Good morning everybody....and Happy Labor Day!
A story I'm working on is based in the Arizona Territory. I thought it might be interesting to find some famous folks who helped to color that great state!
Let's find out about one of the only female stagecoach robbers - Pearl Hart!
Born as Pearl Taylor of French descent in
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada, the petite and attractive young girl would grow up to
become one of the only female stagecoach robbers in the American West. One of
several children, Pearl was brought up in a respectable middle-class family and
received a good education. Though she couldn’t have known it, her life would
take a turn for the worse when, at the age of seventeen, she fell for
swaggering and seductive gambler named Frederick Hart.
Pearl soon eloped with Hart, who sometimes
worked as a bartender, but more often, lost whatever money he had at the gaming
tables. In addition to being a poor provider, he was also said to have been a
heavy drinker and often abusive to his young wife. Whatever dreams Pearl might
have had with Fred, she was soon disappointed, as her life with him proved to
be one hardship after another.
In 1893, the couple traveled to the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago,
Illinois
where Fred worked as a sideshow barker and Pearl found a number of odd jobs.
While she was there, she became enthralled with
the Wild West
shows and was especially enamored by Annie Oakley,
who she saw performing. She also attended the World’s Fair Women’s Pavilion
where she listened to a number of women’s speeches, including Julia Ward
Howe, a prominent women’s activist and poet.
Inspired by seeing strong women and enamored by
the heroes and legends of the Wild West, she soon
mustered the courage to leave her shiftless husband and boarded a train to Trinidad,
Colorado.
There, she became a popular saloon singer. However,
she soon found that she was pregnant with Frederick’s child and returned to her
family in Canada. After giving birth to a son, she left him with her mother and
traveled west again, this time landing in Phoenix, Arizona. Pearl
was disappointed in the "West” not finding the glamour and heroes she had
been so enamored with, instead working as a cook in a café and taking in
laundry to supplement her income.
However, she stayed and in 1895, her estranged
husband Frederick caught up with her. After begging Pearl to come back to him
and promising to get a regular job, the couple reunited. True to his word, Fred
got a job working as a manager and bartender at a local hotel. While their life
seemed to be happier during this time, the pair also began to live a little
wildly, frequenting the saloons and gambling
parlors on Washington Street, where Pearl learned to smoke and drink, and
allegedly use other harsher drugs, including marijuana and morphine.
Inevitably, the couple’s marital problems
started up again and after Pearl gave birth to a second child, a girl, Fred
said he was bored with domestic life and tired of supporting a family. After a
violent argument between the two in 1898, Fred knocked Pearl unconscious and
left her to ride off with Teddy
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in Cuba. Pearl once again returned to her
parents but had gotten a taste of life in the west and didn’t stay long,
leaving her second child there as well.
She was soon back in Arizona,
working at odd jobs in many of the mining camps. But a woman alone during these
times found it difficult to survive and she became very depressed. She tried to
kill herself several times but was saved by acquaintances.
By 1899; however, she had hooked up with a
miner named Joe Boot.
When she received a letter from her brother that her mother was ill and needed
money for medical bills, she turned to Boot
for advice. Joe, who had long been planning to rob a train, had several ideas
for Pearl to make some quick cash.
Their first scam was for Pearl to lure men into
their room, allowing them to think that there was an opportunity for romance.
Instead, Joe knocked them out and they took the unsuspecting men’s money.
However, this was not lucrative enough, so the pair soon conceived of the idea
of robbing a stagecoach.
After careful planning, the couple decided to
rob the stagecoach that ran between Florence and Globe, Arizona. To get
ready for the heist, Pearl cut off her hair and dressed in Joe’s clothing. On
May 30, 1899, they carried out their plan, jumping in front of the stage with
their guns drawn and ordering the driver to stop. As Joe kept his gun pointed
at the driver, Pearl ushered the passengers out of the coach and emptied their
pockets and wallets. After taking about $450 and a revolver, the pair ordered
the passengers back in the coach and Joe fired his gun in the air and told the
driver to take off.
But, for all their planning, the couple hadn’t
prepared for the fact that they were not all that familiar with the surrounding
desert hills. Riding off on their horses, they soon got lost. After a couple of
days, the couple made camp in a grove of trees and after building a campfire,
they fell asleep. Some time later, when they awoke, they were surrounded by the
sheriff and his posse.
Taken to the Globe jail, Hart played
up her part as a lady bandit, giving autographs and entertaining those who just
wanted to get a glimpse of the "Bandit Queen.” A few weeks after her
capture, Pearl escaped from the jail on October 12, 1899, with another prisoner
by the name of Ed Hogan. As the posse quickly pursued the pair, Pearl's legend
began to grow throughout the west. But her freedom would be short as the law
soon found her and returned her to the jail.
Hart's trial took place in Florence
in November, 1899 where she insisted that the court had no right to place her
on trial, saying: "I shall not consent to be tried under a law in which my
sex had no voice in making.” Though she admitted her guilt, she was still
acquitted by the jury, most likely because of her story of robbing the stage only
to send her mother money. Her lawyer had also plead with the jury that it was
her first offense and that she had always obeyed the law in the past.
The trail magistrate, Judge Fletcher
Doan, was furious at the verdict, claiming that Pearl "...flirted with the
jury, bending them to her will." He soon replaced the jury and had Pearl
re-tried for unlawfully carrying a gun. This time, the jury was not swayed by
her charms and she was convicted and sentenced to five years in the Yuma
Territorial Prison. Tried in a separate trial, her partner in crime, Joe Boot,
was not so lucky, as he received 30 years for his part in the stage robbery. Boot,
who was also sent to the Yuma prison, was able to escape in 1901 and was never
recaptured or heard of again. He was thought to have fled to Mexico and stayed
there.
In the meantime, Pearl became even
more of a celebrity while she was in prison and the warden, who liked the
attention, accommodated her with a larger than usual cell as well as a few
other perks. While there her legend grew as she "entertained” visitors and
reporters, often posing for pictures. After just 18 months in prison, she was
paroled on December 19, 1902 and moved to Kansas City. There, she planned to
profit from her fame as the "Lady Bandit” in a production that her sister
wrote about her western adventures. However, her fame faded quickly and she
disappeared from public view for a couple of years until she was arrested in
Kansas City under the name of Mrs. L.P. Keele for buying stolen canned goods.
Afterwards, she disappeared again until in 1924, when she visited the old
courthouse in Florence where she was tried. While there she said to an
attendant with a smile, "nothing has changed.” When the he asked who she
was, she turned in the doorway and dramatically exclaimed: "Pearl Hart,
the lady bandit.
As to what happened to Pearl Hart in the end, it remains unknown. Some reports say that she died in Kansas City where she operated a cigar store in 1925. Others say that she was living in San Francisco, California when she died in 1952. Most often, however, she is credited with having married a rancher in Dripping Springs, Arizona, where she lived out the last days of her life going by the name of Pearl Bywater and died in 1956.
* * * *
By the way....Watch for Chase's Story - coming in January!
I write for all ages, from the early reader to adults. My books range from pictures books for the
little ones, to fantasy, time-travel adventures for ages 9 to 13. I also write
adult stories, including a family drama and contemporary, paranormal and
historical westerns romances, under P. A. Estelle.
I was a school secretary for 21 years. My husband and I moved to our retirement home
in Kingman, AZ, on very rural 54 acres, living on solar and wind only.
More about my books can be found in the following links:
Entertaining fun read. Thank you for sharing your research. Doris
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Penny! Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDelete