The Legend
Jesse Woodson James was born 5 September 1847 on the James farm near Centerville, Clay County, Missouri. Today, Centerville is known as Kearney, and the farm is a popular tourist attraction located about thirty-five miles northeast of Kansas City. He was named after his mother’s brother, Jesse Richard Cole, and after his father’s brother, Drury Woodson James. Woodson was a James family name in honor of an old family friend, Silas Woodson of Kentucky, who had moved to Missouri around 1840 and would become Governor in 1874.
Jesse’s mother, Zerelda Elizabeth Cole, was born 29 January 1825 in Woodford County, Kentucky. She was the oldest of two children born to James Cole and Sarah "Sallie" Lindsay, her younger brother being Jesse Richard Cole, born 29 November 1826. She could trace her family back to John Cole, who died in 1757 in Culpepper County, Virginia. Reports state that she was a tall woman, right at six feet, fair of face, having blonde hair, blue eyes, and beautiful looks. She inherited a strong disposition from her father, was quite domineering in her ideas and determination, and she had no fear.
When Zerelda’s father died on 27 January 1827 in a horse accident, the two-year-old toddler went to live with a relative, James J. Lindsay, who became her guardian. In 1839 at the age of fourteen, she entered St. Catherine’s Academy for Women in Lexington, Kentucky. Shortly thereafter, she met Robert Sallee James at a revival meeting, and on 28 December 1841, near Stamping Ground, Kentucky, she and Robert were married in Lindsay’s home with the local parson, Reverend Y. R. Pitts, officiating.
Robert Sallee James was born 17 July 1816 in Logan County, Kentucky, the fourth of eight children born to John M. James and Mary "Polly" Poor. His brothers and sisters were Mary, William, John, Elizabeth, Thomas Martin, Nancy Gardner, and Drury Woodson James. His sister Mary married John Mimms, sister Elizabeth married Tillman West, and sister Nancy married George B. Hite. The Sallee family of Kentucky was Robert’s grandparents, and his cousin William Sallee was a lifelong, close friend.
Robert James inherited from his parents’ estate, and he chose the ministry as his life’s work. When he arrived in Clay County, Missouri in 1842, he bought a small farm about four miles from the small town of Centerville and set about organizing several Baptist churches in the county. He also helped found the William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.
Robert and Zerelda James had four children: Alexander Franklin James, born 10 January 1843 in Centerville, Missouri, Robert R. James, born 19 June 1845 in Centerville, who died thirty-three days later, Jesse Woodson James, and Susan Lavinia James, born 25 November 1849 in Centerville. Susan, whom Jesse adored, would marry an ex-Quantrill Raider named Allen H. Parmer on 24 November 1870, a man Jesse absolutely hated, and it would cause Jesse to have such depression that he attempted suicide. Susan died in 1889.
Some accounts claim Frank was born in Kentucky, but this is wrong information. Notes from the Pioneer Times, a Mid-Missouri Genealogical Society publication in October 1985, printed that the Liberty Tribune reported Robert James and wife coming to Clay County in 1842, the same year that Robert was ordained to Preach by the Baptist at Old New Hope. Oldest son Frank was born in 1843. That same reference said that Robert James left Missouri in 1850 for the gold fields of California, that ‘there was no better man than Robert James.’
There are some sources which claim that shortly after arriving in Clay County, Robert James grew disenchanted with his strong-willed wife, and the couple separated after the death of son Robert, whom Zerelda idolized. Zerelda is then said to have taken a lover, and the father of Jesse was a physician in Clay County. It may or may not be true. Robert James was nine years older than his teenage wife, and the age difference could have impacted on the marriage. Whatever the case, Jesse was always sensitive on the subject, and it has been theorized that part of his drive to domineer Frank stemmed from his suspicion that there might be something in his own history, which he had to overcome.
Robert James did leave his family for the gold fields of California. There are those who claim he left because of troubles in his marriage, and there are some, including surviving members of the James family, who claim he went to preach, but no one really knows, and Zerelda never saw him again. He was with William Sallee when he died of a strange malady characterized by intense fever at the age of thirty-two in the Hangtown Gold Camp, a place now known as Placerville. The date he departed Missouri was recorded as 12 April 1851, and the date he arrived in Hangtown was recorded as 1 August 1851. The date he died was recorded as 19 August 1851. It is believed that he died of cholera, the scourge of polluted water everywhere. If these dates are accurate, he had been in the Promised Land only eighteen days. Robert James is believed buried in an unmarked grave in Placerville.
On 30 September 1852, Zerelda remarried to a widower named Benjamin Simms, who had children of his own, but it was not a happy marriage, and they separated several months later. Both of them were stubborn and opinionated, and rumors claim that Benjamin treated Frank and Jesse differently than he treated his own children, which the protective Zerelda would not tolerate. Zerelda was spared the problem of divorce when Benjamin died a few months later in a horse accident.
