Belle Starr

• Born: February 5, 1848
• Birthplace: Near Carthage, Missouri
• Died: February 3, 1889
• Place of death: Near Younger's Bend, Indiana Territory (now Oklahoma)

American Old West outlaw

Major offenses: Horse stealing and robbery

Active: July 31, 1882; February, 1886

Locale: Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)

Sentence: Two consecutive terms of six months each at the House of Corrections in Detroit, Michigan; released after nine months of incarceration

Early Life

The second of six children in an upper-middle-class family of Southern sympathizers, Myra Maybelle (Belle) Shirley, later known as Belle Starr (stahr), attended the Carthage Female Academy and was educated as a lady. She enjoyed the time spent riding and hunting in the great outdoors with her beloved older brother, Bud, who was eight years her senior. During the Civil War, Bud was killed while serving with Quantrill’s Raiders—a pro-Confederate gang led by William Clarke Quantrill. The Shirley family then relocated near Dallas, Texas, after Union forces burned Carthage in 1864 and devastated their holdings. In Texas, the Shirley home became a haven for Missouri outlaws who had ridden with Quantrill, among them Cole Younger, Jim Younger, and Jesse James.

Outlaw Career

On November 1, 1866, Belle married Missouri outlaw Jim Reed; their daughter Rosie was born in September, 1868. They lived in Indian Territory with Cherokee outlaw Tom Starr and also spent time in California, where Belle’s son Ed was born in February, 1871. Reed soon relocated to Texas and then headed back to Indian Territory, as he was wanted for passing counterfeit money and for murder. His wife soon joined him, after leaving the children with relatives. Reed was actively involved in several illegal money-procuring ventures with the Younger, James, and Starr gangs and was killed by a deputy sheriff in Paris, Texas, in August, 1874.

Although many legends emerged about Belle, evidence suggests that although often a wife, lover, or companion to nefarious desperadoes and outlaws, Belle herself was tried and found guilty only once, on two counts of stealing horses and robbery with her husband Sam Starr, a Cherokee outlaw she married on June 5, 1880. Her cabin at Younger’s Bend in Indian Territory came to be known as a refuge for criminals on the run, and Belle was clearly a woman of shrewd intelligence, gritty determination, and strong will. Following Starr’s death in a December, 1886, shoot-out with an Indian police officer, Belle invited a Native American named Bill (Jim) July to share her cabin so that she could maintain the legal right to her homestead.

Shortly before her forty-first birthday in 1889, she was shot and killed in an ambush not far from her home. Her murderer was never found, and different theories arose to suggest that her husband, her neighbor, or her son was the culprit. This unsolved mystery helped accelerate the growth of her legend following her death.

Legal Action and Outcome

Belle and Sam Starr went to district court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, on November 7, 1882, to confront the horse stealing and robbery charges that two of their neighbors had filed the previous July. The grand jury found cause to suspect larceny, and the pair appeared in March, 1883, before well-known judge Isaac C. Parker, also known as the Hanging Judge for his preferred method of punishment. Belle was found guilty on both counts; Sam was convicted on only one, as the U.S. court lacked jurisdiction in a case when one Native American committed a crime against another. Sam was sentenced to twelve months in prison and Belle to two consecutive six-month terms in prison at the House of Corrections in Detroit. Nine months later, they were both released.

In 1886, Belle Starr was arrested as a suspect in an armed robbery carried out by three individuals but was released when no reliable evidence could be found that a woman was involved.

Impact

The mystique of the Wild West took hold on American culture following the Civil War, and the lurid adventures of colorful outlaws became the subject of great attention, both in the popular press and in a highly successful emergent form of literary entertainment, the dime novel. Richard K. Fox was a New York City editor of dime novels who noticed an obituary for Belle Starr in the February 6, 1889, New York Times that claimed she had been arrested for murder or robbery twenty times during her life but had always eluded the authorities. Although this was not true, it gave Fox the genesis of a new woman outlaw character for his dime novel empire, and that summer he published Bella Starr, the Bandit Queen: Or, The Female Jesse James, a twenty-five-cent paperback written for him by freelancer Alton B. Meyers. The book sold very well, and the following year a fictitious female outlaw character named Belle Starr began to appear in other dime novels.

Italian physician Cesare Lombroso drew upon these imaginary depictions and descriptions of Belle and analyzed her behavior in a book titled The Female Offender (1895), which gave a touch of academic validity to her growing legend. Belle became the subject of many poems, plays, novels, and films, and storytellers and writers regularly took great liberty with the facts to adjust Starr’s experience or appearance to fit their needs. The ongoing, international appeal of a gun-slinging, stagecoach-robbing Belle Starr was demonstrated by Akihiro Itou’s 1993 Japanese manga (comic book) Belle Starr Bandits.

Bibliography

Shirley, Glenn. Belle Starr and Her Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. The first chapter of this book summarizes the growth of the Belle Starr legend, while the subsequent eighteen chapters carefully try to distinguish fact from fabrication.

Smith, Robert B. Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. A historian carefully tries to work through the many versions of what occurred in some of the James-Younger robberies to discern what the probable truth is. Includes references to Belle Starr and her interactions with gang members.