzzling whiskey and
saloons and using her feminine wiles to scam money off
of unsuspecting wealthy men. She also supposedly caused a lot
of public disturbances, shooting off her guns in the street,
much like she did when she was a kid, but
Raol actually points out that local newspapers never once mentioned
Myra Maybel in conjunction with events like these, even though
(04:26):
they pretty much covered everything that was going on at
the time and would even embellish stories to make them
more comfortable. So it seems unlikely that this really happened
since she's sort of conspicuously missing from these sorts of
accounts well, and it definitely also seems like Myra Maybel
was mostly focused on Pearl during this time in Dallas,
because after it was clear the stage career wasn't gonna happen,
(04:49):
she sold her farm and she set off on a
tour of visits to old Carthage friends in Missouri and
arkanhas and Kansas. And during this journey she ended up
leaving Pearl for a time to ay with a longtime
friend along the way. By eighteen seventy nine or so,
she had gone to Joplin, Missouri, and that gambler Bruce
Younger Cole Younger's cousin. She found him exciting and they
(05:10):
started up a fling. Their relationship was actually pretty scandalous
to not just because they were unmarried and because Bruce
was considered kind of a good for nothing sort of guy,
but also because they were staying at the same hotel,
and some people spread rumors that they were even staying
in the same room. The hotel owner, however, confirmed that
Myra Maybel did in fact have a room of her own,
(05:32):
and her mom and sometimes even Pearl would come and
visit her there. Whatever the exact living situation was, though,
she eventually got tired of it and decided to move
into Indian Territory and visit her late husband's business associate,
Tom Starr and Bruce Younger accompanied her there and, according
to row must have told her at some point that
he would marry her, or at least Myra Maybel expected
(05:53):
this to happen, because records showed that she went ahead
and changed Pearl's last name from Reid to Younger. But
after a while, Bruce just got bored of Indian Territory
and headed off for North Kansas, and according to Row's account,
Myra Maybel was just furious at this because he'd essentially
ruined her reputation. I mean, they had traveled there together
(06:15):
by taking off without marrying her. So Rowl recounts a
popular story of how she got back at him, saying
that Myra Maybel followed him to Kansas on horseback, went
to the courthouse and got a marriage license, and then
she found a justice of the peace and tracked down
Bruce holding a gun to his head. She told him
she'd blow his brains out if he didn't marry her
(06:36):
right away in front of twenty witnesses. So of course
Bruce went along with it. It's a real shotgun wedding exactly.
And after that she ordered a beer for everyone, or
beer in general for everyone. I think she ordered a
keg or something, and then just took off and stay
for the party herself, just took off back to Indian Territory.
So that sounds like kind of an outlandish story, the
(06:57):
type of thing that would be more on the edge
inside of Bell Star's life. But there really is record
of the two of them getting married in Kansas on May,
so there you go, could happen. She obviously wasn't too
hung up on Bruce Younger though, because just three weeks
later there's a record of Myra Maybell marrying someone else,
(07:19):
and that's Sam Starr, a good looking twenty three year
old three quarter Cherokee son of Tom Starr whom we
mentioned earlier. She was probably thirty two at the time
that she listed her age in the Cherokee Nation court
records as twenty seven. She also apparently completely ignored the
fact that she had just married Bruce Younger. Her last
name was listed in the marriage records as read Still,
(07:40):
and it was after she married Sam that she started
going by the name Bell Star. So, because of Sam's
Cherokee status, they could of course apply for a free
parcel of land on Indian Territory, which you couldn't do
as a white person unless you were married to a Cherokee.
So they settled in an area bordering the Canadian River
that was surrounded by clips that contained several caves, and
(08:02):
it was, according to Rout, known as the Younger's Bend
because the Youngers had gone there to strategize during the
Civil War, although other sources suggest Tom Star named it
that because he really admired their gang. That's kind of
a strange hypothesis to me, just because his wife dated
to two of the brothers. Yeah, although if you remember
(08:23):
from the previous podcast, the whole Coal Younger thing was
just a rumor, so he might not have been too upset,
and maybe Fam didn't even know about that. Maybe he didn't.
So the other thing about Younger's Bend was that it
was also seventy miles from Fort Smith, Arkansas, which is
the nearest US court, which becomes significant later on in
the podcast. And they moved into a little cabin there
(08:44):
and they set up this nice life for themselves. Sam
tended to cattle and horses and grew corn and hunted
game and really filled that responsible masculine role in Bell's
life that Jim Reid never really did, if you remember,
he was just more focused on his outlaw and chers
and wasn't kept him on the run and wasn't really around.
And so Sam and as Sam and Bell, they brought
(09:07):
Pearl up to live with them. And even though Bell
had acquired this idyllic sort of life, Bell didn't stay
completely out of trouble. No, much like her parents home
in Texas, Sam and Bell Younger's ben home became kind
of a refuge almost for outlaws. Jesse James was one
of the first to hide out with him. He stayed
(09:27):
with him for a couple of weeks while there was
a ten thousand dollar bounty on his head. James ended
up dying not long after that after taking a gunshot
to the back, and according to Rawle again, rumors of
his stay at Younger's Ben got out after his death,
and this just really added to Belle's reputation as an
outlaw herself. After you entertained, Jesse James, I mean, what
(09:47):
are you gonna do? But Bell didn't necessarily want to
be thought of in that way. She didn't want to
be connected to somebody like Jesse James, at least publicly.
She later wrote, quote on the Canadian River, I hope
to pass the remainder of my life in peace. For
a short time, I lived very happily with my little
girl and husband, but it became noised about that I
(10:08):
was a woman of notoriety from Texas, and from that
time on, my home and actions have been severely criticized.
My home became famous as an outlaw ranch, long before
I was visited by any of the boys who were
friends of mine. Bell's own behavior didn't always reflect this
desire for peace, though, even though it really sounds like
that's what she wanted. In the spring of eighty two,
(10:29):
for example, she got involved in kind of a shady
situation involving horses. The exact details of that situation as
you might imagine with the topic of this nature. They
differ quite a bit depending on what source you're looking at.
