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Jesse James
Jesse James
Born(1847-09-05)September 5, 1847
Clay County, Missouri, USA
DiedApril 3, 1882(1882-04-03) (aged 34)
St. Joseph, Missouri, USA

Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw and the most famous member of the James-Younger gang. He became a figure of folklore after his death. He was a notable gunfighter, who carried on the tradition of pistoleering he acquired as a Missouri teenager riding with the Missouri Bushwhackers, William Clark Quantrill and William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson.

Early life

Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, near the site of present day Kearney. His father, Robert James, was a farmer and Baptist minister from Kentucky who helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. Robert James traveled to California to prospect for gold and died there when Jesse was three years old. After his father's death, his mother Zerelda (nicknamed Zee) remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, and then to a doctor named Reuben Samuel. After their marriage in 1855, Samuel moved into the James home.

In the tumultuous years leading up to the American Civil War, Zerelda and Reuben acquired a total of seven slaves and had them grow tobacco on their well-appointed farm. In addition to Jesse's older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James and younger sister Susan Lavenia James, Jesse gained four half-siblings: Sarah Louisa Samuel (sometimes Sarah Ellen), John Thomas Samuel, Fannie Quantrill Samuel, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Sarah later married a man named John C. Harmon.

The James farm was visited in 1863 by Federal troops looking for information regarding Confederate guerrilla groups. The soldiers beat young Jesse and hung his stepfather (who survived). Shortly after that, in 1864, Jesse joined a guerrilla unit led by Bloody Bill Anderson, who led the Centralia Massacre. Jesse joined at about the same time Anderson's group split from Quantrill's Raiders, so there is some uncertainty regarding whether Jesse James ever served under Quantrill.

After the Civil War

Jesse and Frank James, 1872
Clay County Savings in Liberty

The end of the Civil War left Missouri in shambles. The pro-Union Republicans took control of the state government keeping the Democrats from voting or holding public office. Jesse James was shot in cold blood by Union militia when he attempted to surrender a month after the war's end, leaving him badly wounded. His first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (named after her mother), nursed him back to health, and he started a nine-year courtship with her. She eventually became his wife. (After her husband's death, Zerelda Mimms raised their son to be a respected member of the Kansas City, Missouri, bar.) Meanwhile, some of Jesse's old war comrades, led by Archie Clement, another of the bushwhacker leaders once allied with Quantrill, refused to return to a peaceful life.

In 1866, this group conducted the first armed robbery of a US bank in post-Civil War times, holding up the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty. During this raid, Jesse deliberately shot a bystanding student of William Jewell College. (see Wellman, 1961) The gang staged several more robberies over the next few years, though state authorities (and local lynch mobs) had decimated the ranks of the older bushwhackers.

In 1868, Frank and Jesse James joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank at Russellville, Kentucky. Jesse did not become famous, however, until December 1869, when he and Frank (most likely) robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little, but James (it appears) shot and killed the cashier, mistakenly believing the man to be Samuel P. Cox, the militia officer who killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. James's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge, and the daring escape he and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterward, put his name in the newspapers for the first time.

The robbery marked James's emergence as the most famous of the former guerrillas turned outlaw, and it started an alliance with John Newman Edwards, a Kansas City Times editor who was campaigning to return the old Confederates to power in Missouri. Edwards published Jesse's letters and made him into a symbol of Rebel defiance of Reconstruction through his elaborate editorials and praiseful reporting. Jesse James's own role in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career and enhanced his notoriety.

Meanwhile, the James brothers, along with Cole Younger and his brothers, Bob and Jim, Clell Miller and other former Confederates—now constituting the James-Younger Gang—continued a remarkable string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the bystanders. In 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa. Their later train robberies had a lighter touch—in fact only twice in all of Jesse James's train hold-ups did he rob passengers, because he typically limited himself to the express safe in the baggage car. Such techniques fostered the Robin Hood image that Edwards was creating in his newspapers. Jesse James is thought to have shot 15 people during his bandit career.

