Old West Natural Remedies.....Lydia Pinkham Story

Today, many people look for natural or home remedies for their aliments. Natural herbs, spices, “mothers”recipe for curing the cold, can all be found on the internet.

In the Old West Traveling Medicine Wagons came to the towns to sell you that miracle tonic that would cure whatever ailed you. The biggest producer of patent medicine was Lydia E Pinkham. Her success was not only the product, which like all the patent medicines contained a high alcohol content, but her unique marketing strategy.
 
Her strategy was to simply give the women of the 1800's a voice. Women' s medical conditions and problems were not discussed in the 1800's. Lydia Pinkham encouraged women to talk about their conditions and gain knowledge on how to treat them.

Her Story….

Lydia Estes Pinkham (February 9, 1819 – May 17, 1883) was an iconic concocter and shrewd marketer of a commercially successful herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" meant to relieve menstrual and menopausal pains.
 
Lydia Pinkham was born in the manufacturing city of Lynn, Massachusetts, the tenth of the twelve children of William and Rebecca Estes. William Estes was originally a shoemaker, but by the time Lydia was born in 1819 he had become wealthy through dealing in real estate and had risen to the status of "gentleman farmer" Lydia was educated at Lynn Academy and worked as a schoolteacher before her marriage in September 1843.

 
Isaac Pinkham was a 29 year old shoe manufacturer when he married Lydia in 1843, he would try various business without much success. Lydia gave birth to her first child Charles Hacker Pinkham in 1844, lost her second child to gastroenteritis, and gave birth to her second surviving child Daniel Rogers Pinkham in 1848. A third son, William Pinkham, was born in 1852 and a daughter Aroline Chase Pinkham in 1857. (All the Pinkham children would eventually be involved in the Pinkham medicine business.)

Like many women of her time Lydia Pinkham brewed home remedies, which she continually collected. Her remedy for "female complaints" became very popular among her neighbors to whom she gave it away. One story is that her husband was given the recipe as part payment for a debt, whatever truth may be in this the ingredients of her remedy were generally consistent with the herbal knowledge available to her through such sources as John King's American Dispensary, which she is known to have owned and used. In Lydia Pinkham's time and place the reputation of the medical profession was low. Medical fees were too expensive for most Americans to afford except in emergencies, in which case the remedies were more likely to kill than cure.

Isaac Pinkham was financially ruined in the Panic of 1873, he narrowly escaped arrest for debt and his health was permanently broken by the associated stress. The fortunes of the Pinkham family had long been patchy but they now entered on hard times. Lydia sometimes accepted payment for her popular remedy for female complaints. It is reputed to have been her son Daniel who came up with the idea, in 1875 of making a family business of the remedy. Lydia initially made the remedy on her stove before its success enabled production to be transferred to a factory, she answered letters from customers and probably wrote most of the advertising copy. 

Mass marketed from 1876 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best known patent medicines of the 19th century. Descendants of this product are still available today. Lydia's skill was in marketing her product directly to women and her company continued her shrewd marketing tactics after her death. Her own face was on the label and her company was particularly keen on the use of testimonials from grateful women.

Advertising copy urged women to write to Mrs. Pinkham. They did, and they received answers. They continued to write and receive answers for decades after Lydia Pinkham's death. These staff-written answers combined forthright talk about women's medical issues, advice, and, of course, recommendations for her product. In 1905 the Ladies' Home Journal published a photograph of Lydia Pinkham's tombstone and exposed the ruse. The Pinkham Company insisted that it had never meant to imply that the letters were being answered by Lydia Pinkham, but by her daughter-in-law, Jennie Pinkham.

Although Pinkham's motives were partly self-serving, many modern-day feminists admire her for distributing information on menstruation and the "facts of life" and consider her to be a crusader for women's health issues in a day when women were poorly served by the medical establishment.

(biography from Wikipedia)

 
You can still purchase Lydia Pinkham Vegetable Compound today. The ingredients have been updated to meet FDA standards, but the claims of relief are the same.

The original formula for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was:

Unicorn root (Aletris farinosa L.) 8 oz.
Life root (Senecio aureus L.) 6 oz.
Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa (L.) Nutt.) 6 oz.
Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa L.) 6 oz.
Fenugreek seed (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) 12 oz.




