The Wild West of Yester-Year

Pearl Hart

By Rachel Kovaciny

   

How does a respectable young woman from a well-to-do Ontario family wind up in Arizona’s notorious Yuma Territorial Prison?

 

Although many details of Pearl Hart’s life story are obscured by the legends that sprang up around her in the last days of the Old West, we do still know basic facts. Pearl Taylor Hart grew up in Lindsay, Ontario, part of the upper-middle-class Taylor family. Her parents were religious, well-educated, and wealthy enough to give their children excellent educations. They enrolled Pearl in a ladies’ boarding school, no doubt expecting she would emerge a polished Victorian lady who would attract an appropriate husband.

 

Instead, Pearl eloped with a gambler and con artist named Frederick Hart, running away from her boarding school to marry him at seventeen. Over the next few years, the Harts moved from place to place, sometimes together and sometimes not. Reportedly, Frederick was abusive, especially when intoxicated. Like so many abusers, he could also charm and persuade, and Pearl reunited with him repeatedly. 

  

Frederick found a job as a barker at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and Pearl traveled there with him. While there, she attended lectures by influential women such as Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist poet who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic and advocated for women’s suffrage. Pearl also attended Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, where she became fascinated with sharpshooter Annie Oakley and the idea of the Wild West. Fueled by the fiery words of female lecturers and the dazzling prowess of Annie Oakley, Pearl mustered up the courage to leave her abuser. She took a train to Trinidad, Colorado, where she found work as a singer and a cook, but reluctantly went back east when she realized she was expecting her first child. Pearl stayed with her mother in Ohio until giving birth, then left her infant son there.

 

She went west again, this time ending up in Arizona. Although the West was not as exciting and adventure-filled as she expected, she relished being able to live independently by working as a cook and washerwoman. However, Frederick found her again, and Pearl believed his promises to be a good husband and a steady worker. Frederick found a job managing a local hotel, and things went well in the Hart family for a while. Frederick and Pearl liked to frequent saloons together, where Pearl learned to gamble, drink hard liquor, smoke cigars, and dabble in opium. They even had their second child, a daughter.

 

Frederick returned to his abusive ways, beat up Pearl, and skipped town before he could be held accountable. Pearl left her daughter with her mother and moved from town to town, working as a cook, a waitress, a washerwoman, and probably a prostitute.

 

In May 1899, Pearl received a letter saying her mother was gravely ill. She had no money for tickets back to Ohio, but she was desperate to return to her mother and her children. Pearl’s new paramour, Joe Boot, suggested they could rob a local stagecoach to get her train fare. Somehow, this seemed like the best option. She cut her hair short, dressed up in men’s clothing, and helped Boot rob the stagecoach that ran between Globe and Florence, Arizona. Hart and Boot got away with over $400, but they got lost while trying to evade a posse and were captured after a few days.

 

Pearl Hart was held in jail in Tucson, and her story caught the attention of the national media, who dubbed her the “Bandit Queen.” She happily posed for photographs for reporters, signed autographs, and gave interviews. She even briefly escaped from jail before her trial. And she won her trial and got them both off the hook for armed robbery with her impassioned speech to the jury, claiming all she wanted was to see her dying mother one more time.

 

Alas, this didn’t work at their second trial for tampering with the U.S. mail. They were found guilty and sentenced to Yuma Territorial Prison, Pearl for five years, and Joe for thirty. Boot eventually escaped and disappeared, while the Arizona Territorial Governor pardoned Hart after serving less than half her sentence. Pearl Hart joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show briefly, under an alias. She gave lectures on life inside the prison at Yuma and attempted to write and publish her life’s story. Slowly, she faded into obscurity. Census records show she married a respectable rancher named Bywater and lived on his Arizona ranch until they both died in 1955, within four months of each other.

 

Although not the only woman to rob a coach, Pearl Hart’s reputation as the Bandit Queen endured long after the facts about her life blurred and faded away. ♦