Photo by Sheryl Marie
In addition to the chance to work in beautiful Helena, Montana this week, it proved to be a fruitful time with my editors as well. Lots of books in the works including a western fiction entitled Laura Reno’s Brothers. It’s the western version of how I lost my brother, and let me assure you dear readers, unlike real life, the bad woman and her daughters in this story get theirs in the end. I couldn’t let this day pass without recognizing a brazen frontier woman named Pearl Hart. More than one hundred and thirteen years ago this week, Pearl robbed the last stage to ever be robbed in the Old West. Armed with a .44 Colt pistol and dressed in a man’s gray flannel shirt, jeans, and boots, Pearl Hart rode off into the hills around Globe, Arizona, to rob an unsuspecting stagecoach. The petite twenty-eight year-old woman had a cherub like face, short dark hair, and hard, penetrating little eyes. The white sombrero perched on her had was cocked to one side and cast a shadow over her small nose and plumb cheeks. While her accomplice seized the weapon the stage driver was carrying, Pearl lined the passengers alongside the road and relieved them of the more than $450 they possessed. Before the lady bandit sent the shaken travelers on their way, she provided them with one dollar. “That’s for grub and lodging,” she told them. Once the stage was off again, Pearl and her partner in crime rode out in the opposite directions. The brazen daylight robbery that occurred on May 30, 1899, had historic significance. It was the last stage ever held up, and Pearl Hart was the last stage bandit, female or otherwise, to perpetrate such a crime. Pearl’s mother was desperately ill and needed money to help purchase medicine. Not that it makes it right to rob a stage, but that was the motivation behind it she claimed. There weren’t many stages running in Arizona in the late 1890s; trains were not the primary means of transportation. Pearl decided to rob the stage that ran from Florence to Globe. The holdup went smoothly but the escape plan was flawed. She got lost in the woods surrounding the crime scene and was eventually apprehended by a posse sent to arrest her. Pearl Hart was charged with highway robbery, and her trial took place in Florence. News of Pearl’s crime and the hearing were reported in newspapers throughout the country. For a while she was arguably the most famous woman in the world. The first jury found that the darling Pearl was a victim of circumstances and granted her an acquittal. The judge was furious with the verdict and ordered a second jury to be appointed. After warning them not to be swayed by the fact that she was a woman, the jury found her guilty. Pearl was then sentenced to five years in jail. The bandit Pearl Hart served eighteen months for her sentence and was released on December 19, 1902. She left Arizona for Missouri and settled in Kansas City with her younger sister. There is some dispute over the date the famous lady thief died. Some historians believe she passed away in 1925 in Kansas City. Others suggest she died in Arizona in 1955. Her body lies in an unmarked grave in a small cemetery located at the base of the Dripping Springs Mountains near Globe.
