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Zerelda James

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(Redirected from Benjamin Simms) Mother of outlaw Jesse James (1825–1911)

This article is about the mother of Jesse James. For the wife of outlaw Jesse James, see Zerelda Mimms. "Benjamin Simms" redirects here. For other persons, see Ben Simm.
Zerelda James
BornZerelda Elizabeth Cole
(1825-01-29)January 29, 1825
Woodford County, Kentucky, U.S.
DiedFebruary 10, 1911(1911-02-10) (aged 86)
near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
Spouses
Robert S. James ​ ​(m. 1841; died 1850)​
Benjamin Simms ​ ​(m. 1852; sep. 1854)​
Reuben Samuel ​ ​(m. 1855; died 1908)​
Children8 (incl. Frank and Jesse)

Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel (January 29, 1825 – February 10, 1911) was the mother of famous outlaws Frank James and Jesse James.

Biography

Cole was born to James and Sarah Lindsay Cole on January 29, 1825, in Woodford County, Kentucky. She had one brother, younger than her by one year, named Jesse Richard Cole, who committed suicide by gunshot on 12 November 1895 at Kearney at the age of 67. He had been complaining of being sick for a few days, went to the chicken house carrying a pillow, laid down and fired a shot through his heart.

She was of English and Scottish descent. When Zerelda was a child, her father broke his neck in a riding accident, leaving her mother with two young children. They were taken in by her paternal grandfather, who owned a saloon. Later, her mother remarried Robert Thomason, a farmer. Zerelda did not get along with her new stepfather, Robert, so she went to live with some of her mother's relatives in Kentucky, where she attended a Catholic girls' school.

First marriage

Zerelda Cole married Robert Sallee James on December 28, 1841, at the residence of her uncle, James Madison Lindsay, in Stamping Ground, Kentucky, when she was 16 years old. A college friend of Robert's officiated as the best man, and tobacco was given in bond. The two moved to the vicinity of Centerville (later Kearney, Missouri).

Robert James was a commercial hemp farmer, a slave owner, and a popular evangelical minister in the Baptist Church. Zerelda bore him four children.

  • Alexander Franklin James (b. January 10, 1843 – d. February 18, 1915)
  • Robert R. James (b. July 19, 1845 – d. August 21, 1845)
  • Jesse Woodson James (b. September 5, 1847 – d. April 3, 1882)
  • Susan Lavenia James (b. November 25, 1849 – d. March 3, 1889)

Shortly after the birth of his daughter, Susan, Robert James moved to California to preach to the gold miners, where he contracted either pneumonia, cholera or typhoid and died on (according to tradition) August 18, 1850. His grave has never been officially identified, and no marker exists for him today. There is a much-disputed story that, in later years, Jesse went looking for his father's grave.

Second marriage

Benjamin A. Simms was a wealthy neighbour farmer who was born around 1800 in Virginia, lived in Clinton County, Missouri and left an state there. He was the brother of John H. Simms, who served in the War of 1812. He was drafted around July 1814 to serve the same war in the Regiment of Virginia Militia, and served through December as a private.

On 11 December 1823 he married Mary Ann George in Woodford County, Kentucky, before moving to Missouri. Mary died and he married the widowed Zerelda James on September 25, 1855. The marriage proved unhappy, primarily because Simms disliked Frank James and Jesse James, to whom he was reportedly cruel and abusive. "The chief trouble arose from the fact that her three little children, Frank Jesse, and Susie, whom she had always humored and indulged, gave their old step-father no end of annoyance". Benjamin demanded the children sent away, Zerelda refused and left Simms because "he was mean to her sons". He was killed accidentally in Clay County on January 2, 1854, when his horse threw him.

Third marriage

Zerelda was married a third time to Dr. Reuben Samuel (b. January 1829 – d. March 1, 1908), on September 25, 1855. Samuel has been described as "a quiet, passive man...standing in the shadow of his outspoken, forceful wife". Dr. Reuben Samuel and Zerelda Samuel had four children:

  • Sarah Louisa Samuel (b. April 7, 1858 – d. July 14, 1921)
  • John Thomas Samuel (b. December 25, 1861 – d. March 15, 1934)
  • Fanny Quantrill Samuel (b. October 18, 1863 – d. May 3, 1922)
  • Archie Peyton Samuel (b. July 26, 1866 – d. January 26, 1875)

There has been some dispute as to the spelling of the surname "Samuel". Sometimes it is spelled "Samuels". However, the spelling "Samuel" is attested by birth records, family gravestones, and neighbor Homer Croy.