But basically, Bell and Sam had corralled some of their
horses on a neighbor's land, and suddenly the neighbor realized
that a couple of the horses they had belonged to
(10:50):
other people who lived in the neighborhood, and he pointed
that out to them. But Sam and Bell didn't listen
and didn't really return the horses either. Didn't react to
an innocent kind of way, like what a mistake. Exactly
give these back or let me explain why these horses
look exactly like these other people's horses. No, none of that.
So by July one, eighty two, Bell and Sam were
(11:12):
charged with horse stealing. Then on November seven, eighteen eighty two,
they both appeared in district Court at Fort Smith and
their trial was set for February or March of eighteen
eighty three, and a judge we mentioned in the Bass
Reeves podcast, the Hanging Judge, Isaac C. Parker, presided over
their trial. He got his scary nickname, if you'll remember,
(11:33):
from the tough sentences that he used to hand out.
But he took it easy on Bell and Sam since
it was their first conviction. So Sam was sentenced to
twelve months and Bell to two six month terms in
the House of Correction in Detroit, and Sam did mostly
hard labor while he was locked up, but Bell really
became a model prisoner. She helped tutor the other female
inmates who were pursuing an education, since of course she
(11:57):
was very well educated. According to Richard aren't It's article
in wild West, which we mentioned in the previous podcast.
She even charmed the warden into making her his quote assistant,
so she did pretty well for herself well she was
in prison, but both Sam and Bell ended up having
their sentences shortened to nine months and they were released
around Christmas eighty three. So after being convicted of something
(12:20):
as serious as horse stealing, Bell really didn't want to
get in trouble like that again, and she kind of
made a promise to her daughter Pearl that she wasn't
going to get into any trouble like that again. In fact,
she sent Pearl a letter before serving her sentence that said,
and she'll be away from you a few months, baby,
and have only this consolation to offer you that never
(12:40):
again will I be placed in such humiliating circumstances. I mean,
I have to think she thinks a little bit of
Pearl's father too, and how he was so absent from
the family because he was always getting in trouble and
didn't want to be another parent like that. Yeah, and
it maybe also that she's thinking a little bit of
her family name. I remember, remember she came from this
well to do kind of southern family, and she maybe thinking, yes,
(13:03):
I've been locked up now I want to change my ways.
So when Belle got out of prison, she really did
seem to do her best to keep this promise. Tom
Starr had kept up Younger's Bend for them, and she
and Sam took care of the spring planting, and they
brought both kids, Pearl and Eddie up to live with them.
Bell even planted a flower garden, and she was also
(13:23):
a model neighbor. According to Ral, she was known for
attempting to the sick in her area, even people she
had had altercations with people she didn't really like that much.
She would rush to their side if something was wrong
and really help out wherever she could. She still had
a restless wild side to her, though she would apparently
take frequent trips to visit friends to satisfy that, and
(13:44):
she couldn't connect with the other women who lived in
their neighborhood. That was kind of one disconnect that she
had with everyone around her because they weren't as educated
as her. So when she would see one of the
women coming to visit her and chat for a while,
she would sometimes just, I guess, head out the back
door with a book and hide somewhere until they had
gone away. Well, and of course, she also still had
(14:06):
a bit of a soft spot for outlaw She really
admired them for the way that they lived life in
their own terms, and they were always always welcome to
visit in her home, so if she saw an outlaw coming,
she wasn't heading out the back door with a book.
But living like this, Bell managed to stay out of
trouble for at least a year, but then trouble caught
up with her again in the form of the outlawed
(14:28):
John Middleton, and he was wanted for horse theft and
murder and found his way to younger Spend and Bell
had probably met him through her earlier travels, maybe in
Arkansas even and Middleton ended up hiding out around Bell's
property until about April eighty five, and then when the
Stars Cabin was raided that spring, Middleton realized it was
(14:49):
just too dangerous to stay there. I mean, if you
start to get too much of a reputation as an
outlaw side out, the law is going to come there too.
So Bell came up with a pretty clever play end
to get Middleton out of the area. She would take
off on one of her trips to Arkansas. That was
how the plan was going to be, taking Pearl along
(15:11):
with her, and they traveled by covered wagon and Middleton
would hide in the back of the wagon. Sam and
Eddie were to travel along behind them for at least
part of the journey, and then when the coast was clear,
Pearl would lend Middleton her horse and he would take off.
So everything went as planned at first, but then Middleton
somehow managed to offend Pearl. They got in an argument
(15:33):
and she would not loan him her horse, so Belle
at the last minute had to track down another horse
for him and ended up buying the sorry old mare
that was blind in one eye. Not a good getaway horse. No, So,
as you would imagine, Middleton is not happy about this
at all, But he took the horse and fled anyway.
And that horse, covered in mud and still wearing pearl saddle.
(15:55):
Apparently she wouldn't loan in the horse, but she would
loan in her saddle was still It was spotted a
few days later without the writer. After a search, Middleton's
body was found. He drowned trying to cross swollen river
on the horse. Authorities also discovered something that would mean
even more trouble for Bell. The person who had sold
her that horse, that sorry old mayor, was not the owner.
(16:19):
It was a stolen horse, stolen one eyed horse. So
Belle was charged with larceny and a warrant was issued
for her rest in January. She ended up turning herself
in at Fort Smith and her trial was set for September.
And these events really just stoked the rumors surrounding Bell.
According to Rouse book, newspapers had a field day with
(16:40):
the situation, and we're coming up with all kinds of
theories about her, including pretty delicious ones that she had
been Middleton's mistress and that she ran a gang of
cattle thieves. But in the meantime, Sam who seemed so
domestic a little earlier in the episode wasn't really helping
matters very much. She had already been implicated in the
hold up of a U. S Mail hack, and then
(17:01):
in February he was accused of being one of three
men who robbed several farm settlements. So again a witness
identified another one of the three, the three who robbed
these farm settlements as a woman dressed as a man,
specifically as Bell Starts. So Bell suddenly had some heat
on her. Yeah, she's wanted, her husband's wanted. Sam managed
(17:25):
to evade the authorities for a while. I mean they
were in Younger's Bend, but remember they have these caves,
those caves all around them to hide in, so he
somehow manages to get away every time they come around
looking for them. But Bell was arrested for the crime
in mid May, and it's while she was in Fort
Smith entering her not guilty ply for this crime that
she kicked off another legend about herself. She had her
(17:47):
photo taken that May with a murderer called Blue Duck.