 

The Modern formula-straight from the bottle:

Supplement Facts
Serving Size: 1 Tablespoon
Amount Per 1 Tablespoonful %Daily Value
Vitamin C 20 mg 33%
Vitamin E 5 mg 16.5%%
Proprietary Blend 3 g
Jamaica Dogwood (bark)
Motherwart (leaf)
Dandelion (root)
Pleurisy (root)
Glycyrrhiza (licorice root)
Black Cohosh (root)
Gentian (root)

Ingredients: water, fructose, ascorbic acid, dogwood bark, motherwart leaf, flavor, dandelion root, alcohol 10%, pleurisy root, licorice root, salicylic acid, edetic acid, sodium benzoate, black cohosh root, dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate, BHA, butylparaben, gentian root.
 
Directions: Shake before using. Take 1 tablespoon 3 times a day with meals. For best results, take regularly throughout the month. If preferred, mix with fruit juice.

If you are pregnant or nursing a baby, seek the advice of a health professional before using this product.





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Western Horseman the safest most durable 
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Pioneer Women of the 1800's...Strong, Courageous, smart.

Women on the frontier in the 1800's were not the beautiful dainty wallflowers like their counter parts in Europe. The frontier women had to be strong, resourceful, hard working, and a great horseman.

Women in the 1800’s took part in all facets of Frontier Life. The hardship of frontier life required that all members of the family take part to make ends meet. So, 1800 women mounted their horses to hunt with their husbands and also camp out for days. Some women even became cattle-women. One such cattle-women was Elizabeth E. Johnson.

*Elizabeth E. Johnson was born in Missouri in 1843. She moved to Hays County, Texas soon after her father had established the Johnson Institute there in 1852. Lizzie began teaching at the school when she was sixteen. Later she left to teach in schools at Manor, Lockhart, and Austin. Quietly she saved her money and added to her income by writing stories for Frank Leslie’s Magazine. As she accumulated money, she invested it. At one point she purchased $2,500 worth of stock in the Evans, Snider, Bewell Cattle Co. of Chicago. She earned 100 percent dividends for three years straight and then sold her stock for $20,000. On June 1, 1871, she invested the money in cattle and registered her own brand (CY) in the Travis County brand book along with her mark.

Lizzie Johnson’s wealth continued to grow. So did her responsibilities. In the summer of 1879, at the age of thirty-six, she married Hezkiah G Williams, a preacher and widower with several children. She continued to teach school in Austin, write magazine articles, and invest in cattle. She maintained control over her wealth, having had her husband sign a paper agreeing that all of her property remained hers. On his own, Hezkiah entered the cattle business in 1881, but he was a poor businessman who also liked to drink, and Lizzie had to keep pulling him out of financial trouble. At least twice Lizzie and Hezkiah traveled up the Chisholm Trail to Kansas. They rode behind the herd in a buggy drawn by a team of horses. This was about 1879, and Lizzie was the first woman to drive her own herd up the trail. For several years she and her husband, after coming up the trail, spent the fall and winter months in St. Louis, where Lizzie made extra money by keeping books for other cattlemen. When she died in 1924, at the age of 81 (her husband had died on 1914), Lizzie Johnson’s estate totaled more than $200,000, including large holdings in Austin real estate.


(*An excerpt from Emily Jones Shelton, “Lizzie E Johnson: A Cattle Queen of Texas” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol L (1947) pp 349-366)

The old west is filled with stories like this of men and women and their adventures on the trail. They worked hard for a living and expected their horse tack to work just as hard and to last.

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Western Horseman the safest most durable
Quality American made leather horse tack.......Buckaroo John Brand
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Patent Medicine Trail Blazer, Lydia E. Pinkham

Last week I wrote of the traveling medicine shows and the phenomenon of patent medicine. I wanted to share this biography of one of the biggest producers of patent medicine, Lydia E Pinkham. Her success was not only the product, which like all the patent medicines contained a high alcohol content, but her unique marketing strategy.

Her strategy was to simply give the women of the 1800's a voice. Women' s medical conditions and problems were not discussed in the 1800's. Lydia Pinkham encouraged women to talk about their conditions and gain knowledge on how to treat them.

Lydia E Pinkhams story is a fine example of the strength and resolve of the women in the 1800's.

(biography from Wikipedia)

Lydia Estes Pinkham (February 9, 1819 – May 17, 1883) was an iconic concocter and shrewd marketer of a commercially successful herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" meant to relieve menstrual and menopausal pains.

