But her very next partner was also a warrior bandit. She did leave him behind and move back with her parents before he was killed in a gunfight in 1874. Her husband, though, was a wanted criminal. She became part of the gang, mostly as a tagalong. From there, things happened pretty quickly for Myra Maybelle. He and Belle fell in love and married in November 1866. Jim Reed, a childhood friend of the Shirley family, came with them to hole up at the Shirley’s Texas spread. In 1866, the James brothers and Cole Younger gangs fled Missouri after robbing their first bank. The Shirley farm in Texas was an ideal outlaw hideout. This drove the Shirley family to Texas, where their daughter would become a legendary outlaw. The Union also burned their town, Carthage, as part of an effort to remove everyone from the border areas, no matter which side they took in the Civil War. Sometimes the bushwhackers killed their victims and any time they interacted with the Union infantry the motto was “take no prisoners.” Other warrior bandits who began the terrorist life as bushwhackers included Frank and Jesse James.īud was killed in 1864, and it was a turning point for his sister and the rest of the family. As the name implies, they would jump out of hiding to torment and steal from the locals, many of them Union-sympathizing farmers. He was one of the “ bushwhackers,” small bands of renegades who hid in the Missouri backcountry to resist the Union army’s occupation. One of her relatives who may have led her astray was an older brother, Bud. So it wasn’t a foregone conclusion she’d end up hanging out with bandits in the border states. Belle’s formal education included classical languages. Her parents were affluent and owned an inn and a tavern. She was born in Missouri February 5, 1848, and started living in Carthage, Missouri when she was two. The Wild West outlaw started life with the name Myra Maybelle Shirley.
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