Zerelda then remarried for the last time on 25 September 1855 to Dr. Rueben Samuel of Samuels Station, Kentucky. He was four years younger than she, a quiet, loving man who spent much of his time with his family. He also accepted and loved Zerelda’s children as his own. They settled on the James farm and proceeded to raise a nice family: Sarah Louisa, born 26 December 1858, John Thomas, born 25 December 1861, Fannie Quantrill, born 18 October 1863, and Archie Peyton, born 26 July 1866. According to all sources, Perry Samuel, a mulatto boy born out of wedlock to one of the slaves, was raised as part of the Samuel family, and he routinely shows up in the genealogy of John Cole as one of Zerelda’s children with the date of birth being either 1862 or 1866, depending on which source is used.
While growing up, Frank and Jesse learned to ride and shoot. They knew all there was to know about their surrounding countryside, all the deer trails, roads, and river crossings, which would greatly aid them in the future. They also learned the fine art of disappearing in the woods, another trait which would come in handy. Many sources recount how the boys had no fear, and they apparently inherited this trait from their mother. Zerelda Samuel was strong-willed, and she instilled in her sons to stand up for what they believed. She was also a firm religious influence, and her family attended church and Sunday school regularly. By all accounts, Frank and Jesse’s early childhood can only be called normal. It was a loving and happy family living a peaceful existence. The Civil War would change everything.
The Samuel family home was located in dangerous territory, as the farm lay situated close to the Kansas border. When Kansas opened for settlement in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, signed by President Franklin Pierce, made it possible for the citizens of Kansas to determine whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new territory. This set the scene for the vicious border fighting to follow. It is interesting to note that whereas the Civil War lasted five years in other places, it lasted ten years in Missouri. Kansas Jayhawkers, as those from the anti-slavery side were called, along with the Redlegs, or the Union abolitionist guerrillas, began a series of slave-stealing raids into Missouri. Sometimes these slaves were sold back to their original owners, and considering that an adult male slave was worth $1,200, it was a tidy profit for the guerrillas. These marauders, led by James Lane, James Montgomery, and Charles Jennison, left so much death and destruction in their wake that Missouri residents retaliated by taking matters into their own hands. They rode into Kansas, ambushed settlers, burned farms, and voted illegally in elections, putting Kansas in control of pro-slavery officials. Tensions became so bad in the Kansas - Missouri Border War that men from both sides burned, looted, and murdered with abandon.
Slavery was a big issue in Missouri. Many citizens came from the slave states, and many landowners had 200 or more slaves, and this included the ancestry of Jesse and Frank on both sides of their family. By the 1850’s, new immigrants coming into Missouri were from Germany and Ireland, and they opposed the entire slavery issue. To be on either side one way or the other became enough reason to be shot in the back on a lonely road.
In 1860, South Carolina voted to secede from the union. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana soon followed. Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee followed in 1861. When the Missouri delegate took its vote, the count was for the Union, but most of Missouri’s citizens supported the South. In fact, the delegates who voted for the Union had a hard time being loyal when Kansas raiders stole their livestock and personal belongings and then burned their homes to the ground.
When the Civil War officially started with the shot on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on 12 April 1861, Missouri was still divided. The Union wanted Missouri officials to raise troops to fight the Confederate Rebels, and Missouri’s Governor Clairborne Jackson refused. A second vote to secede from the Union failed. Governor Jackson fled to Arkansas, and his brother-in-law General Sterling Price took command of the Home Guard. It resulted in the Union army asking Washington for more ammunition and men.
In 1861, when he was eighteen-years-old, Frank James joined the Home Guard that sided with the South. Frank was a bookish, Bible-quoting man considered dull by some who knew him, but he had no problem mustering up the guts needed to fight in the savage Battle of Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, which the South won. While on a visit home after the battle, his outspoken support of the Southern cause got him into trouble with the anti-slavery militia, and he was jailed. The only way he could obtain his release was to swear allegiance to the Union. He signed the paper and went home.
Several months later, Missouri’s provisional government ordered all adult men to enlist in the state militia to fight for the Union. Frank had no such intentions. He left home and enlisted with William Clark Quantrill’s Confederate Partisan Rangers. They wore no uniforms, except those they took from dead bodies, usually dead Yankee bodies, and they recognized none of the rules of warfare, but they were highly effective for the Southern cause. Each man knew that if he were to be taken by the enemy, he would be shot. By the same token, the Partisan Rangers showed little mercy to the enemy. Yankees soon learned to respect this band of guerrillas.
It was not long before the Missouri anti-slavery militia knew Frank’s association with the Rangers. In June 1863, a squad rode into the yard of the farm and accused Rueben Samuel of being disloyal to the cause and of hiding guerrilla troops. They bound his hands behind his back, looped a noose over his head, and hung him from a nearby coffee tree. They hoisted him up and down, trying to get him to say where Frank and the Rangers were hiding. Gasping for breath, Dr. Samuel said nothing, so the group tied one end of the rope to the tree trunk and left him dangling, choking to death. They then found Zerelda, who was five months pregnant with Fannie, and tried to make her talk. When she refused, they threw her across the room into a wall.
The soldiers next went looking for Jesse. They found him plowing a field and immediately surrounded him, demanding to know Frank’s whereabouts. When they realized he would not cooperate, they drove him through the corn rows, lashing his back with a rope so severely that it was crisscrossed with bloody welts, and his shirt hung in bloody tatters. He crawled home, where he found his mother trying to revive her husband. Zerelda had managed to cut Dr. Samuel down, but he suffered brain damage from the incident and would later have to be institutionalized.