Pinkertons engaged

Express companies turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop the James-Younger Gang. The Chicago-based agency worked primarily against urban professional criminals as well as targeting unions and breaking strikes. The former guerrillas, supported by many old Confederates in Missouri, proved to be too much for them. One agent (Joseph Whicher) was dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm and turned up dead shortly afterward, with all but his hands eaten by the hogs that freely roamed the area. Two others (Louis J. Lull and John Boyle) were sent after the Youngers; Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17, 1874, though he killed John Younger before he died (an event depicted in the film, The Long Riders (1980).

Allan Pinkerton, the agency's founder and leader, took on the case as a personal vendetta. Working with old Unionists around Jesse James's family's farm, he staged a raid on the homestead on the night of January 25, 1875. An incendiary device thrown inside by the detectives exploded, killing James's young half-brother and blowing off one of James's mother's arms. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was to burn the house down.

However, a 1994 book written by Robert Dyer entitled Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri (ISBN-13: 978-0826209597) contains the following:

"In early 1991, a Jesse James researcher named Ted Yeatman found an interesting letter among the papers of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The letter was written by Allan Pinkerton to a lawyer working for him in Liberty, Missouri, named Samuel Hardwicke. In the letter Pinkerton tells Hardwicke that when the men go to the James home to look for Jesse they should find some way to 'burn the house down.' He suggests they use some type of firebomb."

This letter illustrates just how far the unprincipled Pinkerton was willing to go in his vendetta against the James brothers, but the move backfired. The bloody fiasco did more than all of Edwards's columns to turn Jesse James into a sympathetic figure for much of the public. A bill that lavishly praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty was only narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Former Confederates, allowed to vote and hold office again, voted a limit on reward offers the governor could make for fugitives (when the only reward offers higher than the new limit previously made had been for the James brothers). But Frank and Jesse married (Jesse to his first cousin Zee Mimms) and moved to the Nashville, Tennessee, area, probably to save their mother from further assaults.

Jesse and his wife Zerelda, whom he married on April 24, 1874, had four children: Jesse James, Jr. (b. 1875), Gould James (b. 1878), Montgomery James (b. 1878), and Mary Susan James (b. 1879). Twins Gould and Montgomery died in infancy. His surviving son was raised by his mother to become a lawyer, and he spent his career as a respected member of the Kansas City, Missouri, bar (above). In 1868 James had become a Baptist, remaining a devout Christian for the rest of his life. He was of medium height, of slender but solid build, with a bearded, narrow face, and prominent blue eyes. Till his later days, when he became abnormally suspicious and moody, he was good-natured and jocular, though quick-tempered. He always justified his outlawry on the alleged ground that he had been driven into it by persecution. Doubtless, given the rapine of the unionists in the post-war Reconstruction period, Jesse's claim was not completely imaginary. In fact, corrupt, post-war Republican administrations pushed other young men into outlawry, notably William Bonney, otherwise known as 'Billy the Kid'.(Jacobsen, 1997)

Downfall of the gang

On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted their most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected the bank because of its connection to two Union generals and Radical Republican politicians: Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Benjamin Butler, Ames's father-in-law and the stern Union commander in occupied New Orleans.

However, the robbery was thwarted when Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the safe, falsely claiming that it was secured by a time lock even as they held a bowie knife to his throat and cracked his skull with a pistol butt. Unbeknownst to the gang, the vault was unprotected at the time of the robbery, the inner door closed but unlocked. The citizens of Northfield had taken notice and were arriving with guns. Before leaving the bank, Frank James shot the unarmed Heywood in the head. When the bandits exited the bank, they found the rest of their gang dead or wounded amid a hail of gunfire. Suspicious townsmen had confronted the bandits, ran to get their arms, and fired from under the cover of windows and the corners of buildings. The gang barely escaped, leaving two of their number and two unarmed townspeople (including Heywood) dead in Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. The James brothers eventually split from the others and escaped to Missouri. The Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts, were soon discovered. A brisk gunfight left Pitts dead and the Youngers all prisoners. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed.

