Pearl Starr

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Pearl Starr (right) with two unidentified women

Rosie Lee "Pearl" Reed was born in September 1868 in Rich Hill, Missouri and spent most of her life in Fort Smith, Arkansas as the owner of a bordello. She was the first child of Belle Starr, the reputed "Bandit Queen", and Jim Reed, Belle's first husband and a known thief and murderer.

As a small child, Pearl was subject to the upheaval caused by her father's life of crime, moving around the country before he died in a gunfight when Pearl was six. Her mother remarried an Indian named Sam Starr and the family settled beside the Canadian River at a place called Younger’s Bend in Indian Territory. Her mother was murdered when Pearl was twenty-one.

According to some of the writers of the fiction that surrounded Belle after her death, Pearl gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Flossie in April 1887, at age 18. Although most historical writers accept Flossie’s birth, despite a dearth of evidence, Belle apparently would not and sent Pearl away to relatives to have her baby, refusing to countenance her illegitimate granddaughter.

In 1888 Pearl’s brother, Eddie got into bad company and was found in possession of some stolen property and even managed to get himself shot by his accomplice. Whatever became of Pearl’s daughter isn’t known but in the summer of 1888 Pearl returned to her mother’s house at Younger’s Bend to provide nursing care for her brother, without Flossie.

Eddie’s case went to trial in July 1889 where he was found guilty and sent to prison. It was about this time Pearl married Will Harrison but the marriage went sour and the couple were divorced in 1891. Capitalizing on the dime novel fame of Belle, she changed her name to Pearl Starr at this time. Pearl established herself as a prostitute in Van Buren, Arkansas ostensibly to make money for the purpose of getting her brother out of prison, eventually putting together a defence team that managed a presidential pardon 1893.

After securing sufficient capital, Pearl moved across the river to Fort Smith, Arkansas and established her own bordello. Located on "the Row," Fort Smith's water front street of gambling halls, saloons and bordellos, the house was clearly identified with a bright red star surrounded by lighted pearls. The parlor featured a talented piano player, good whiskey and the "most beautiful girls west of the Mississippi." Business prospered and Pearl purchased additional houses, and invested in saloons and other property.

Pearl had another daughter out of wedlock in 1894 and named her Ruth. She married Arthur Erbach in 1897 and gave him a son in 1898, both of whom were dead of malaria in a year’s time. By 1902 she was living with a man named Dell Andrews and although not married to him she presented him with a daughter, Jennette in November of that year.

The only time Pearl was implicated in a crime was in 1911. After a burglary at a general merchandise store in Fort Smith, police found several of the stolen items hidden at Pearl's Winslow home. She was found guilty of robbery and sentenced to a year in the Arkansas State Penitentiary. Posting $2000 bail, Pearl's attorneys appealed the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court which overturned the verdict.

In 1916 the city of Fort Smith began enacting ordinances making prostitution illegal. For a few years, Pearl's activities were overlooked but she was eventually arrested. The charges were dropped with the understanding that Pearl would leave the community. In 1921, at age 53, she left Fort Smith for Douglas, Arizona, where she died in 1925.

Flossie is credited with authoring an insightful two-part article for the Dallas Morning News Sunday editions on April 30 and May 7, 1933. According to “Flossie” Pearl fully believed from 1889 to her last day her brother Edwin, always resentful of Belle's attention to Rosie, was their mother's shotgunning killer, but was never able to prove it. In fact, Eddie had no such resentment; the two siblings were close and loved each other very much. Eddie had other motives for wanting to kill his mother, but most importantly, he had a provable alibi as to his whereabouts at the time of Belle’s murder and Pearl would have been fully aware of this. If “Flossie” had had any dealings with Pearl she, too, would have known it. “Flossie’s” articles transpired to be little more than a regurgitation of the fiction already written about Belle and is thoroughly discredited as a source.