Lydia Pinkham was born in the manufacturing city of Lynn, Massachusetts, the tenth of the twelve children of William and Rebecca Estes. William Estes was originally a shoemaker, but by the time Lydia was born in 1819 he had become wealthy through dealing in real estate and had risen to the status of "gentleman farmer" Lydia was educated at Lynn Academy and worked as a schoolteacher before her marriage in September 1843.

Isaac Pinkham was a 29-year-old shoe manufacturer when he married Lydia in 1843, he would try various business without much success. Lydia gave birth to her first child Charles Hacker Pinkham in 1844, lost her second child to gastroenteritis, and gave birth to her second surviving child Daniel Rogers Pinkham in 1848. A third son, William Pinkham, was born in 1852 and a daughter Aroline Chase Pinkham in 1857. (All the Pinkham children would eventually be involved in the Pinkham medicine business.)

Like many women of her time Lydia Pinkham brewed home remedies, which she continually collected. Her remedy for "female complaints" became very popular among her neighbors to whom she gave it away. One story is that her husband was given the recipe as part payment for a debt, whatever truth may be in this the ingredients of her remedy were generally consistent with the herbal knowledge available to her through such sources as John King's American Dispensary, which she is known to have owned and used. In Lydia Pinkham's time and place the reputation of the medical profession was low. Medical fees were too expensive for most Americans to afford except in emergencies, in which case the remedies were more likely to kill than cure. For example a common "medicine" was calomel, in fact not a medicine but a deadly mercurial toxin, and this fact was even at the time sufficiently well known among the skeptical to be the subject of a popular comic song. In these circumstances there is no mystery why many preferred to trust unlicensed "root and herb" practitioners, and to trust women prepared to share their domestic remedies such as Lydia Pinkham.


Isaac Pinkham was financially ruined in the Panic of 1873, he narrowly escaped arrest for debt and his health was permanently broken by the associated stress. The fortunes of the Pinkham family had long been patchy but they now entered on hard times. Lydia sometimes accepted payment for her popular remedy for female complaints. It is reputed to have been her son Daniel who came up with the idea, in 1875 of making a family business of the remedy. Lydia initially made the remedy on her stove before its success enabled production to be transferred to a factory, she answered letters from customers and probably wrote most of the advertising copy. Mass marketed from 1876 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best known patent medicines of the 19th century. Descendants of this product are still available today. Lydia's skill was in marketing her product directly to women and her company continued her shrewd marketing tactics after her death. Her own face was on the label and her company was particularly keen on the use of testimonials from grateful women.


Advertising copy urged women to write to Mrs. Pinkham. They did, and they received answers. They continued to write and receive answers for decades after Lydia Pinkham's death. These staff-written answers combined forthright talk about women's medical issues, advice, and, of course, recommendations for her product. In 1905 the Ladies' Home Journal published a photograph of Lydia Pinkham's tombstone and exposed the ruse. The Pinkham Company insisted that it had never meant to imply that the letters were being answered by Lydia Pinkham, but by her daughter-in-law, Jennie Pinkham.

Although Pinkham's motives were partly self-serving, many modern-day feminists admire her for distributing information on menstruation and the "facts of life" and consider her to be a crusader for women's health issues in a day when women were poorly served by the medical establishment.


In 1922, Lydia's daughter Aroline Chase Pinkham Gove founded the Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, Massachusetts. The clinic, still in operation as of 2004[update], provides health services to young mothers and their children. It is designated Site 9 of the Salem Women's Heritage Trail.



You can still purchase Lydia Pinkham Vegetable Compound today. The ingredients have been updated to meet FDA standards, but the claims of relief are the same.




















The original formula for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was:

* Unicorn root (Aletris farinosa L.) 8 oz.
* Life root (Senecio aureus L.) 6 oz.
* Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa (L.) Nutt.) 6 oz.
* Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa L.) 6 oz.
* Fenugreek seed (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) 12 oz.



Modern formula-straight from the bottle

Supplement Facts
Serving Size: 1 Tablespoon
Amount Per 1 Tablespoonful %Daily Value
Vitamin C
20 mg 33%
Vitamin E
5 mg 16.5%%
Proprietary Blend
3 g
Jamaica Dogwood (bark)
†
Motherwart (leaf)
†
Dandelion (root)
†
Pleurisy (root)
†
Glycyrrhiza (licorice root)
†
Black Cohosh (root)
†
Gentian (root)
†
†Daily value not established.
Ingredients: water, fructose, ascorbic acid, dogwood bark, motherwart leaf, flavor, dandelion root, alcohol 10%, pleurisy root, licorice root, salicylic acid, edetic acid, sodium benzoate, black cohosh root, dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate, BHA, butylparaben, gentian root.

