Pearl Starr
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Rosie Lee "Pearl" Reed was born in 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 famous "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 in Indian Territory. Her mother was murdered when Pearl was twenty-one.
Pearl left Indian Territory after Belle's death and established herself as a prostitute in Van Buren, Arkansas. Capitalizing on the dime novel fame of Belle, she changed her name to Pearl Starr at this time.
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.
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 Arizona, where she died in 1925. She was survived by a daughter, Flossie, who authored an insightful two-part article on her for the Dallas Sun's Sunday editions in or about 1930. 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. She was proficient on the piano, learning on the one Belle freighted in to their cabin in Younger's Bend. She epitaphed Belle's headstone there.