As soon as he was well enough, Jesse determined to strike back. He sought out Quantrill’s band, ready to join his brother, but he was turned down as being too young. When word got around that Jesse had been to see the hated enemy leader, the militia returned to the farm. Neither Jesse nor Dr. Samuel was home, but Zerelda and the other children were. They were arrested and hauled to jail in St. Joseph for several weeks, held as Confederate sympathizers, where they were starved and mistreated. While in jail, Susan contracted a fever and almost died.
Consumed with hatred and more determined than ever to avenge his family, Jesse again sought Quantrill and begged to be allowed to ride with his brother. Quantrill still thought him too young, but "Bloody" Bill Anderson, one of Quantrill’s lieutenants, liked the lad’s spunk and offered to look out for him, if Quantrill would allow him to join. From that moment onward, Jesse considered Bill Anderson his brother.
Anderson had suffered much at the hands of the anti-slavers, and his one goal in life was to kill Yankees, revenge for the deaths of his father and sister. It stemmed from a disastrous effort on the part of General Thomas C. Ewing, Jr., a commander in the Union army, to locate and arrest members of Quantrill's Rangers. Ewing ordered the arrest of all female members of the Rangers, and he detained them in a three-story building in Kansas. When the over-crowded conditions caused the building to collapse, Anderson’s sister was one of several women killed. The guerrillas decided to retaliate. Orders went out for all men who had ridden with them in the past to gather in Johnson County, Missouri. Quantrill planned to destroy Lawrence, Kansas, home of the hated marauder, James Lane.
Cole Younger brought in his unit, and Frank James rode with him. Kansas Jayhawkers had murdered Cole’s father, after looting and burning their farm near Lee’s Summit, a suburb of southeast Kansas City, and he was out for revenge. Cole and Frank were cousins and fast friends, being only one year apart in age. Leaving Jesse in camp, the guerrillas rode on Lawrence.
On 21 August 1863, the citizens of Lawrence awoke to Hell. Orders were to kill every man in town, hoping to get James Lane in the process, only Lane left town a day earlier and escaped the slaughter. Men were killed in front of their families and homes, and businesses were burned to the ground. By the time it was over, nearly 200 men were dead.
General Ewing struck back. He ordered the complete evacuation of persons living in Jackson, Cass, Bates and most of Vernon Counties of Missouri, all on the Kansas border. It was General Order Number Eleven. Thousands of Missouri residents fled in terror. Soldiers then marched through the area destroying everything in sight. The destruction was so thorough that it became known as the "Burn District."
Missouri was now in an uproar. The state government quit offering amnesty to Quantrill’s Rangers, and the Rangers quit offering paroles to captured prisoners. There were no surrenders and no prisoners after that, and with all sorts of militia now after them, the Rangers rode to Sherman, Texas, for the winter. While there, Frank James met General Joseph Shelby and his adjutant, Major John Newman Edwards, a former newspaperman. Both men would form a lasting friendship with the James brothers, and it would be Edwards who would contribute to their fame with glorifying articles and a series of "Dime Novels."
By the time he was seventeen, Jesse was an experienced guerrilla warrior. He was tall and slim, boyish-looking with an oval face and blue eyes. He also had a temper to match that of his mother’s, and few dared mess with him. It was said that he could ride like the wind, holding the bridle reins in his mouth, shooting with either hand at any target, moving or stationary, and hit it dead on. He never missed. Bloody Bill praised him as the best fighter in his command.
Some claim that it was while riding with the guerrillas that Jesse received his nickname. He was reported to be in the process of cleaning his pistol when it discharged, taking off the tip of his middle finger on his left hand. He is said to have cried out that it was the "dingest darndest thing," and the guerrillas gave him the name "Jesse Dingus." Other historians disagree on the timing of his wound, claiming it happened back on the farm before the war. All sources agree that he did have this deformity, and it is known that when he became an outlaw, he took to wearing gloves. It is believed he did it to keep from being identified by his disfigured hand. Which story is true, if any, is not known. Other stories claim a horse bit off the finger. In the story told by J. Frank Dalton in 1947, one of the people who would later lay claim to being Jesse James, the tip of the finger was shot off in a fight with two Union men in the Bigelow family, the name Charlie Bigelow being given as the name of the person buried in Jesse’s grave. It would also be the index finger and not the second finger, which raises its own set of questions for historians to straighten out.
Jesse also had other distinguishing marks. When he was a youth, he contracted what might be described as severe conjunctivitis, an inflammation of the mucus membranes lining the inner surface of the eyelids and covering the front part of the eyeball. When it flared up, he had an almost chronic pink-eye appearance. He had to blink often, and some say his stare was glassy, yet penetrating. As anyone who has suffered from this ailment can attest, the eye does become stressed, resulting in a glassy appearance and frequent blinking. A crude way to refer to it is having a "cold in the eye." Although annoying, it is not painful, nor particularly debilitating. If Jesse did have it, it was not noted at his death. Enough references do mention Jesse’s reddened eyes and frequent blinking, however, that it would appear to be truth.