According to both Row's work and Arnot's article, this is
really the only time she ever met Blue Duck, but
the fact that they're in this photo together gave biographers
an excuse to link her to him, suggesting that she
may have been his mistress, and that she even retained
an attorney who helped him avoid the death sentence. And
(18:09):
I couldn't help wondering here, since I end up mentioning
Linesome Dove in so many of these Wild West episodes
because things remind me of them. Uh, Blue Duck is is,
of course the famous murderer and the kidnapper in Lonesome Dove.
And I wondered a little bit if maybe this Blue
Duck was some sort of inspiration for that character. I
think that may be likely, and I think it's also
(18:30):
easy to see how even though she didn't know this
person and another again, it's an affiliation with an outlaw,
of affiliation with a notorious character um even through just
a picture that helped add to Bell's reputation, and an
outlaw of a different sort, maybe than some of the
earlier men she had been hanging out with, maybe a
(18:50):
worse sort, worse, more disturbing, more psychotic kind of sort.
Just a side note, there was another famous photo taken
around this time, that of her wearing a riding costume
sitting side saddle on a horse, and if you google
Bell Star you may actually see this pretty interesting photo
to look at. But Bell had her own legal matters
to attend to, of course, and she had at this
(19:12):
point been indicted for two crimes and had to stand
trial for both over the next couple of months, but
she wasn't convicted in either. Ultimately, that initial horse stuff
that she went to prison for was the only thing
that she ever served time for, but she had some
pretty serious family matters to deal with at this point.
She returned to Indian Territory and found Sam, still trying
(19:34):
to avoid the authorities, had been shot and badly wounded,
and she finally convinced him to turn himself in, thinking
that it would just be safer if he did so.
But before his trial date actually came around, Sam got
into a confrontation with the same neighborhood initially gotten him
in Bell in trouble for horse theft, and Sam and
the neighbor ended up shooting each other dead December. So
(19:58):
that was a big blow to Bell, not just because
she lost her husband, but without Sam in the picture,
she no longer had a legitimate claim to her land.
But she really liked her land. She loved the home
that they built there, and she really wanted to stay.
So she had to think of a creative way of
solving that problem, and she did just that, and the
answer was marrying twenty four year old Bill July. You
(20:22):
sometimes see his name as Jim July or Jim Starr.
I think he went by different aliases or nicknames. And
he was a Creek Indian who was an adopted son
of Tom Star. That didn't solve all of Bell's problems, though,
her kids were going through some stuff as well. Her
son Eddie, who was almost seventeen when Bell remarried, didn't
accept her new husband at all. I think that he
(20:44):
had really connected with Sam. And when this new guy
came into the picture, he was only a few years
older than him, he just wasn't having it. And Pearl
had been dating a young man that Bell didn't a
proof of because his family wasn't wealthy. So that created
kind of another issue in an issue in which Bell
doesn't really come up looking that great well now, And
(21:04):
and the deal with Pearl really got out of hand
because when the boy asked for Pearl's hand in marriage,
Bell turned him down and then sent Pearl away to
visit friends, and then while Pearl was gone, she concocted
a fake letter to the boy from Pearl saying that
Pearl had married she Pearl had married somebody else and
signed Pearl's name to it, so tricking this kid. He
(21:28):
ended up being so hurt that he went off and
married another girl. Learning about her former boyfriend's marriage really
crushed Pearl, but eventually both she and this man learned
what had happened, and they saw each other a few
times secretly. Pearl ended up getting pregnant and leaving home
to live with her Reed family because Bell was so
angry she wanted her to give up that baby, because
(21:49):
the whole point was that she wanted her to marry
someone else. She wanted her to marry someone with money,
someone who had a future. So I just think this
is interesting because throughout Bell's life story, this seems to
be one of her redeeming qualities is that she loves
her kids, especially Pearl. It seems, you know, she's really
a devoted a mother, but this story just makes her
seem really controlling and kind of diabolical. Yeah, it got
(22:11):
out of hand clearly, but trouble with Law kept on
following them too, so Bell had more than just these
family problems to worry about. She tried to avoid it,
but in June of eight seven, Bill July was arrested
and indicted for horse theft, and in July of her
son Eddie was charged with the same thing. So it
was everybody was everybody was an outlaw. Now they weren't
(22:34):
just harboring them right. Meanwhile, Bell was renting out the
land your Younger's ben to various farmers. She had entered
into a rental agreement with Mr Edgar Watson, but then
later found out through his wife that he was wanted
for murder in Florida. And at this point she really
was not interested in harboring random fugitives anymore, especially ones
that weren't part of her family or her friends, because
(22:55):
she didn't want to face arrest or trial herself, so
she tried to back out of the steel with Watson,
but since she had already accepted payment from him, he
would not budge. So finally she sort of obliquely or
maybe not so obliquely, threatened him, saying, quote, I don't
suppose the United States officers would trouble you, but the
Florida officers might and that really did it. Watson was
(23:18):
furious and he did leave. He settled on another farm nearby,
but he was very, very upset about this. And then
on February two nine, Belle accompanied her husband part of
the way to Fort Smith, where he was going to
stand trial for those horse theft charges, and after doing
a little bit of shopping, she headed back home the
next day, stopping at a neighbor's place for a bit
(23:40):
to eat and socialize along the way. After she left
the neighbor's house, she headed back toward a younger spend
on horseback, and when she turned onto the river lane
that would take her back home, she was shot at
least twice, causing her to fall from her horse. Neighbors
discovered her and came to her side, but she died
they're on the lane. Most people, of course, suspected Watson
(24:03):
of being the one who shot Bell. He, as we mentioned,
had that grudge against her, and the shooting happened right
near the farm where he was living at the time.