Directions: Shake before using. Take 1 tablespoon 3 times a day with meals. For best results, take regularly throughout the month. If preferred, mix with fruit juice.

If you are pregnant or nursing a baby, seek the advice of a health professional before using this product.

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.




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the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

Buckaroo John Brand

Buckaroo Leather, The Brand to Demand
Visit Our Unique Store Today
Buckaroo Leather Shopping Site

Women of the 1800s on the Cattle Drive

The experiences of life on the Prairie by the true cowboys, are stories of danger, hardships and true character.

On these adventures were also the women. The tales that follow are their stories of life on the Cattle Drive. Excerpts from the book "The Cowgirls" by Joyce Gibson Roach


A Womens Perspective on The Cattle Drive



Mrs. Amanda Burks of Cotulla Texas, describes how cattle had to be rushed through stretches of timber in order to keep them from scattering, and how during electrical storms "lighting seemed to settle on the ground and creep along like something alive." She survived a hail storm during which she had to tie her horses to keep them from running away with her, and then found herself lost from the group. When she was with t he crew, Amanda often was left alone in camp at night while the men stood alert for stampede.

Amanda saw the great spectacle of fifteen herds lined out waiting to cross the Trinity River and of a stampede caused by Indians in which the Burks's herd was mixed with another.

While many women must have seen prairie fires, probably few ever saw one which started with their own two little hands. Amanda, thinking she would be helpful, decided to build a fire in a dry gully attached to the prairie on either side. It did not take long to set the entire countryside ablaze. Mrs. Burks was impressed that the cowboys did not fuss at her about the fire. In fact she noted that along the trail the men were attentive to her and made a point of hunting surprises of wild fruit and prairie chickens for her.

Mrs. Burks knew what it was to suffer through winter on the plains, but of each of her hardships she said that it helped break the monotony. Some felt sorry for Amanda but her reply was:

"....what women, youthful and full spirit and the love of living, needs sympathy because of availing herself of the opportunity of being with her husband while at his chosen work in the great out-of-door world."




In 1871, Harriet Cluck gathered her three children up along with George, her husband and one thousand head of cattle, headed north from Texas up the Chisholm Trail. The family packed their belongings in an old hack, but Mrs. Cluck kept her spy glass and shotgun always with her.

The journey went smoothly until the herd hit the Red River. The river was flooded and Mrs. Cluck handed her children over to trusted riders while she climbed on behind her husband on his horse to make the crossing.

Mrs. Cluck made it a point to scan the horizon for trouble and one day she found it-rustlers. Helping to load the shotguns, Mrs. Cluck bolstered the courage of younger cowboys by calling out, "If any of you boys are afraid to fight, come here and drive the hack and give me your guns and horse." When the rustlers approached the herd and asked for a tribute, George Cluck replied, "I have sixteen as good fighters under me as ever crossed the Red River and they are all crack shots. When you get ready, open the ball, but us Texans will dance the first set."

No doubt Harriet felt the same way.


I hope you have enjoyed these stories- please check back for more of these amazing stories of Women on the Prairie.




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the Western Horseman the safest most durable Quality
American made leather horse tack.......

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Pearl Hart-1800 Pioneer Women

The Last of the Lady Road Agents

The era of the old west was the most colorful period of our nation's history. It was a time when notorious outlaws and brave lawman became legendary characters whose name are more popular today than in the 1800s. By the turn of the century though, the west was becoming civilized. Trains were slowly replacing the older methods of transportation and most of the desperados were either dead or in exile. The days of the stagecoach robberies were past, at least the citizens of Arizona thought so. On May 30, 1899 when two people stepped out onto the road with guns drawn, and commanded the driver of the Benson-Globe stage to "Halt!" and, the short career of Pearl Hart, who is known as "The Last of the Lady Road Agents" began.

When the stage came to a stop, three nervous passengers disembarked and obediently raised their hands in the air. They noticed the bandits were an odd pair. One was tall, muscular and sported a fancy mustache. The other smaller one appeared to be a woman whose figure was poorly concealed. She was wearing a rough miner's shirt and blue overalls, which were tucked into course boots that were obviously too large. A few dark curls escaped from beneath the dirty cowboy hat that covered her head and the hands that ransacked the passenger's pockets were small and white.