There was one recognition mark, which all sources accept. It happened on 23 April 1865 at the end of the war. Jesse and his party were riding toward Lexington, Missouri, under a white flag of truce, toward the official surrender station at Burns School, when they were met by a force of Union soldiers coming their way. One or both sides opened fire, and Jesse was shot in the right chest. Some say his horse was shot from under him, and others say it was the horse of Jesse Hamlett, his good friend riding next to him. In any event, during the confusion, Jesse crawled into some bushes, but two Yankees pursued. He turned and killed the lead Yankee’s horse, gaining some time to hide. The soldiers searched about for a bit, and then left, leaving Jesse to spend a painful night alone near a stream. Jesse wore a flannel shirt at the time, and the bullet carried a piece of this cloth into the wound, probably saving him from bleeding to death. When he was later found, the wound was said to be so severe that he was not expected to live. Although it can neither be confirmed nor denied, Jesse is credited with being the last Confederate soldier shot, and the shot that wounded him was the last fired in the war.
Since Jesse had crawled off into the brush and his companions had believed him dead, his name was not listed as one of those who surrendered. This oversight was probably the single most contributing factor toward leading Jesse into crime. He had not technically surrendered, so he would forever be considered an outlaw and be constantly harassed by Federal partisans and troops looking for him.
When he was able to leave the hospital, Jesse boarded a steamboat at Lexington and sailed up the Missouri River to join his mother and Dr. Samuel in exile in Rulo, Nebraska, near the Missouri border, where they had fled to avoid the repercussions of the war. His condition was so serious that no one gave him any real hope of survival. He remained in Nebraska under the care of Dr. Samuel for about two months with no real improvements, coughing up small bits of the flannel shirt, and in his weakened condition, he thought he would die. He asked his mother to take him home to Missouri. The Samuel family loaded him on a flatboat and sailed downriver to Kansas City, where they stopped at a boarding house run by Jesse’s Aunt Mary James Mimms. His cousin, Zerelda Mimms, named in honor of his mother, took over his care, and during the next four months, he slowly gained back his strength, but he would never regain the use of his right lung.
Frank’s experiences while riding with the guerrillas matched those of Jesse’s. Brother Jesse had nicknamed him "Buck," a term of affection in many Southern families. While riding with the guerrillas, he acquired the reputation of being a good scout, which required a sharp eye to detail. It would serve him well later, when he became an outlaw. He rode with Quantrill under the command of Captain Cole Younger, who became one of his closest friends. When their outlaw days began, he and Cole would already be making names for themselves before Jesse joined the gang.
When Bloody Bill Anderson ordered his unit to Centralia, Missouri, Frank and Jesse were among the men who rode on the town. A train from St. Charles filled with Union troops was stopped by a pile of railroad ties on the tracks, and Anderson ordered the Union men out. Anderson selected one of them to hold as hostage for an exchange, but he ordered the others shot. The train was then set on fire, the throttle in the engine opened, and it rolled wildly down the track. The experience taught Jesse a certain technique of brutality.
This incident so incensed Major A. V. E. Johnson, that he went after the Rangers, swearing to kill every one of them. When the two forces met, Anderson ordered his troops to form up in a line, dismount and cinch up their saddles. Johnson read it all wrong. Thinking Anderson’s men preferred hand-to-hand combat, he ordered his men to dismount, and every fourth man led the horses away. It was just what Anderson wanted. When the horses were off the field, Anderson’s men remounted and proceeded to wipe out the Union troops. It was said that Jesse led the attack which killed Major Johnson on 20 September 1864. This killing would lead to an indictment after the war.
This battle was one of the last for the guerrillas. During the next few weeks, Bloody Bill Anderson was killed, and the Confederate army fled from Missouri, leaving the guerrillas without support. The guerrillas scattered, and Frank was with Quantrill’s band when it fled to Kentucky. When Quantrill was then killed, Frank surrendered. He was allowed to return home, after promising for the second time to never again take up arms against the Federal government.
The days immediately after the War were not easy for former Missouri guerrillas. The state constitution did not allow them to vote or practice law, medicine, or other professions, and they were not even allowed to serve as officers of a church. They were treated like second-class citizens. Furthermore, although ex-Union soldiers were pardoned for all wartime activities committed after 1 January 1861, the Confederate veterans were not pardoned and could be jailed for crimes committed during the war. It resulted in wide-scale ambushes and lynchings. Many of the ex-guerrillas took up weapons again, determined to earn a living with a gun. It was an uneasy life for the James brothers.
Jesse and Frank went back to the family farm, but Jesse was in such poor condition that his wound continued to re-open from time to time, draining large amounts of puss from his chest. He and Frank continued to work in the fields, and it was at this time that Jesse joined the choir of the local Baptist church and became baptized. Frank journeyed to California, while Jesse continued to recuperate under the care of Dr. Samuel. This pastoral existence came to an end when the Night Riders struck.
February 1866 was the final straw. A group of Night Riders rode on the farm in the dead of night, insisting that Jesse come out. Jesse still suffered from the wound in his chest, but he dressed quickly, and Dr. Samuel stalled the Riders until Jesse was ready. There was no thought of giving himself up to be charged with war crimes. Jesse fired a shot through the door, pulled it open, and fled. A short time later, he left home, heading to California by way of New York and Panama, where he rejoined his brother at the home of their uncle, Drury Woodson James.
