Jesse James
1847 - 1882
Dr. Allan Thomson, who was once Jack London's doctor, lived a piece up
the road from the James family. He tells me Jesse was born in 1847, the
son of a Baptist minister and a mother who found it necessary to marry
three times, her last husband being a kindly man, Dr Reuben Samuel.He also states that Jesse was spawned of the Civil War as a Quantrell Raider, and that his fast gunhand can be attributed to the new Navy Colts cap-and-ball, which set a faster pace in the art of draw-shoot killing.
Dr. Thomson says
Confederate money wasn't worth a Chinese whisker, and, with the shame
of having lost the war to a lot of no-good bluecoats. It was easy
for a Missourian to saddle up, ride out, and do harm to anything
Republican, whether it was a train, stagecoach, or a bank. Jesse,
being no exception, found a democratic following in brother Frank,
Clell Miller, Jim Poole, George White, and a host of other staunch
hearts, including the Younger cousins some 17 men ready for
anything at all in what was considered a continuation of the border
states war. They were to peg up a quarter of a million dollars in
train and bank robberies, consummating this record in 17 years of
gunslinging.
They had relatives,
he ways, all over the state, and could tarry most anywhere while on the
run. Few outside lawmen came into this territory because they
feared being bushwhacked by relatives who could still handle an old
squirrel rifle, relatives that had cut down Louie Lull, a Pinkerton
snoop, and had cashed in a local police officer who had the wrong
tendencies. Then, too, one of the Youngers had outdrawn and
outshot another Pinkerton whose body was found half eaten by hogs on a
lonely road.
Dr.
Reuben Samuel, Jesse's stepfather, had the misfortune to be standing by
the fireplace when a Pinkerton threw a bomb into the fireplace which
literally blew him sky-high and tore off the arm of Jesse's mother,
killing his step-brother outright. A horrible thing, indeed.
Now Jesse had a
legitimate excuse to rob and kill, and he went at the business like a
madman, riding east, west, south, north sticking up trains, banks,
stagecoaches, brusquely pushing people around and killing those who
resisted him. He held up his first train in 1873, the Chicago,
Rock Island and Pacific, near Adair, Iowa, and his first bank at
Liberty, Missouri; then one at Russelville, in Logan County,
Kentucky. Jesse offered little jokes and puns as he took the
money. His blue eyes blinked and a dry smile showed the humor he
inherited from his mother.
Feeling the urge to
marry, he managed a respectable church wedding to his first cousin,
Zerelda, who had nursed him back from his Civil War wounds. He
was a hero now. Good Missourians liked to sing songs of him and
his Robinhood legend.
On
September of 1876 the boys rode out to Northfield, Minnesota, where
they roared into a bank making definite demands at gunpoint. The
people recognized at once what was taking place, and a withering
gunfight followed in which Bill Chadwell, Clell Miller and a couple of
citizens were cut down. Charlie Pitts went to his death.
Jim Younger received five slugs, Bob Younger two; and although Cole
Younger's big body felt the bite of five bullets, he still stood on his
feet to bow to the ladies as the wagon rolled them off to jail.
All were sentenced to life imprisonment, but Jim and Cole Younger were
paroled after 25 years of jail.
Frank James was not
caught. Jesse semi-retired up in the swank Nashville area living
the life of ease, smoking success cigars, racing horses and sunning
himself of afternoons, and making no particular effort to conceal the
real identity of the great Jesse James while he passes himself off as a
"Mr. Howard". Later, he went on to California where he visited an
uncle in Paso Robles, and then on to the wine country of Napa Valley to
see some friends. But life grew dull, and James returned home.
Back
into the saddle and his guns. He robbed a stage at Muscle Shoals,
Alabama, gunning down the conductor and an ambitious passenger all
in July 1881, the year Billy the Kid was killed away off in New Mexico
Territory.
Reward
posters were now in evidence shouting a ten thousand-dollar bounty for
Jesse, dead or alive. Bob Ford, a former member of the gang,
could not resist this money, so he picked one of Jesse's pistols off
the table in Jesse's own house and killed him while he was
straightening a picture on the wall.
All
Missouri mourned poor Jesse's death. Frank James surrendered to
the governor. It was the end of the James Banditry. You
certainly knew this when you saw Frank James acting nightly as a
doorman in a St Louis burlesque not long afterward.
Calamity Jane | Clay Allison | Curly Bill | Dave Mather
Doc Holliday | Jesse James | Jim Courtright | Joaquin Murrietta
John Ringo | John Wesley Hardin | King Fisher | Luke Short
Old Man Clanton | Pat Garrett | Wild Bill Hickok | Wyatt Earp
OK Corral | Artist - Lea Franklin McCarty