Myra Maybelle Shirley moved to a town called Scyene, Texas in 1864. Neither the town nor the lady’s name is well known at this point. Scyene is now a part of the city of Dallas (in the southeastern corner of the city). Myra married a man named Jim Reed in 1866, and they lived a fairly quiet life for a while. Jim Reed fell in with some outlaws — mainly the Starr clan from the Oklahoma territory. Jim Reed was killed in 1874, and Myra subsequently married Sam Starr. They moved to Oklahoma, where she became known as Belle Starr.
The 1870 census shows that living next door to the Shirley family was a family originally from Missouri — the Younger family. Shortly after that census, Jim, Bob and John Younger took their mother back to Missouri, where she died. The brothers alternated between Texas and Missouri for a while, then joined forces with Jesse and Frank James to form the James-Younger gang.
Sam Bass was operating in the area in 1878, robbing two stagecoaches and four trains in an area within 25 miles of Dallas. He was killed in Round Rock Texas, near Austin, slightly later in the year.
And just to cap things off, there was a young dentist named John Henry Holliday who opened a dental practice on Elm Street in Dallas in 1873. Together with his partner, he won awards for dentistry at the Dallas County Fair. Tuberculosis soon began to interfere with his dental practice and he turned to gambling as his main source of income. Later, of course, he moved around to a number of areas in the West (including Tombstone, Arizona), where he became known as Doc Holliday.
That’s quite a roll call of famous names from the early days of Dallas!