Uncle Woodson owned the Paso Robles Hot Sulphur Springs spa in San Luis, and Frank had gone to him to recover from his own wounds. While in California, Jesse and Frank thoroughly searched Placerville and the surrounding gold camps for their father’s grave, but they never found it. A year later, they returned to Missouri and formed the James Gang, becoming the most famous outlaw gang in American history.
Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers – Cole, John, Bob, and Jim – and many other ex-Confederate Rangers, including five more sets of brothers, made up the bulk of the gang members. At times, there would be as many as twelve men riding, and at other times, only a few. As near as can be determined, thirty-one men were members of the James Gang.
These men were adept at robbing banks, the first one apparently attributed to them being the 20 March 1868 robbery of the Southern Deposit Bank in Russellville, Kentucky, where the robbers absconded with $14,000. Throughout 1866 to 1868 more robberies occurred throughout Missouri, Kentucky, and into Iowa. No proof was ever found to establish that Frank and Jesse took part in these robberies, but several of their friends were identified. The proof turned up on 7 December 1869 at the robbery of the Daviess County Savings Bank of $700 in Gallatin, Missouri.
Two men rode into town around noon, and while one stayed outside with the horses, the other entered the bank and asked the teller to change a large bill. Inside the bank were John Sheets, an ex-Union officer, and his cashier. As Sheets counted out the change, the second bandit entered the bank and whispered a few words to his partner. He then drew his pistol and fired twice, hitting Sheets in the head and chest, killing him instantly. When the bandits took the keys and attempted to open the vault, the cashier saw his chance, and fled. Although shot in the arm, he managed to raise the alarm.
Out in the street, armed men gathered. When the two bandits tried to mount their horses, shots rained down on them, and the horses spooked. The bandit who had killed Sheets lost his balance, catching his left foot in the stirrup as he fell. His horse dragged him face down through the street for about thirty feet before he was able to free himself. His partner pulled him up behind on his horse, and the two men fled.
Pursued by the posse, the bandits knew they had not a prayer of escaping riding double, but about a mile out of town, they came across a farmer riding a suitable horse, and they robbed him of his steed. They then seized a Methodist minister and forced him to lead them along the back trails around the next town. Before releasing him, one of the bandits said that he had just killed a man named Cox, who had killed his brother Bill Anderson during the war. Major S. P. Cox really had killed Anderson, but the bandit had killed the wrong man, mistaking Sheets for Cox, as the two resembled each other and lived in the same town. According to historians, Jesse had always considered Anderson his brother and had sworn revenge on his killers.
Back in town, a major clue was left by the skittish horse that had been abandoned by the robbers. On 16 December 1869, the Kansas City Times reported that the animal belonged to a "young man named James whose mother and stepfather live about four miles from Centerville, Clay County." The story went on to say that "both he and his brother are desperate men, having had much experience in horse and revolver work." A reward of $3,000 was offered for the capture of Jesse and Frank James.
Deputy Sheriff John S. Thomason of Liberty, along with his son Oscar and two other men, formed a posse to effect the capture of the James brothers. They rode to the James farm, but they underestimated Jesse and Frank. The brothers were used to keeping horses saddled and ready in case they had to make a quick escape, a trick they had learned while riding with the Rangers. When a young boy warned Frank and Jesse of the posse, the two men burst out of the barn at a gallop, cleared the back fence, and raced away. The posse attempted to follow, but three of the horses refused to leap the fence, and only Sheriff Thomason’s mount went over. Unwilling to chase the bandits without help, he jumped off and began firing. His horse bolted and was shot and killed by the returning gunfire. The irony is that the sheriff had to borrow a horse from Dr. Samuel to take him home.
By 1874, Missouri had gained the nickname of "The Robber State." People from other states could not understand why the James Gang had never been captured, but people really did not understand the conditions in Missouri at that time. When Missouri was under radical rule, county governments had issued nearly $19 million in bonds to finance the railroads, even though most of Missouri’s citizens had voted against it. Ignoring the popular vote, judges approved the bonds, and the railroads bought up land and charged high shipping fees. Farmers already in debt from loss of equipment destroyed in the Civil War, could not afford the high fees. Add to that, property taxes were raised to pay the interest on the railroad bonds. When the James Gang decided to deal out a little justice to the railroads, which had forced many of the farmers off their lands, many people cheered them onward.
Tiring of bank robbing, Jesse made his first strike against the railroads on 21 July 1873, when he held up the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific train near Adair, Iowa. The gang had learned that $75,000 in gold was to be transported on the train, and they devised an ingenious plan. They broke into a handcar house and stole track tools, rode down the track to a curve and removed track bars and spikes from a length of rail. They then tied ropes to the rail and waited for the train. When the train was past the point of being able to stop, they pulled the rail out. Engineer John Rafferty went into reverse, but the engine turned over on its side, crushing Rafferty and injuring the fireman and several of the passengers. Surprised at finding the baggage car empty (the gold shipment had been put on another train, which would come through twelve hours later), the gang robbed all the passengers, getting away with a mere $3,000. Although train robbery was not new – the Reno brothers had done it seven years earlier -- Jesse perfected the technique to such a high degree that other gangs attempted to imitate his style. Train crews and passengers alike were now fearful of falling victim to the train-robbing James Gang.