Jesse and Frank returned to the Nashville area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri, on October 8, 1879. The robbery began a spree of crimes, including the hold-up of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of old, battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while James grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another. The authorities grew suspicious, and by 1881 the brothers were forced to return to Missouri. In December, Jesse rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, not far from where he had been born and raised. Frank, however, decided to move to safer territory, heading east to Virginia.

Murder/Assassination

Jesse James's home in St. Joseph where he was shot

With his gang depleted by arrests, deaths, and defections, Jesse thought he had only two men left whom he could trust: brothers Bob and Charley Ford. Charley had been out on raids with Jesse before, but Bob was an eager new recruit. To better protect himself, Jesse asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. Little did he know that Bob Ford had been conducting secret negotiations with Thomas T. Crittenden, the Missouri governor, to bring in Jesse James. Crittenden had made the capture of the James brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address he declared that no political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law from offering a sufficiently large reward, he had turned to the railroad and express corporations to put up a $10,000 bounty for each of them.

On April 3, 1882, as James prepared for another robbery, he climbed a chair to dust a picture. It was a rare moment. He had his guns off, having removed them earlier when the unusual heat forced him to remove his coat. As he moved in and out of the house, he feared the pistols would attract attention from the passers-by. Seizing the opportunity, the Ford brothers drew their pistols. Bob was the fastest, firing a shot into the back of Jesse's head, killing him instantly.

The assassination proved a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role. As crowds pressed into the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit, they surrendered to the authorities, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to hang. However, they were promptly pardoned by the governor. Indeed, the governor's quick pardon suggested that he was well aware that the brothers intended to kill, rather than capture, Jesse James. (The Ford brothers, like many who knew James, never believed it was practical to try to capture such a dangerous man.) The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and helped create a new legend in James.

The Fords received a portion of the reward (some of it also went to law enforcement officials active in the plan) and fled Missouri. Zerelda, Jesse’s mother, appeared at the coroner’s inquest, deeply anguished, and loudly denounced Dick Liddil, a former gang member who was cooperating with state authorities. Charley Ford committed suicide in May 1884. Bob Ford was later killed by a shotgun blast to the throat in his tent saloon in Creede, Colorado, on June 8, 1892. His killer, Edward Capehart O'Kelley, was sentenced to life in prison. Because of health problems, his sentence was commuted, and O'Kelley was released on October 3, 1902.

Jesse James’s epitaph, selected by his mother, reads: In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to Appear Here.

Rumors of survival

Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his death. Some said that Ford did not kill James but someone else, in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. Some stories say he lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as late as 1948, and a man named J. Frank Dalton, who claimed to be Jesse James, died in Granbury, Texas, in 1951 at age 103. Some stories claim the real recipient of Ford's bullet was a man named Charles Bigelow, reported to have been living with James's wife at the time. Generally speaking, however, these tales received little credence, then or now; Jesse's wife, Zee, died alone and in poverty. The body buried in Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and, according to a report by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D.; James E. Starrs, L.L.M.; and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D. titled Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Presumptive Remains of Jesse James, does appear to be the remains of Jesse James. A court order was granted in 2000 to exhume and test Dalton's body, but the wrong body was exhumed. Some people believed that Jesse James hid in the attic of a two story house in Dublin, Texas while he was hiding from the law.

Legacy

During his lifetime, Jesse James was largely celebrated by former Confederates, to whom he appealed directly in his letters to the press. Indeed, some historians credit him with contributing to the rise of Confederates to dominance in Missouri politics (by the 1880s, for example, both U.S. Senators from the state had been identified with the Confederate cause). His return to crime after the fall of Reconstruction, however, was devoid of political overtones, but it helped cement his place in American memory as a simple but remarkably effective bandit. During the Populist and Progressive eras, he emerged as America's Robin Hood, standing up against corporations in defense of the small farmer (a role he never played during his lifetime). This image is still seen in films, as well as songs and folklore. Although he remains a controversial symbol in the cultural battles over the place of the Civil War in American history, he is regarded as a hero by the neo-Confederate movement.

Irish-American Lucchese Family associate Jimmy Burke named his two sons, Frank James Burke and Jesse James Burke, after the James brothers.

Popular culture

A dime novel featuring Jesse James.

