Early Life
Belle Starr was born Myra Maybelle Shirley on her father's farm near Carthage, Missouri. She was known as May to her family. Her father was John Shirley. Her mother, Eliza Hatfield, was related to the Hatfield's of the famous Family Feud. In the 1860s her father sold the farm and moved the family to Carthage where he bought an inn and livery stable on the town square.
May Shirley received a classical education and learned piano, while graduating from Missouri's Carthage Female Academy, a private institution that her father had helped to found.
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