The James Gang was also into playing Robin Hood. They gave holdup money to friends, neighbors, and relatives to help pay their debts, and their family and friends never forgot. Of course, the gang would also rob the banks where the money would end up being deposited, but that was their plan. When the James Gang needed to hole up, they had no problems finding a safe place. Missouri lawmen were at a constant disadvantage.
One Robin Hood story has achieved legend status, and whether or not it really happened has never been proved. The wife of a Quantrill Ranger killed in the war expected the tax man, and it had been made clear to her that she would lose her home and land if she did not pay up. When Jesse rode into her yard seeking food and shelter, she told him of her troubles. He asked the woman when the tax man was due and by which road he would come, and then he gave the woman enough money to pay the taxes and purchase her farm. When the gang rode off, Jesse cautioned the woman to get a receipt for the taxes and to make sure it included everything she would need to prove free title to her farm. The tax man duly showed up, thinking he would be richer by one farm, but the widow paid him everything and demanded her receipts, which he reluctantly furnished her. On his way back to town, he was summarily robbed of all the money by unidentified highwaymen.
The James Gang included some really tough characters. Besides Frank and Jesse and the four Younger brothers, they also counted George White, Clell Miller, Jim Poole, Big George Shepherd, cousin Wood Hite, Bill Chadwell, Charlie Pitts, Dick Liddell and Jim Cummings, all of them expert shots and products of the Border War. In Clay County alone, they were practically immune from the law, as friends and family were everywhere, but they also had friends all over Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. One of their favorite hiding places was Saltpeter Cave, now known as Meramac Caverns, southwest of St. Louis. They could race their horses into the mouth of the cave for some distance, thus eluding any posse that was after them. On one occasion, the posse dared to enter the cave looking for them, and although the horses were found, the gang members avoided capture by escaping out a back entrance.
Frank and Jesse James and the Youngers were cousins, and Frank and Cole were fast friends. Thomas Coleman Younger was born 15 January 1844, a jovial man with a hearty sense of humor, who alternated his lawless career with periods of activity in church work and honest labor. It was even claimed by some writers that he fathered Myra Maybelle Shirley’s illegitimate daughter, Pearl, and it has since achieved the status of fact. Myra Shirley rode into legend as Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, and although she and Cole Younger did know each other, it has never been proven that she and Cole had a love child. Cole Younger always denied it. Belle did have a daughter she nicknamed Pearl, but the child’s father was probably another ex-guerrilla named James Read, whom she married in the late 1860’s. In fact, the child’s grandparents insisted on calling the little girl "Rosie," and she’s gone down in history as Rosie Lee Read, but most writers still refer to her as Pearl Younger Read.
Cole Younger was a handsome man, but he had been shot so many times during the war that his body resembled a pin cushion. One musket ball had lodged in his right eye, and even with the subsequent glass eye, his features remained somewhat disfigured in that area. He was older than his three outlaw brothers, but all were products of the same bloody border wars as the James brothers. Besides his three outlaw brothers, Cole also had four other brothers and six sisters.
Father Henry Washington Younger had been a United States mail contractor for many years before he was shot down in cold blood and robbed by the Missouri militia in 1861. When Cole returned home from college and found his father dead, he had joined Quantrill seeking revenge. It was 1862 , and he was eighteen, almost one year younger to the day than Frank James. Two years later, Jim Younger, then sixteen, would also become a member of the Rangers. John Younger was also a Quantrill Ranger, but Bob was only twelve at the start of the War and was not one of the guerrillas.
Sources agree the Youngers were cousins to the James boys, and the Youngers were also cousins to the Dalton brothers of Coffeyville, Kansas, who would ride into history as the Dalton Gang of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories of 1889. There is also the claim that Johnny Ringo, who gained fame in Tombstone, Arizona during the days of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, was also a cousin to the Youngers. The Daltons actually were cousins to the Youngers, since their mother was a sister of the Younger brothers, but it gets mighty confusing in the larger families to keep genealogies straight through the lateral ranks of the family tree. One could argue that if the Daltons were cousins to the Youngers and the Youngers were cousins to the James family, then the Daltons were also cousins to the James family, but this sort of logic is a non sequitor of historical fact and serves only to cloud the issue. What is interesting to note is that the Dalton Gang did try to emulate the James Gang when they began their reign of terror a decade later.
Riding with the James brothers, the Younger brothers participated in most of the raids on the trains and banks attributed to Jesse James and his leadership, but there is also no question that Jesse was blamed for many crimes he did not commit. Sometimes two robberies were perpetrated at the same time, hundreds of miles apart, and at both scenes, people swore they saw Jesse. To throw off pursuit and cast confusion into the pot, different gang members would always use the alias of Jesse James. It became a real chore to determine who did which crime.
