Belle Starr
| Belle Starr | |
|---|---|
Studio portrait of Belle Starr, "Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws"
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| Born |
Myra Maybelle Shirley February 5, 1848 Carthage, Missouri |
| Died | February 3, 1889 (aged 40) near King Creek, Oklahoma |
| Nationality | United States/Confederate States |
| Spouse(s) | Sam Starr James C. Reed Jim July Starr |
| Children |
Pearl Starr Eddie Reed |
| Parent(s) | John Shirley "Eliza" Pennington Shirley |
| Relatives | Preston Shirley, brother Charlotte Shirley, sister John Allison Shirley, brother Benton Edwin Shirley, brother Mansfield Shirley, brother Cravens Shirley, brother |
Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr (February 5, 1848 – February 3, 1889), better known as Belle Starr, was a notorious American outlaw.
Belle associated with the James–Younger Gang and other outlaws. She was convicted of horse theft in 1883. She was fatally shot in 1889 in a case that is still officially unsolved. Her story was popularized by Richard K. Fox—editor and publisher of the National Police Gazette—and she later became a popular character in television and movies.
Belle Starr was born as Myra Maybelle Shirley on her father's farm near Carthage, Missouri, where her father prospered raising wheat, corn, hogs and horses. Most of her family called her May. Her father was John Shirley who was the black sheep of a well-to-do Virginia family who had moved west to Indiana, where he married and divorced twice. Her mother, Elizabeth "Eliza" Hatfield Shirley, was John Shirley's third wife and a distant relative to the Hatfields of the famous family feud. In the 1860s, her father sold the farm and moved the family to Carthage, where he bought an inn, livery stable and blacksmith shop on the town square.
May Shirley received a classical education and learned piano, while graduating from Missouri's Carthage Female Academy, a private institution that her father had helped to found.
After a Union attack on Carthage in 1864, the Shirleys moved to Scyene, Texas. According to legend, it was at Scyene that the Shirleys became associated with a number of Missouri-born criminals, including Jesse James and the Youngers. In fact, she knew the Younger brothers and the James boys because she had grown up with them in Missouri. Her brother, John A. M. "Bud" Shirley, was called Captain Shirley by local Confederate sympathizers. He does not appear on any list of Quantrill's Raiders, but rode with a group who were called partisans by some and bushwackers by Union sympathizers. Bud Shirley was killed in 1864 in Sarcoxie, Missouri, while he and another scout were being fed at the home of a Confederate sympathizer. Union troops surrounded the house and when Bud attempted to escape, he was shot and killed.
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