Festivals

The Defeat of Jesse James Days are celebrated every year in Northfield, Minnesota during the first weekend of September to honor its victory over the Jesse James Gang. The festival is among the largest outdoor celebrations in Minnesota. Thousands of visitors witness reenactments of the robbery, watch championship rodeo, enjoy a carnival, watch the parade, explore arts and crafts expositions, and attend musical performances.

During the Jersey County Victorian Festival that centers around the 1866 Col. William H. Fulkerson estate "Hazel Dell", Jesse James history is brought to life through reenactments of stagecoach holdups and by storytelling. Over the three day event, thousands of spectators learn of the documented James Gang stopping point at Hazel Dell and of the connection between ex-Confederates Fulkerson and Jesse James. Historical Civil War reenactments, arts and crafts, and music all compose this family-oriented event, one of the largest historical festivals in the Midwest, held every Labor Day Weekend in Jerseyville, Illinois.

Jesse's birthplace, boyhood home, and final resting place, Kearney, Missouri, also celebrate the life of their most famous resident. Each year, during the 3rd weekend in September, the Jesse James Festival is in full swing at the Jesse James Festival Grounds. A carnival, parade, rodeo, historic re-enactments, a Teen Dance, and a Barbecue Cook-off are all part of the festival. www.jessejamesfestival.com

<img src="http://www.greatriverroad.com/vicfest/jcvfimg/lh04mansionv2.jpg"> The 1866 Fulkerson Mansion at Hazel Dell estate, Jerseyville, Illinois: A Documented Jesse James Gang Stopping Point and on the National Register of Historic Places.

Music and literature

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Main article: Jesse James in Music

Jesse James has been the subject of many songs, books, articles and movies throughout the years. Jesse is often used as a fictional character in many Western novels, starting with some of the original dime novels, including some that were published while he was still alive. For instance, in Willa Cather's My Antonia, the narrator is said to be reading a book entitled 'Life of Jesse James' - probably a dime novel. He also found his place in John Lee Hooker's famous song "I'm bad like Jesse James." In his worshipful adaptation of the traditional song "Jesse James," Woody Guthrie magnified James's hero status, and Guthrie even borrowed the tune for his outlaw hero ballad "Jesus Christ," indirectly paying homage to James again. Echoing the Confederate hero aspect, Hank Williams, Jr.'s 1983 Southern anthem "Whole Lot Of Hank" has the lyrics "Frank and Jesse James knowed how to rob them trains, they always took it from the rich and gave it to the poor, they might have had a bad name but they sure had a heart of gold." In the song "Apache" by The Sugarhill Gang, Big Bank Hank mentions Jesse James in the first verse with the lines "My Tribe went down in the hall of fame // Cause I'm the one who shot Jesse James " In his 2006 release, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," Bruce Springsteen includes the song "Jesse James." The widely known celtic-based band ,The Pogues, also wrote a song titled "Jesse James" after the famous outlaw.

Jesse James is mentioned in the song "It's Pretty Hard To Beat The King" by the hardcore band Drop Dead, Gorgeous. "They call me Jesse James and I own the night life. I drift from town to town across the nation. Praise the lord, lock and load boys. We go down, we go down, we go down together."

In her album "Heart of Stone" (1989), the popular singer Cher included a song titled "Just Like Jesse James". This single, which was released in 1990, achieved high positions in the charts and 1,500,000 copies worldwide.