In 1874, the railroads and banks hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to put a stop to the depredations. The Agency put their best man on the case, John W. Whicher. He went to Liberty to apprehend the James brothers, but on the road between Independence and Blue Mills, Whicher was found shot through the head and the heart. Not knowing who was responsible, but blaming the James brothers, Allan Pinkerton laid plans to punish them. On the night of 25 January 1874, his detectives surrounded the James farmhouse and tossed a thirty-two-pound iron bomb through the window. It was wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags. Since they had just tossed one through the window a moment earlier, which had not exploded, and which Zerelda had maneuvered into the fireplace to keep from burning the house down, nine-year-old Archie picked up the second one to toss it into the fireplace. This time, the bomb went off, and he died a few minutes later. The explosion also mangled Zerelda’s right arm and hurt Dr. Samuel. Zerelda’s injury was so severe that her arm had to be amputated below the elbow.
Two months later, three lawmen caught up with John and Jim Younger in the wooded country near Monegaw Springs, Missouri, and in the resultant shootout, John Younger, a Pinkerton detective named Louis Lull, and Sheriff Ed Daniels all died. Although seriously wounded, Jim Younger managed to escape to rejoin the gang.
The atrocity at the James farmhouse, which left Archie Samuel dead and Zerelda crippled, did much to sway sentiment in favor of Jesse and Frank and against the Pinkerton detectives. In March 1875, General Jeff Jones introduced into the Missouri House of Representatives, a Bill offering amnesty to Frank and Jesse for their war crimes, if they would agree to stand trial for crimes charged against them since the war. It was defeated only when the body of Daniel Askew, a neighbor who had helped the Pinkerton agents in the farm raid, was found shot in his front yard. The James boys were suspected, although friends claimed an enemy of the family had done the murder.
By this time, the James brothers were living legends with a $10,000 reward offered for their capture. They had been guerrillas fighting with ferocity along the border and for the South, and they had survived dreadful wounds which would have killed a less extraordinary man. Both were known to fight at any hour or in any way, using many names and disguises, and they would not be driven from their home. Because they had more friends than the ones who hunted them, they were able to slip about like the wind. Their good friend, John Newman Edwards, wrote: "They are uncommon men. Neither travels twice the same road. Neither tells the direction from which he came nor the direction in which he means to go. They are rarely together, but yet they are never far apart. There is a design in this – the calm, cool, deadly design of men who recognize the perils which beset them and who are not afraid to die. They traveled this way because if any so-called friend -- tempted by the large rewards offered for the life of either – should seek to take it and succeed, the other, safe from the snare and free to do his worst, is pledged to avenge the brother slain through treachery, and avenge him surely….the Jameses trust very few people -- two probably out of every ten thousand….They were hunted, and they were human. They replied to proscription by defiance, ambushment by ambushment, musket shot by pistol shot, night attack by counterattack, charge by counter-charge, and so will they do, desperately and with splendid heroism, until the end….They come and go as silently as the leaves fall."
The robbery which did more than any other to cripple the James Gang occurred on the morning of 7 September 1876. The First National Bank at Northfield, Minnesota, was located on the south end of a building on the corner of Division Street and Bridge Square. Besides Frank and Jesse, the other members of the gang were Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, Clell Miller, Bill Chadwell (alias William Stiles), and Charlie Pitts (alias Samuel Wells). It did not go well from the start. Arriving in town in two groups, the first group, consisting of Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts, who were supposed to be posing as loafers while waiting for the others to show up, became impatient. When they spotted Cole Younger and Clell Miller riding down the street, they entered the bank prematurely before the others could get set. Cole and Miller had to hurry to catch up, and it aroused the suspicions of nearby businessmen, who sounded the alarm. In the shooting melee which followed, both Miller and Chadwell were shot dead in the street, and Bob and Cole Younger were wounded. The Youngers and Pitts rode out of town in one direction and the James brothers in another. They left without collecting any money.
Minnesota Governor John Pillsbury then offered a huge reward for capture of the remaining bandits, and two weeks later, the Youngers and Charlie Pitts were cornered by a sheriff’s posse in a swamp hideout near Madelia. In the violent gunfight which followed, Charlie was killed, Jim Younger got five bullets, one shattering his upper jaw, Cole got eleven, and Bob was shot through the right lung. The three Youngers were duly herded together and taken to Madelia. When pressed to identify the other two members of the gang who had gotten away, they would only say that the two men were known to them as "Woods" and "Howard," the aliases Frank and Jesse had used in Tennessee. And as J. B. Howard and B. J. Woodson, Jesse and Frank continued to evade the law for three more years.
Of the eight outlaws who rode on Northfield, only Frank and Jesse managed to escape. The three Younger brothers were tried and sentenced to life in prison. Several attempts were made by Missouri officials to have the brothers released, but all petitions were refused. Bob Younger died on 16 September 1889 from consumption, while still inside the bleak prison at Stillwater, Minnesota. On 14 July 1901, Cole and Jim Younger were granted a pardon, but they were ordered to remain in Minnesota as a condition of their release. Unable to withstand the severity imposed on them by the pardon, Jim Younger committed suicide one Sunday afternoon in October 1902, after being refused permission to marry his sweetheart. A year later, Cole Younger was finally permitted to return to his home in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and he lived a happy life as a part-time preacher until his death from a heart attack on 21 March 1916.