There were even tracks from the scene that led toward
his cabin, but the trail ended before they got to
the building, so they couldn't definitively prove it. According to
Row the murder weapon later on even turned out to
(24:24):
be one of his guns. But ultimately, even though Watson
was jailed for the crime, he had his lawyer's help
and was able to convince the judge that all of
the evidence was completely circumstantial. There were no witnesses around,
so there was nobody to prove otherwise. And there are
a few other potential suspects to including July Bell had
supposedly caught him having an affair with the Cherokee girl,
(24:46):
and then Eddie and Pearl too, just because things had
gotten so rough with with their whole situation. Yeah, Eddie
and Pearl were both unhappy because of fights that she
had had with both of them. Obviously, Pearl had the
whole relationship situation and the baby that wasn't accepted into
her family, but they were there for Bell. In the end.
There was a funeral for her, to which the family
and several outlaws came to pay their respects. I mean,
(25:09):
even though she was a controversial figure, she had a
lot of friends and a lot of people who came
to her funeral. Later, Pearl had a stone wall erected
around Belle's grave and there was a headstone that read,
shed not for her the bitter tear, nor give the
heart to vain regret, because but the casket that lies
here the gem that filled its sparkles. Yet, so after
(25:31):
Bell's death, her fame really started to spread far and wide,
and pretty quickly too. Raw notes that it started with
an obituary sent by the Fort Smith newspaper The Elevator
to several newspapers in the eastern United States, and many
of the papers just ignored the obituary, you know, who
is this random lady from the West. But the New
(25:51):
York Times ran it under the headline quote a desperate
woman killed, and parts of it read Belle is the
wife of Cole Younger Jim Star, which is spelled incorrectly.
Her second husband was shot down by the side of
Bell less than two years ago. Bell Star married Cole
Younger directly after the war, but left him and joined
(26:12):
a band of outlaws that operated in the Indian Territory.
She had been arrested for murder and robbery a score
of times but always managed to escape, So that definitely
built up the bandit queen legend, and things just kind
of spiraled from there. An editor and publisher named Richard K.
Fox saw the New York Times obituary, got interested, and
(26:34):
by eighteen eighty nine he'd written a paperback called Bell Star,
The Bandit Queen or the Female Jesse James and most
now seemed to consider Fox's work as having been largely fictionalized,
but for years a lot of people regarded it as biography. Later, writers,
including William Harmon, who wrote a book about Judge parker In,
even used Fox's book as a source material for their
(26:57):
own accounts of Bell's life, and later on to movies,
including the ninety one film Bell Star, compounded this sensationalized take. Actually,
if you look at pictures of Bell Star, you're going
to find that side full one and then a lot
of movie pictures. Um. Finally, though, in the nineteen eighties,
researchers started trying to get at her real story, you know,
(27:17):
what was behind this obviously fictional obituary and the later
admittedly fictionalized accounts of her work, and interviewed or descendants
and looked into legal records and letters for clues, you know,
trying to find out what really happened. And it's still
kind of hard to get quite at who she was.
But it seems like even if she wasn't truly an
(27:38):
outlaw queen, she certainly did have an outlaw spirit, She
had outlaw potential she did. It seems like she had
conflicting desires to be a um a ranch wife and
be a bandit queen. And I think that's kind of
summed up in in this quote that I like from
Bell that she gave to a reporter a couple of
(28:00):
years before her death, she said, I regard myself as
a woman who's seen much of life, and I think,
no matter what's true and what's fiction about her, that's
kind of hard to deny. Well, and she's almost the
kind of person who you like to imagine there are
some of these accounts that will just never know about.
I mean, it does add to a person's legend if
there's still a little obscure after all of this research
(28:21):
that's been put into them, that's very true. Well that's
all about all we have on Bell's life, on Bell
Star's life. If you would like to, I don't know,
maybe add your own Bell Star stories to the mix,
or give us your best fictionalized account of Bell Star
that we haven't looked into or mentioned yet, or your
favorite movie of the wild West. We were talking about
(28:44):
Western's earlier today, so I'm curious as to ones that
people like because I'm always wondering which ones I should
check out. I didn't watch a lot of like my youth.
We'll need to check out the Bell Star movie. We'll
have to check out the Bell Star movie. I actually
haven't seen that. So if you have any suggestions like
that for We're just any suggestions at all. Maybe you
don't have anything that's wild West, but you just want
to request a different sort of episode, feel free to
(29:05):
write us. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
or you can look us up on Facebook and we're
on Twitter at Miston History and appropriately enough for a
story about a woman who was on the run some
of our life. We do have an article on bounty hunting.
You can imagine again Belle saying I don't know who
he is and you'll never get that bounty. Um. You
(29:28):
can think all of that while you read our article
how bounty Hunting works by searching for it on our
homepage at www dot house stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house,
(29:51):
stuff works, iPhone up has a ride down with it
Today on iTunes, didn't
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a choker boarding and I'm Scared Dowdy,
and we are picking up here again with the story
of Bell Star, one of the most notorious female outlaws
(00:22):
of the Old West, who has been called the bandit
Queen and the female Jesse James. And she's been credited
with robbing stage coaches, holding up branchers while dressed as
a man, and leading her own band of outlaws. But
as we discussed in the last episode, a lot of
these stories about her may have just come from the
public's desire for intrigue filled adventure tales of the Wild West. Regardless,
(00:45):
though these stories bled into a number of biographies and
so called official accounts of her life, it became true
almost but more recent accounts have contradicted a lot of
these stories. For example, we mentioned in the last episode
that some people have thought That's daughter Pearl was fathered
by the famous outlaw Cole Younger, and even sources like
Encyclopedia Britannica say that this is quote probable, But then
(01:09):
other works like Margaret Rouse biography, Bell of the West,
which have looked into letters and court records those sort
of things, say that that's most likely not the case.
So what we've been doing is recounting Bell's life and
some of those better known stories and the differing takes
on them, And what we're trying to do is look
into where some of the wilder ones came from, maybe
(01:30):
how they came about, And the hopes are that perhaps
by understanding her character and seeing what primary sources can
corroborate with some of these stories, you can at least
get close to what her real story truly is. So
we'll rehash part one a little bit. So far, we've
talked about her childhood, her work as a spy during
the Civil War, and her family's harboring of outlaws in
(01:52):
Texas and that tumultuous marriage to the outlaw Jim Read.
And what we've really seen from all of this is
that even if Bell herself wasn't a criminal, she was
always really spunky. She was an outspoken girl with a
quick temper, and she associated very closely with a lot
of outlaws. So already it's kind of easy to see
how her personality would have lent itself quite nicely to
(02:14):
this whole persona of the bandit queen. It makes sense.