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Movies and television

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  • In an episode of The Twilight Zone, "Showdown with Rance McGrew"
  • In an episode of The Brady Bunch, Bobby upsets his parents and teachers when he decides to idolize Jesse James as a hero. His father locates an old man whose family was murdered by Jesse James to talk to Bobby, who subsequently has nightmares of his own family being murdered on a train in the Old West.
  • In an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? Frank and Jesse James are out in a storm one night when they are taken in by a kind old woman who gives them soup and a bed for the night. She explains that she is getting evicted the next day as she can't afford to pay her rent. The next morning, Frank and Jesse leave the old woman $900 to cover her house, and a note telling her to make sure she gets a cash receipt. They are then seen robbing the bank manager of the money. The bank manager threatens to put a price on their heads and they respond, "We already got a price on our heads, you tell your friends, you just got robbed by Frank and Jesse James."
  • In an episode of Lois and Clark, Superman (Clark Kent) goes back in time and meets Jesse James.
  • In the episode of Little House on the Prairie titled The Aftermmath, Jesse and Frank James take refuge in Walnut Grove after a failed robbery attempt. The arrival of pursuing bounty hunters precipitates a civic crisis in the town, whose leaders are reluctant to turn the James brothers over to a group bent on summarily executing them. The crisis escalates radically when the James brothers take Mary Ingalls hostage. (This episode also suggests, contrary to history, that Bob Ford was a law-abiding citizen who harbored a desire for revenge for Jesse and Frank's murder of his brother during Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas.)
  • In The Young Riders (1989-1992), Jesse James appears in the last season (91-92) as one of the Pony Express riders. In the show, this occurs before he becomes an outlaw.
  • Jesse James is mentioned in the opening song in Smokey and the Bandit ("You've heard about the legend of Jesse James…")
  • Just like Jesse James is the title of a movie that appears in Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking (2005), in which Sam Shepard plays an aging western movie star whose first success was with that movie.

Museums

Museums devoted to Jesse James are scattered throughout the Midwest at many of the places where he robbed.

  • James Farm in Kearney, Missouri: The James farm in Kearney, Missouri, remained in private hands until 1974 when Clay County bought it and turned it into a museum.
  • Jesse James Home Museum: the house where Jesse James was killed in south St. Joseph was moved in 1939 to the Belt Highway on St. Joseph's east side to attract tourists. In 1977 it was moved to its current location, near Patee House, which was the headquarters of the Pony Express. At its current location the house is two blocks from the home's original location and is owned and operated by the Pony Express Historical Association.
  • First National Bank of Northfield: The Northfield Historical Society in Northfield, Minnesota, has restored the building that housed the First National Bank, the scene of the disastrous 1876 raid.
  • Heaton Bowman Funeral Home, 36th and Frederick Avenue, St. Joseph, MO. The funeral home's predesessor conducted the original autopsy and funeral for Jesse James. If you ask politely at the front desk the staff will escort you to a small room in the back that holds the log book and other documentation.
  • In Asdee, North Kerry, Eire - the home of his ancestors, there was a small museum and the parish priest, Canon William Ferris, said a solemn requiem mass for Jesse's soul every year on 3rd April. See Fintan O'Toole's book, "A Mass for Jesse James"

See also

Notes

  1. "Jesse Woodson James", Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.
  2. Ries,Judith: Ed O'Kelley: The Man Who Murdered Jesse James' Murderer, Stewart Printing and Publishing Co., Marble Hill, Missouri, 1994 (ISBN 0-934426-61-9)

References

These are various biographies, articles and books that address Jesse James:

  • Hobsbawm, Eric J.: Bandits, Pantheon, 1981
  • Jacobsen, Joel. Such Men as Billy the Kid: The Lincoln County War Reconsidered. 1997

ISBN: 0803276060

  • Koblas, John J., Faithful Unto Death, Northfield Historical Society Press, 2001
  • Ries, Judith, Ed O'Kelley: The Man Who Murdered Jesse James' Murderer, Stewart Printing & Publishing Co., 1994.
  • Settle, William A., Jr.: Jesse James Was His Name
  • Settle, William A., Jr.: Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri 1977
  • Slotkin, Richard: Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, Atheneum, 1985
  • Stiles, T.J.: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002
  • Stone, A.C., Starrs, J.E., Stoneking, M.: Mitochondrial DNA analysis of the presumptive remains of Jesse James, Journal of Forensic Sciences 46, (2001)
  • Thelen, David, Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri, Oxford University Press, 1986
  • Wellman, Paul I. A Dynasty of Western Outlaws. Doubleday, 1961; 1986.
  • White, Richard, "Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits, Western Historical Quarterly 12, no. 4 (October 1981)
  • Dyer, Robert, "Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri", University of Missouri Press, 1994
  • Yeatman, Ted P.: Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend, Cumberland House, 2001

External links

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