The haul was not a poor one. A drummer had $290, a heavy set man turned over $36 and a Chinese merchant added $100. The robbers seemed content and the smaller one silently returned four dollars to each passenger for bed and food. Then they rode off into the bushes and the stage continued on its way at a fast pace. When it arrived in Globe, the driver ran in and notified the sheriff and an excited posse set out in pursuit of the dangerous renegades. The old timers, however, seemed almost happy, for to them a robbery meant the old west was still alive and kicking.

Meanwhile the road agents who were clearly novices attempted to cover their tracks. They were unfamiliar with the territory and spent three days plunging across canyons and doubling back, only to find themselves a few miles from the scene of the crime. When the posse found them they were sound asleep on the ground. Neither one even had the chance to spend a penny of their ill gotton gains.

The sheriff awakened the pair and asked the man his name. When he seemed hesitant to answer, the woman said, "Joe, its Joe Boot." No one ever knew his true identity, so that was how he was booked. Boot didn't give the lawman any trouble, he turned himself over without a word, but the woman was not anxious to go to jail, she put up quite a fight and had to be subdued. The Arizona Star reported, "She is a wild-cat of a woman and had she not been relieved of her gun a bloody foray might have resulted." When they reached the jail, Pearl was carrying all the money.

The path that led Pearl Hart to that fateful day in May was long and hard. She was born in 1872 in Ontario, Canada, and christened Pearl by her mother, no one is sure of her last name. It can be assumed Pearl had a normal childhood, very little has been written about her early years. She entered a boarding school for young ladies at the age of 16, and while there she met a personable man named Hart. He swept the girl off of her feet with his looks and promises. A year later they eloped, much to her mother's dismay.

Hart was a semi-professional gambler, sometime bartender and full-time drinker who spent more hours nursing his hangovers than working. Pearl returned to her mother several times during her marriage, but Hart always managed to convince her to give him one more chance.

In 1893 they went to Chicago in hopes of finding steady employment at the World Columbian Exposition. Hart was confident he could get a good bartending job. He ended up instead as a barker in a shabby side show. Pearl, however, discovered the glamour of the West in the form of the tall, muscular cowboys who were part of the entertainment. It wasn't long before one of the amorous cowhands convinced the pretty lady to accompany him to Colorado. He paid her way but soon left her there to fend for herself.

Pearl's admiration for cowboys ended and she began cooking in the mining camps of the west. For the first time she began to save money and was doing well. Pearl especially liked the attention she received from the male population. One day in Phoenix,Arizona , she ran into her husband. When he noticed she looked prosperous he decided to get a bit of her money. Once more Hart talked his way back into her life with the usual promises.

This time he did settle down for a few years and held a steady job. During that interlude they had two babies. Hart again showed his lack of responsibility when he began drinking and abusing his family. Pearl knew she really had enough of her husband and sent her children to her mother, who was living in Ohio.

Without the babies and her husband, Pearl returned to the mining camps disillusioned with life. She drifted from place to place and soon began drinking heavily and using drugs. There were many men in her life, but she was not a prostitute.

In 1889 Pearl met Joe Boot in a mining camp in Arizona, and they became close friends. Whether Pearl was in love with Boot or not has never been revealed, although at the time of their arrest she claimed undying affection for the man. At other times, however she expressed disgust for him and said he was weak and worthless.

Boot was with Pearl when she received a letter saying her mother who she loved very much, was ill and needed money for medical expenses. She and Boot looked at their resources and since neither one had any, devised a plan to rob the stage. At least that is the reason they gave the police. Boot said he just went along with it to help the women.

This was Pearl's first encounter wit h the law and her last, but it made headlines throughout the United States. Many newspaper reporters rushed to Arizona to write every detail of the "sordid" crime they could dig up, whether it was true or not. Pearl was portrayed as a fallen woman and described as a morphine fiend. Through the years writers have continued to tell of the notorious Pearl Hart who will forever be remembered as a stage robber.

Sheriff Bill Truman of Pima County said she was a tiger-cat for nerve and endurance and would have killed him if she could. In another report it was written, "She is a delicate, dark haired woman, with little about her that would suggest the ability to hold up a stage loaded with frontiersmen. She had refined features, a mouth of the true rosebud type, and clear blue eyes that would be confiding and baby-like were it not for the few lines that come only through the seamy side of life. In weight she is not over 100 pounds, in form slight and graceful".