And when we left off in part one, it was
August of eight seventy four, and we were getting another
taste of that spunk nous. A man named John Morris
had just killed Read and then asked Bell, who at
this point was still going by her given name Myra Maybel,
to come identified a body so that he could collect
(02:36):
the bounty. So Myra Mabel shows up, sure enough, but
she looks at Read's body and says that she's never
seen him before, and then told Norris, and you'll remember
this dramatic quote from the end, you will never get
that bounty. So something was going on here, maybe some
strange loyalty to Read or and us against out laws,
against the law exactly. So it's unclear if the story
(02:59):
is true, but either way, plenty of people could identify
Read for Morris. So Morris got his share of the
balanty after all, though not the full amount since he
didn't bring in Read's full gang. After Reid's death, though
Maira Maybel really did struggle for a while. Jim Steath
had left her pretty much broke except for that land
her father had given her, and it was hard for
a woman in those days to make a living on
(03:20):
her own too, and she had the kids to think about,
so she rented her farmland and briefly tried to push
Pearl into a stage career because she had seen other
children become quite successful that way. A little girl performers
in particular, were very popular in the frontier town, so
Maira Maybel took Pearl to Dallas and rolled her in
school and acting classes there, but Pearl ended up getting sick,
(03:42):
and so the doctor recommended she avoid the stress of performing.
In the meantime, though, Maira Maybel's father had passed away
and her mother sold the farm and moved to Dallas
with Eddie, so it really seemed like hard times for
the family. According to Row's work, some Bellstar biographers paint
the time in Dallas as a really wild time for her,
(04:02):
when she spent all of her time guzzling whiskey and
saloons and using her feminine wiles to scam money off
of unsuspecting wealthy men. She also supposedly caused a lot
of public disturbances, shooting off her guns in the street,
much like she did when she was a kid, but
Raol actually points out that local newspapers never once mentioned
Myra Maybel in conjunction with events like these, even though
(04:26):
they pretty much covered everything that was going on at
the time and would even embellish stories to make them
more comfortable. So it seems unlikely that this really happened
since she's sort of conspicuously missing from these sorts of
accounts well, and it definitely also seems like Myra Maybel
was mostly focused on Pearl during this time in Dallas,
because after it was clear the stage career wasn't gonna happen,
(04:49):
she sold her farm and she set off on a
tour of visits to old Carthage friends in Missouri and
arkanhas and Kansas. And during this journey she ended up
leaving Pearl for a time to ay with a longtime
friend along the way. By eighteen seventy nine or so,
she had gone to Joplin, Missouri, and that gambler Bruce
Younger Cole Younger's cousin. She found him exciting and they
(05:10):
started up a fling. Their relationship was actually pretty scandalous
to not just because they were unmarried and because Bruce
was considered kind of a good for nothing sort of guy,
but also because they were staying at the same hotel,
and some people spread rumors that they were even staying
in the same room. The hotel owner, however, confirmed that
Myra Maybel did in fact have a room of her own,
(05:32):
and her mom and sometimes even Pearl would come and
visit her there. Whatever the exact living situation was, though,
she eventually got tired of it and decided to move
into Indian Territory and visit her late husband's business associate,
Tom Starr and Bruce Younger accompanied her there and, according
to row must have told her at some point that
he would marry her, or at least Myra Maybel expected
(05:53):
this to happen, because records showed that she went ahead
and changed Pearl's last name from Reid to Younger. But
after a while, Bruce just got bored of Indian Territory
and headed off for North Kansas, and according to Row's account,
Myra Maybel was just furious at this because he'd essentially
ruined her reputation. I mean, they had traveled there together
(06:15):
by taking off without marrying her. So Rowl recounts a
popular story of how she got back at him, saying
that Myra Maybel followed him to Kansas on horseback, went
to the courthouse and got a marriage license, and then
she found a justice of the peace and tracked down
Bruce holding a gun to his head. She told him
she'd blow his brains out if he didn't marry her
(06:36):
right away in front of twenty witnesses. So of course
Bruce went along with it. It's a real shotgun wedding exactly.
And after that she ordered a beer for everyone, or
beer in general for everyone. I think she ordered a
keg or something, and then just took off and stay
for the party herself, just took off back to Indian Territory.
So that sounds like kind of an outlandish story, the
(06:57):
type of thing that would be more on the edge
inside of Bell Star's life. But there really is record
of the two of them getting married in Kansas on May,
so there you go, could happen. She obviously wasn't too
hung up on Bruce Younger though, because just three weeks
later there's a record of Myra Maybell marrying someone else,
(07:19):
and that's Sam Starr, a good looking twenty three year
old three quarter Cherokee son of Tom Starr whom we
mentioned earlier. She was probably thirty two at the time
that she listed her age in the Cherokee Nation court
records as twenty seven. She also apparently completely ignored the
fact that she had just married Bruce Younger. Her last
name was listed in the marriage records as read Still,
(07:40):
and it was after she married Sam that she started
going by the name Bell Star. So, because of Sam's
Cherokee status, they could of course apply for a free
parcel of land on Indian Territory, which you couldn't do
as a white person unless you were married to a Cherokee.
So they settled in an area bordering the Canadian River
that was surrounded by clips that contained several caves, and
(08:02):
it was, according to Rout, known as the Younger's Bend
because the Youngers had gone there to strategize during the
Civil War, although other sources suggest Tom Star named it
that because he really admired their gang. That's kind of
a strange hypothesis to me, just because his wife dated
to two of the brothers. Yeah, although if you remember
(08:23):
from the previous podcast, the whole Coal Younger thing was
just a rumor, so he might not have been too upset,
and maybe Fam didn't even know about that. Maybe he didn't.
So the other thing about Younger's Bend was that it
was also seventy miles from Fort Smith, Arkansas, which is
the nearest US court, which becomes significant later on in
the podcast. And they moved into a little cabin there
(08:44):
and they set up this nice life for themselves. Sam
tended to cattle and horses and grew corn and hunted
game and really filled that responsible masculine role in Bell's
life that Jim Reid never really did, if you remember,
he was just more focused on his outlaw and chers
and wasn't kept him on the run and wasn't really around.