The botched Northfield bank episode not only depleted the James Gang membership, it also made the gang so unpopular that it became impossible to recruit new members. The gang still flourished, however, and authorities were desperately in need of some means to stop them before the public lost all faith in the law. When Governor Thomas Crittenden came up for re-election, part of his campaign was a promise to the voters to bring the gang members to justice. Early 1882, Sheriff Timberlake of Clay County, Missouri settled on a plan, which, if successful, would put the James Gang out of business. He could not know the extent of the controversy his actions would create.
Jesse had been an outlaw for sixteen years by the time Bob Ford and Sheriff Timberlake formulated their plan. Ford was to stay in Jesse’s confidence and let the sheriff know the time and place of the gang’s next job, even though they both thought Jesse would become suspicious when he learned gang member Dick Liddell had surrendered. Jesse was no fool, and he was dangerous when crossed. Bob Ford would have to make his move at the first opportunity.
On 3 April 1882, Bob Ford and his brother Charlie were at the home of a quiet, unassuming man living a peaceful existence as Tom Howard in St. Joseph, Missouri. Howard had been a resident of St. Joseph for several years, and his neighbors had to no reason to suspect he was anything other than an upstanding, law-abiding citizen raising a nice family. But, on that date, they learned differently, and history would be made. Howard is claimed to have taken off his pistols, turned his back on the Fords, and stepped onto a chair to dust a picture which was hanging above his head. They were all in the front room of the house. Bob Ford was then said to have pulled out a pearl-handled .44 and shot Tom Howard in the back of the head. The bullet entered behind the ear and exited out the other side, leaving a hole in the wall of the house, an area which is today framed as one of the main attractions for tourists visiting the house. Ford gave this written account of the shooting to Governor Crittenden:
On the morning of April 3, Jess and I went downtown, as usual, before breakfast, for the papers. We got to the house about eight o’clock and sat down in the front room. Jess was sitting with his back to me, reading the St. Louis Republican. I picked up The Ties, and the first thing I saw in big headlines was the story about Dick Liddil’s surrender. Just then Mrs. James came in and said breakfast was ready. Beside me was a chair with a shawl on it, and quick as a flash, I lifted it and shoved the paper under. Jess couldn’t have seen me, but he got up, walked over to the chair, picked up the shawl and threw it on the bed, and taking the paper, went out to the kitchen. I felt like the jig was up, but I followed and sat down at the table opposite Jess.
Mrs. James poured the coffee and then sat down at one end of the table. Jess spread the paper in front of him and began to look over the headlines. All at one Jess said, "Hello, here. The surrender of Dick Liddil" and he looked across at me with a glare in his eye.
"Young man, I thought you told me you didn’t know that Dick Liddil had surrendered," he said.
I told him I didn’t know it.
"Well," he said, "it’s very strange. He surrendered three weeks ago and you was right here in the neighborhood. It looks fishy."
He continued to glare at me, and I got up and went into the front room. In a minute, I heard Jess push his chair back and walk to the door. He came in smiling, and said pleasantly, "Well Bob, it’s all right anyway."
Instantly his real purpose flashed upon my mind. I knew I had not fooled him. He was too sharp for that. He knew at that moment as well as I did that I was there to betray him. But he was not going to kill me in the presence of his wife and children. He walked over to the bed, and deliberately unbuckled his belt, with four revolvers in it, and threw it on the bed. It was the first time in my life I had seen him without the belt on, and I knew he threw it off to further quiet any suspicions I might have.
He seemed to want to busy himself with something to make an impression on my mind that he had forgotten the incident at the breakfast table, and said, "That picture is awful dusty." There wasn’t a speck of dust that I could see on the picture, but he stood a chair beneath it and then got upon it and began to dust the picture on the wall.
As he stood there unarmed with his back to me, it came to me suddenly. "Now or never is your chance. If you don’t get him now, he’ll get you tonight." Without further thought or a moment’s delay, I pulled my revolver and leveled it as I sat. He heard the click as I cocked it with my thumb and started to turn as I pulled the trigger. The ball struck him just behind the ear, and he fell like a log, dead.
This is the traditional account of the life and death of Jesse James. The only problem with it is that lawmen questioned his death from the start. Jesse had not used his own name for sixteen years, and the only ones who really knew what he looked like were his family and gang members. Nearly every robbery within a tri-state area had been contributed to him, but lawmen all agreed that he could not possibly have pulled off all the crimes. Gang members were known to use his name all the time, and it served well to confuse the posses, but it also served well to confuse the identification of the body in St. Joseph.
Bob Ford said he killed Jesse James, but did Bob Ford know the real Jesse? Or did Ford know a gang member who used the alias of Jesse? The people in St. Joseph knew the dead man only as Tom Howard. When Zerelda James was summoned to view the body the next morning and make positive identification, she is reported to have blurted out, "That’s not my son." She was immediately ushered into an anteroom, and when she returned, she said she had not seen Jesse for awhile. She asked for another look, whereupon she then proceeded to wail and weep and make positive identification. Frank James never did identify the body.
The body was taken back to the James farm and buried on the property, away from sight-seers and anyone who might plunder the tombstone for a souvenir. There is also the theory that it was buried on the farm to keep anyone from exhuming it for further examination.
Next up is the second leg of the triangle -- the J. Frank Dalton account of being the "real" Jesse James.