Joe Boot, on the other hand was described by Sheriff Truman as, " a weak morphine-depraved specimen of mortality, without spirit and lacking intelligence and activity. It is plain the woman was the leader of the assorted partnership. She does not deny that such was the case and expresses nothing but contempt for her companion."

The prisoners were first taken to Florence for preliminary hearings and held over without bond to answer to the grand jury. Pearl was transferred to the Pima County jail at Tucson because there were no accommodations for women in the Florence jail. It was said Pearl cried when they separated her from Boot.

On October 20, 1899, The Tucson Star wrote of Pearl's escape from the Tucson jail. The officers were quite upset over it as they had taken every precaution for her safe keeping. The newspaper wrote, "It is evident that after everything was quiet someone entered the courthouse, walked up the stairway and entered the tower room. It was the work of but a few minutes to cut a hole through the wall into Pearl's room. She held a sheet to catch the plaster that fell by her side. After the hole was cut through, she put a sheet underneath, and placing her chair upon that crawled through the hole."

It was obvious she had an accomplice because she couldn't have managed it alone. The police believed it was Ed Hogan, who was serving a drunk and disorderly sentence. He was a trustee and also turned up missing the next day. Pearl was captured in New Mexico several days later and returned to Tucson.

The plight of Pearl Hart won the hearts of many, especially women. She had no prior arrest and they felt she should not be put on trial, convicted and sentenced under a law she or her sex had no part in making. She captured their sympathy and used it to help win freedom. However, no one really knows who Pearl was, her personality changed to suit her moods. In the eyes of many she was a petite woman who couldn't possibly have committed the crime. Others saw her as a depraved, fallen women. Even Pearl's vocabulary alternated between Western phrases, gutter slang and that of an educated woman. Later, during her confinement, she wrote poetry which showed an educational background.

On November 25, 1899 Pearl stood trial for her part in the robbery and was acquitted. The judge was furious and dismissed the jury. He immediately rearrested her, calling in a new jury. This time Pearl was charged with a lesser crime, stealing the revolver from the stage driver. She could not stand trial again for the robbery itself.

The Arizona Sentinel reported, "the action which will be telegraphed all over the country is, however, likely to do the reputation of Arizona a considerable amount of injury, as it will confirm many eastern people in the that the people of Arizona have a sneaking sympathy for crimes…In these days of women's rights the question of sex should not be allowed to play any greater part in crime than it is supposed to do in merit and achievement."

Pearl at the age of 28, was convicted and sentenced to serve 5 years in the territorial prison at Yuma, Arizona, her accomplice, Joe Boot, was sentenced to 30 years. Throughout the trial Boot had maintained he did it only to help a lady in distress. Although both Boot and Pearl had a "death-do-us-part" vow, he escaped a few months later and was never heard of again. Pearl entered the prison on Nov 15, 1899. She was the 13th female prisoner and became #1559.

A letter arrived at the prison from Pearl's brother in law that confirmed her first story of why she committed the robbery. It said, "To the Sheriff- I see by the papers that you have Miss Pearl Hart in custody in Arizona for some misdemeanor. Now, as I am her brother in law, I am interested in her welfare. It has been a long time since we have heard from her, and we did not know what had become of her. I assure you that her mother would be glad to have her at home. I have seen her sit and cry when we were talking about Pearl and wondering what had become of her…Now, I would beg of you to be as easy as you can, for we have not dared to let her mother know that we have heard anything of her and much less that she is a prisoner, as she is troubled with heart disease and the news might affect her seriously…James T. Taylor"

Pearl was the only female prisoner for almost nine months. By the time she was granted a pardoned she was sharing her cell with 3 other women.

Pearl's sister and her mother petitioned the governor for a parole. They said if Pearl obtained a release she would have the opportunity to play a leading role on the Orpheum circuit. Her sister had written a play which would dramatize Pearl's experience as a stage robber.

The petition was convincing and Governor Alexander O. Brodie agreed to sign it if Pearl would leave Arizona. She accepted the terms and was released a little over two years from the day she entered the prison.

It was said Pearl left the prison in good health and free from opium addiction. No one knows if Pearl's stage appearance was successful. The end of her life appears to be as confusing and as much a mystery as the lady herself.

Excerpt from the book " Daughters of the West" by Anne Seagraves

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