And so Sam and as Sam and Bell, they brought
(09:07):
Pearl up to live with them. And even though Bell
had acquired this idyllic sort of life, Bell didn't stay
completely out of trouble. No, much like her parents home
in Texas, Sam and Bell Younger's ben home became kind
of a refuge almost for outlaws. Jesse James was one
of the first to hide out with him. He stayed
(09:27):
with him for a couple of weeks while there was
a ten thousand dollar bounty on his head. James ended
up dying not long after that after taking a gunshot
to the back, and according to Rawle again, rumors of
his stay at Younger's Ben got out after his death,
and this just really added to Belle's reputation as an
outlaw herself. After you entertained, Jesse James, I mean, what
(09:47):
are you gonna do? But Bell didn't necessarily want to
be thought of in that way. She didn't want to
be connected to somebody like Jesse James, at least publicly.
She later wrote, quote on the Canadian River, I hope
to pass the remainder of my life in peace. For
a short time, I lived very happily with my little
girl and husband, but it became noised about that I
(10:08):
was a woman of notoriety from Texas, and from that
time on, my home and actions have been severely criticized.
My home became famous as an outlaw ranch, long before
I was visited by any of the boys who were
friends of mine. Bell's own behavior didn't always reflect this
desire for peace, though, even though it really sounds like
that's what she wanted. In the spring of eighty two,
(10:29):
for example, she got involved in kind of a shady
situation involving horses. The exact details of that situation as
you might imagine with the topic of this nature. They
differ quite a bit depending on what source you're looking at.
But basically, Bell and Sam had corralled some of their
horses on a neighbor's land, and suddenly the neighbor realized
that a couple of the horses they had belonged to
(10:50):
other people who lived in the neighborhood, and he pointed
that out to them. But Sam and Bell didn't listen
and didn't really return the horses either. Didn't react to
an innocent kind of way, like what a mistake. Exactly
give these back or let me explain why these horses
look exactly like these other people's horses. No, none of that.
So by July one, eighty two, Bell and Sam were
(11:12):
charged with horse stealing. Then on November seven, eighteen eighty two,
they both appeared in district Court at Fort Smith and
their trial was set for February or March of eighteen
eighty three, and a judge we mentioned in the Bass
Reeves podcast, the Hanging Judge, Isaac C. Parker, presided over
their trial. He got his scary nickname, if you'll remember,
(11:33):
from the tough sentences that he used to hand out.
But he took it easy on Bell and Sam since
it was their first conviction. So Sam was sentenced to
twelve months and Bell to two six month terms in
the House of Correction in Detroit, and Sam did mostly
hard labor while he was locked up, but Bell really
became a model prisoner. She helped tutor the other female
inmates who were pursuing an education, since of course she
(11:57):
was very well educated. According to Richard aren't It's article
in wild West, which we mentioned in the previous podcast.
She even charmed the warden into making her his quote assistant,
so she did pretty well for herself well she was
in prison, but both Sam and Bell ended up having
their sentences shortened to nine months and they were released
around Christmas eighty three. So after being convicted of something
(12:20):
as serious as horse stealing, Bell really didn't want to
get in trouble like that again, and she kind of
made a promise to her daughter Pearl that she wasn't
going to get into any trouble like that again. In fact,
she sent Pearl a letter before serving her sentence that said,
and she'll be away from you a few months, baby,
and have only this consolation to offer you that never
(12:40):
again will I be placed in such humiliating circumstances. I mean,
I have to think she thinks a little bit of
Pearl's father too, and how he was so absent from
the family because he was always getting in trouble and
didn't want to be another parent like that. Yeah, and
it maybe also that she's thinking a little bit of
her family name. I remember, remember she came from this
well to do kind of southern family, and she maybe thinking, yes,
(13:03):
I've been locked up now I want to change my ways.
So when Belle got out of prison, she really did
seem to do her best to keep this promise. Tom
Starr had kept up Younger's Bend for them, and she
and Sam took care of the spring planting, and they
brought both kids, Pearl and Eddie up to live with them.
Bell even planted a flower garden, and she was also
(13:23):
a model neighbor. According to Ral, she was known for
attempting to the sick in her area, even people she
had had altercations with people she didn't really like that much.
She would rush to their side if something was wrong
and really help out wherever she could. She still had
a restless wild side to her, though she would apparently
take frequent trips to visit friends to satisfy that, and
(13:44):
she couldn't connect with the other women who lived in
their neighborhood. That was kind of one disconnect that she
had with everyone around her because they weren't as educated
as her. So when she would see one of the
women coming to visit her and chat for a while,
she would sometimes just, I guess, head out the back
door with a book and hide somewhere until they had
gone away. Well, and of course, she also still had
(14:06):
a bit of a soft spot for outlaw She really
admired them for the way that they lived life in
their own terms, and they were always always welcome to
visit in her home, so if she saw an outlaw coming,
she wasn't heading out the back door with a book.
But living like this, Bell managed to stay out of
trouble for at least a year, but then trouble caught
up with her again in the form of the outlawed
(14:28):
John Middleton, and he was wanted for horse theft and
murder and found his way to younger Spend and Bell
had probably met him through her earlier travels, maybe in
Arkansas even and Middleton ended up hiding out around Bell's
property until about April eighty five, and then when the
Stars Cabin was raided that spring, Middleton realized it was
(14:49):
just too dangerous to stay there. I mean, if you
start to get too much of a reputation as an
outlaw side out, the law is going to come there too.
So Bell came up with a pretty clever play end
to get Middleton out of the area. She would take
off on one of her trips to Arkansas. That was
how the plan was going to be, taking Pearl along
(15:11):
with her, and they traveled by covered wagon and Middleton
would hide in the back of the wagon. Sam and
Eddie were to travel along behind them for at least
part of the journey, and then when the coast was clear,
Pearl would lend Middleton her horse and he would take off.
So everything went as planned at first, but then Middleton
somehow managed to offend Pearl. They got in an argument
(15:33):
and she would not loan him her horse, so Belle
at the last minute had to track down another horse
for him and ended up buying the sorry old mare
that was blind in one eye. Not a good getaway horse. No, So,
as you would imagine, Middleton is not happy about this
at all, But he took the horse and fled anyway.