Pinkerton Raid

The Pinkerton Agency's founder and leader, Allan Pinkerton, attempted to capture the James brothers. On the night of January 25, 1875, he staged a raid on the homestead. Detectives threw an incendiary device into the house; it exploded, killing James's young half-brother Archie (named for Archie Clement) and blowing off the right arm of Zerelda Samuel. Afterwards, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was arson, but biographer Ted Yeatman located a letter by Pinkerton in the Library of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to "burn the house down."

Post Jesse: The James Farm Tour

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With all the press of the famous James brothers of Missouri, the hysteria of the Frank James trial, and all the dime novels of which the family did not approve, it was inevitable that people would turn up at the farm wanting to see the place where the infamous Jesse James had grown up.

Zerelda charged for the tour, and the visitors were taken on a tour of the farmhouse including a vivid account of the Pinkerton Raid in January. The fireplace does not bear burn marks but there is evidence of which floor boards were salvaged and which were replaced when the repairs were made as compensation by Pinkerton to Mrs. James for the death of her son and injury to herself.

The tour culminated at the grave of Jesse, who was originally buried in the front yard outside Zerelda's bedroom window so when she slept at night, she had a clear, unobstructed view of his grave. Zerelda was worried that someone would come and take him so she had him buried an extra few feet down than the standard six. For an extra few coins visitors were allowed to scoop up the "authentic" pebbles from the grave. Zerelda replenished them from the stream where the boys used to play. Years later when Jesse's wife, also named Zerelda, died, his mother had Jesse reburied alongside his wife at Mount Olivet in Kearney, MO. She further would play on the sympathies of her visitors by offering to sell old, rusted, often inoperable guns that she said belonged to Jesse before he died, which in reality she had bought second-hand, leading to a proliferation of people claiming to and sincerely believing that they owned a gun that had once belonged to Jesse James.

Death

Obituary from the Washington Post; February 11, 1911

Zerelda died in 1911 in the Burlington carriage on a train traveling to San Francisco, California of a heart ailment (some 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City). She was 86 years old and was buried next to Reuben Samuel, her third husband, and sons Jesse and Archie at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Clay County, Missouri.

Popular culture

Timeline

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References

  1. Steele, Philip W. (June 30, 1987). Jesse and Frank James: The Family History. Pelican Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4556-0664-1.
  2. "A Pillow for a Suicide". The Enid Events. Oklahoma. November 21, 1895. Retrieved October 31, 2021 – via Find a Grave.
  3. ^ Johnson 2008, p. 5.
  4. ^ Chappell & Hall 1969, p. 42.
  5. Chappell & Hall 1969, p. 41.
  6. Pension File, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
  7. Cimino, Al (August 24, 2016). Gunfighters: A Chronicle of Dangerous Men & Violent Death. Book Sales. p. 54. ISBN 9780785833765.
  8. National Historical Company, St. Louis (1885). History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri. St. Louis, National Historical Co.
  9. Johnson 2008, p. 6.
  10. Settle, William A. (1967). Jesse James Was His Name. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. p. 8.
  11. page 2, column 7, Liberty Weekly Tribune, 6 January 1854
  12. Steele, Phillip W. (September 23, 2010). Outlaws and Gunfighters of the Old West. Pelican Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 9781455610020.
  13. Monahan, Sherry (January 22, 2016). "A Deadly Kitchen". True West Magazine. Archived from the original on January 16, 2019. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  14. Yeatman, Ted P. (2000). Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend. Cumberland House Publishing. pp. 128–44. ISBN 1-58182-325-8.
  15. Stiles, T.J. (2002). Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. Knopf Publishing. pp. 272–85. ISBN 0-375-40583-6.
  16. Philip W. Steele, Jesse and Frank James: The Family History (Pelican Publishing, 1987) p.45

Bibliography

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