Born to outlaw parents, Rose Lee Reed stood little chance of a respectable life. By the time she arrived in Arizona, she already had endured disappointments, disasters and regrets.
Born in 1868 in Rich Hill, Missouri, Rose was the daughter of Myra Mabelle Shirley, better known as the lady bandit Belle Starr. Her father was probably the desperado James Reed although some sources credit outlaw Cole Younger as her father.
Belle wanted Rose to be a stage star. But whenever the child appeared on stage she became violently ill, dissolving Belle’s dreams of a lucrative career for her daughter.
Rose was age 6 when Reed died. Belle married horse rustler Sam Starr in 1880 when Rose was 12. At age 18, Rose gave birth to her first child, Mamie, and was persuaded by her mother to give up the baby for adoption.
In 1888, Rose’s younger brother Edwin was charged with robbery. Desperate to earn bail money for her wayward brother but with no marketable skills, Rose went to work in an Arkansas bawdy house.
When Belle Starr was murdered in 1889, Rose began using the name Pearl Starr to capitalize on her mother’s fame and started her own bordello in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Her two-story house was known by the cut glass star surrounded by pearls that she placed in one of the windows.
For almost 20 years, Pearl ran a profitable house of ill repute. She added additional brothels and invested in saloons along with other properties.
She married four times and had three more children. Ruth was born in 1894, Arthur in 1898 although he lived less than a year, and Jennette in 1902.
Since she knew most of the Fort Smith business leaders, Pearl managed to stay out of trouble until 1916 when the town passed ordinances making prostitution illegal. Arrested, Pearl was fined $50 and ordered to spend 10 days in jail. Her attorneys appealed.
That March, the court determined, “By agreement of counsel, it is by the court ordered that defendant to be released from jail upon the condition that she leave the city and that she be re-arrested upon her return to the city.”
Pearl headed for Arizona and landed in the bustling town of Bisbee, which had one of the largest open-pit mining operations in the country during World War I. It was also home to Brewery Gulch, a place that surely attracted Pearl since at one time there were over 40 saloons in the region, and the brothels were said to attract some of the most beautiful and rowdy women in the territory.
Pearl called herself Rosa Reed when she arrived in Bisbee with pregnant daughter Jennette in tow. Jennette’s baby was given up for adoption just as her mother had done with her first child years earlier. At the time, daughter Ruth, an aspiring musician, was attending The Strassberger Music Conservatory in St. Louis, Missouri.
Reprising her usual occupation on Brewery Avenue and investing some of her hard-earned money in a copper mine, Rosa, aka Pearl, was in business again. But Arizona authorities were not as inclined to look the other way on houses of ill repute as were Arkansas officers of the law.
Two years after arriving in Bisbee, in 1918, police arrested Rosa for running a disorderly house in Upper Brewery Gulch. She was fined $50 plus court costs.
She was arrested again in September 1921 for possession of liquor at her boarding house.
“She was held in jail for some time,” reported the Bisbee Daily Review, “before she was able to put up a $200 bond for her appearance.” Her attorney demanded a jury trial.
On Oct. 7, 1921, the following article appeared in the Bisbee Review:
“The jury in the city case against Rosa Reed, charged with a violation of the city ordinance which prohibits one from having intoxicating liquor in a public rooming house, after being out for about two hours, informed the court that they were unable to agree on a verdict and were discharged by Judge Hogan.” Rosa had friends everywhere.
She moved to the Reno Building on Broadway Street and listed herself as a landlady on the 1922 voter rolls.
During this time, she contacted the orphanage that had taken in her first daughter, Mamie. Mamie had been adopted and now used the name Flossie. When Flossie became aware of her birth mother, she contacted Rosa and the two reunited in Bisbee around 1923. Rosa claimed she had never signed the papers giving up her child but that her infamous mother, Belle, wanting a better life for her daughter, had forged Rosa’s signature on the adoption papers.
In 1916, Bisbee was attractive to Rose Lee Reed because it was home to Brewery Gulch and over 40 saloons in the region, and the brothels were said to attract some of the most beautiful and rowdy women in the territory.
In 1924, Rosa and Jennette moved to Douglas to join daughter Ruth who was living in the border town at the time.
Established as a smelter site for Bisbee’s copper mines, Douglas was threatened with invasion by Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa while Rosa was still living in Bisbee. It is believed that Villa rode his horse into the lobby of the still-standing Gadsden Hotel and that the horse knocked a chip out of one of the steps of the grand staircase that leads to the rooms above. The damaged step can be seen today.
Rosa found work managing the Savoy rooming house on G Avenue, just a few blocks from the fashionable Gadsden Hotel. The Savoy still stands, but its windows and doors are now boarded up.
Less than a year later, on July 5, 1925, Rosa was admitted to the Cochise County Hospital. She died the following day with her cause of death reported as arterial sclerosis. Her daughters decided not to engrave their mother’s tombstone with her tarnished name but instead marked her headstone Rose Pearl Reed.
The three sisters went their separate ways. Jennette married several times before following in her mother’s footsteps as a prostitute in Nevada.
Ruth traveled throughout the Southwest with her music before settling down in Nevada near Jennette.
Upon reconnecting with her mother and learning her history, Mamie, or Flossie, the daughter Pearl gave up at birth, researched and wrote many articles about the family she had never known.