And that horse, covered in mud and still wearing pearl saddle.
(15:55):
Apparently she wouldn't loan in the horse, but she would
loan in her saddle was still It was spotted a
few days later without the writer. After a search, Middleton's
body was found. He drowned trying to cross swollen river
on the horse. Authorities also discovered something that would mean
even more trouble for Bell. The person who had sold
her that horse, that sorry old mayor, was not the owner.
(16:19):
It was a stolen horse, stolen one eyed horse. So
Belle was charged with larceny and a warrant was issued
for her rest in January. She ended up turning herself
in at Fort Smith and her trial was set for September.
And these events really just stoked the rumors surrounding Bell.
According to Rouse book, newspapers had a field day with
(16:40):
the situation, and we're coming up with all kinds of
theories about her, including pretty delicious ones that she had
been Middleton's mistress and that she ran a gang of
cattle thieves. But in the meantime, Sam who seemed so
domestic a little earlier in the episode wasn't really helping
matters very much. She had already been implicated in the
hold up of a U. S Mail hack, and then
(17:01):
in February he was accused of being one of three
men who robbed several farm settlements. So again a witness
identified another one of the three, the three who robbed
these farm settlements as a woman dressed as a man,
specifically as Bell Starts. So Bell suddenly had some heat
on her. Yeah, she's wanted, her husband's wanted. Sam managed
(17:25):
to evade the authorities for a while. I mean they
were in Younger's Bend, but remember they have these caves,
those caves all around them to hide in, so he
somehow manages to get away every time they come around
looking for them. But Bell was arrested for the crime
in mid May, and it's while she was in Fort
Smith entering her not guilty ply for this crime that
she kicked off another legend about herself. She had her
(17:47):
photo taken that May with a murderer called Blue Duck.
According to both Row's work and Arnot's article, this is
really the only time she ever met Blue Duck, but
the fact that they're in this photo together gave biographers
an excuse to link her to him, suggesting that she
may have been his mistress, and that she even retained
an attorney who helped him avoid the death sentence. And
(18:09):
I couldn't help wondering here, since I end up mentioning
Linesome Dove in so many of these Wild West episodes
because things remind me of them. Uh, Blue Duck is is,
of course the famous murderer and the kidnapper in Lonesome Dove.
And I wondered a little bit if maybe this Blue
Duck was some sort of inspiration for that character. I
think that may be likely, and I think it's also
(18:30):
easy to see how even though she didn't know this
person and another again, it's an affiliation with an outlaw,
of affiliation with a notorious character um even through just
a picture that helped add to Bell's reputation, and an
outlaw of a different sort, maybe than some of the
earlier men she had been hanging out with, maybe a
(18:50):
worse sort, worse, more disturbing, more psychotic kind of sort.
Just a side note, there was another famous photo taken
around this time, that of her wearing a riding costume
sitting side saddle on a horse, and if you google
Bell Star you may actually see this pretty interesting photo
to look at. But Bell had her own legal matters
to attend to, of course, and she had at this
(19:12):
point been indicted for two crimes and had to stand
trial for both over the next couple of months, but
she wasn't convicted in either. Ultimately, that initial horse stuff
that she went to prison for was the only thing
that she ever served time for, but she had some
pretty serious family matters to deal with at this point.
She returned to Indian Territory and found Sam, still trying
(19:34):
to avoid the authorities, had been shot and badly wounded,
and she finally convinced him to turn himself in, thinking
that it would just be safer if he did so.
But before his trial date actually came around, Sam got
into a confrontation with the same neighborhood initially gotten him
in Bell in trouble for horse theft, and Sam and
the neighbor ended up shooting each other dead December. So
(19:58):
that was a big blow to Bell, not just because
she lost her husband, but without Sam in the picture,
she no longer had a legitimate claim to her land.
But she really liked her land. She loved the home
that they built there, and she really wanted to stay.
So she had to think of a creative way of
solving that problem, and she did just that, and the
answer was marrying twenty four year old Bill July. You
(20:22):
sometimes see his name as Jim July or Jim Starr.
I think he went by different aliases or nicknames. And
he was a Creek Indian who was an adopted son
of Tom Star. That didn't solve all of Bell's problems, though,
her kids were going through some stuff as well. Her
son Eddie, who was almost seventeen when Bell remarried, didn't
accept her new husband at all. I think that he
(20:44):
had really connected with Sam. And when this new guy
came into the picture, he was only a few years
older than him, he just wasn't having it. And Pearl
had been dating a young man that Bell didn't a
proof of because his family wasn't wealthy. So that created
kind of another issue in an issue in which Bell
doesn't really come up looking that great well now, And
(21:04):
and the deal with Pearl really got out of hand
because when the boy asked for Pearl's hand in marriage,
Bell turned him down and then sent Pearl away to
visit friends, and then while Pearl was gone, she concocted
a fake letter to the boy from Pearl saying that
Pearl had married she Pearl had married somebody else and
signed Pearl's name to it, so tricking this kid. He
(21:28):
ended up being so hurt that he went off and
married another girl. Learning about her former boyfriend's marriage really
crushed Pearl, but eventually both she and this man learned
what had happened, and they saw each other a few
times secretly. Pearl ended up getting pregnant and leaving home
to live with her Reed family because Bell was so
angry she wanted her to give up that baby, because
(21:49):
the whole point was that she wanted her to marry
someone else. She wanted her to marry someone with money,
someone who had a future. So I just think this
is interesting because throughout Bell's life story, this seems to
be one of her redeeming qualities is that she loves
her kids, especially Pearl. It seems, you know, she's really
a devoted a mother, but this story just makes her
seem really controlling and kind of diabolical. Yeah, it got
(22:11):
out of hand clearly, but trouble with Law kept on
following them too, so Bell had more than just these
family problems to worry about. She tried to avoid it,
but in June of eight seven, Bill July was arrested
and indicted for horse theft, and in July of her
son Eddie was charged with the same thing. So it
was everybody was everybody was an outlaw. Now they weren't
(22:34):
just harboring them right. Meanwhile, Bell was renting out the
land your Younger's ben to various farmers. She had entered
into a rental agreement with Mr Edgar Watson, but then
later found out through his wife that he was wanted
for murder in Florida. And at this point she really
was not interested in harboring random fugitives anymore, especially ones
that weren't part of her family or her friends, because
(22:55):
she didn't want to face arrest or trial herself, so
she tried to back out of the steel with Watson,
but since she had already accepted payment from him, he
would not budge. So finally she sort of obliquely or
maybe not so obliquely, threatened him, saying, quote, I don't
suppose the United States officers would trouble you, but the
Florida officers might and that really did it. Watson was
(23:18):
furious and he did leave. He settled on another farm nearby,
but he was very, very upset about this. And then
on February two nine, Belle accompanied her husband part of
the way to Fort Smith, where he was going to
stand trial for those horse theft charges, and after doing
a little bit of shopping, she headed back home the
next day, stopping at a neighbor's place for a bit
(23:40):
to eat and socialize along the way. After she left
the neighbor's house, she headed back toward a younger spend
on horseback, and when she turned onto the river lane
that would take her back home, she was shot at
least twice, causing her to fall from her horse. Neighbors
discovered her and came to her side, but she died
they're on the lane. Most people, of course, suspected Watson
(24:03):
of being the one who shot Bell. He, as we mentioned,
had that grudge against her, and the shooting happened right
near the farm where he was living at the time.
There were even tracks from the scene that led toward
his cabin, but the trail ended before they got to
the building, so they couldn't definitively prove it. According to
Row the murder weapon later on even turned out to
(24:24):
be one of his guns. But ultimately, even though Watson
was jailed for the crime, he had his lawyer's help
and was able to convince the judge that all of
the evidence was completely circumstantial. There were no witnesses around,
so there was nobody to prove otherwise. And there are
a few other potential suspects to including July Bell had
supposedly caught him having an affair with the Cherokee girl,
(24:46):
and then Eddie and Pearl too, just because things had
gotten so rough with with their whole situation. Yeah, Eddie
and Pearl were both unhappy because of fights that she
had had with both of them. Obviously, Pearl had the
whole relationship situation and the baby that wasn't accepted into
her family, but they were there for Bell. In the end.
There was a funeral for her, to which the family
and several outlaws came to pay their respects. I mean,
(25:09):
even though she was a controversial figure, she had a
lot of friends and a lot of people who came
to her funeral. Later, Pearl had a stone wall erected
around Belle's grave and there was a headstone that read,
shed not for her the bitter tear, nor give the
heart to vain regret, because but the casket that lies
here the gem that filled its sparkles. Yet, so after
(25:31):
Bell's death, her fame really started to spread far and wide,
and pretty quickly too. Raw notes that it started with
an obituary sent by the Fort Smith newspaper The Elevator
to several newspapers in the eastern United States, and many
of the papers just ignored the obituary, you know, who
is this random lady from the West. But the New
(25:51):
York Times ran it under the headline quote a desperate
woman killed, and parts of it read Belle is the
wife of Cole Younger Jim Star, which is spelled incorrectly.
Her second husband was shot down by the side of
Bell less than two years ago. Bell Star married Cole
Younger directly after the war, but left him and joined
(26:12):
a band of outlaws that operated in the Indian Territory.
She had been arrested for murder and robbery a score
of times but always managed to escape, So that definitely
built up the bandit queen legend, and things just kind
of spiraled from there. An editor and publisher named Richard K.
Fox saw the New York Times obituary, got interested, and
(26:34):
by eighteen eighty nine he'd written a paperback called Bell Star,
The Bandit Queen or the Female Jesse James and most
now seemed to consider Fox's work as having been largely fictionalized,
but for years a lot of people regarded it as biography. Later, writers,
including William Harmon, who wrote a book about Judge parker In,
even used Fox's book as a source material for their
(26:57):
own accounts of Bell's life, and later on to movies,
including the ninety one film Bell Star, compounded this sensationalized take. Actually,
if you look at pictures of Bell Star, you're going
to find that side full one and then a lot
of movie pictures. Um. Finally, though, in the nineteen eighties,
researchers started trying to get at her real story, you know,
(27:17):
what was behind this obviously fictional obituary and the later
admittedly fictionalized accounts of her work, and interviewed or descendants
and looked into legal records and letters for clues, you know,
trying to find out what really happened. And it's still
kind of hard to get quite at who she was.
But it seems like even if she wasn't truly an
(27:38):
outlaw queen, she certainly did have an outlaw spirit, She
had outlaw potential she did. It seems like she had
conflicting desires to be a um a ranch wife and
be a bandit queen. And I think that's kind of
summed up in in this quote that I like from
Bell that she gave to a reporter a couple of
(28:00):
years before her death, she said, I regard myself as
a woman who's seen much of life, and I think,
no matter what's true and what's fiction about her, that's
kind of hard to deny. Well, and she's almost the
kind of person who you like to imagine there are
some of these accounts that will just never know about.
I mean, it does add to a person's legend if
there's still a little obscure after all of this research
(28:21):
that's been put into them, that's very true. Well that's
all about all we have on Bell's life, on Bell
Star's life. If you would like to, I don't know,
maybe add your own Bell Star stories to the mix,
or give us your best fictionalized account of Bell Star
that we haven't looked into or mentioned yet, or your
favorite movie of the wild West. We were talking about
(28:44):
Western's earlier today, so I'm curious as to ones that
people like because I'm always wondering which ones I should
check out. I didn't watch a lot of like my youth.
We'll need to check out the Bell Star movie. We'll
have to check out the Bell Star movie. I actually
haven't seen that. So if you have any suggestions like
that for We're just any suggestions at all. Maybe you
don't have anything that's wild West, but you just want
to request a different sort of episode, feel free to
(29:05):
write us. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
or you can look us up on Facebook and we're
on Twitter at Miston History and appropriately enough for a
story about a woman who was on the run some
of our life. We do have an article on bounty hunting.
You can imagine again Belle saying I don't know who
he is and you'll never get that bounty. Um. You
(29:28):
can think all of that while you read our article
how bounty Hunting works by searching for it on our
homepage at www dot house stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house,
(29:51):
stuff works, iPhone up has a ride down with it
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