JESSE

JAMESRise of an
American Outlaw
Jesse Jam d through all
the land
For Jesse he was bold and bad and brave

Such is how one version of the popular

19th-century ballad “Jesse James” depicted the
infamous Missouri outlaw. And, to a certain extent,
s.

MARK LEE GARDNER

MAN AND MYTH
Murderer and thief, Jesse James
became a legend in his own
time. This photograph, issued
following his death in 1882, was
certified by James’s wife as “the
only late Photograph [sic] of my
deceased husband, taken before
death.” Left: Jesse James’s Colt
Single Action Army revolver,
manufactured in 1880
PHOTO: MISSOURI STATE ARCHIVES
REVOLVER: FRAZIER HISTORY MUSEUM
 THE TRIALS OF
MOTHER JAMES

D
escribed as a “radiantly beautiful woman” in her
youth, Zerelda James Samuel (1825-1911) stood
nearly six feet tall. More imposing than her height,
though, was her personality. At a time when women
were expected to tend to the children and keep their opinions
to themselves, the strong-willed Zerelda didn’t hesitate to
speak her mind. It was said she was “not afraid of the devil
himself.” It was also said that Jesse James took after his mother.
Zerelda’s life was filled with half brother, Archie Samuel,
tragedy, but the hardest of causing a fatal wound. Anoth-
all to bear occurred on Jan- er piece mangled Zerelda’s
uary 26, 1875. In the dark of right wrist so badly that her
night, a small force of men arm had to be amputated just
employed by the Pinkerton below the elbow. As she did
Detective Agency attacked in the face of other hardships,
her farmhouse in the belief Zerelda carried on. In her last
the James boys were home years, Zerelda sold 25-cent
(they weren’t). The Pinker- tickets to tour her home and
tons forced an incendiary visit her son Jesse’s grave.
device through the kitchen “Much trouble has come to
window that unexpectedly me there,” she told a reporter,
exploded. A piece of shrapnel “but I love the old place and
struck Jesse’s eight-year-old want to live there ‘til I die.”

SURVIVOR’S n the dozen years from 1869 to 1881,
STRENGTH Jesse James may have taken part in as
An undated many as 19 robberies—banks, trains,
photograph of and stagecoaches—stretching from
Zerelda James Mississippi to West Virginia to Min-
Samuel (above),
nesota. Nearly 20 people died as a result of this
mother of Frank
and Jesse James, outlawry,including seven of Jesse’s cohorts,yet
reveals the toll thebrazenholdupscontinued.Lawenforcement
that life had and private detectives failed repeatedly to cor-
taken on the ral Jesse and his gang, and Missouri earned the
resolute Zerelda.
epithet the“Robber State.”
PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES
But before there was the bold and bad and
brave Jesse,and long before there was the mythic
Jesse of song, dime novels, and films, there was
a blue-eyed boy, son of a Baptist minister and
a devoted mother, coming of age in a land torn
apart over slavery and divided loyalties.
Jesse’s parents, Kentucky natives, met in the
summer of 1841. His father, Robert, was a stu-
dent at Georgetown College.His mother,Zerel-
da Cole, attended a Catholic school in nearby
Lexington. A classmate remembered Robert as
exceptionally bright, but“his awkwardness and
gawky appearance caused him to be the victim
of many practical jokes.”The easygoing Robert
took the jokes in stride, however, and soon be-
came one of the most well liked men at the col-
lege.ZereldaseemedtohavediscoveredRobert’s
charms as well, and they were married in De-
cember. The groom was 23 and his bride was 16.

1841 1850 1861

Robert James and Zerelda
FROM Cole meet and marry. They
move to Missouri and start
FARMER TO a family. They have three
THIEF children who live to adulthood:
Frank, Jesse, and Susan.
Enticed west by the California
gold rush, Robert James dies in
the mining camp of Rough and
Ready. Zerelda is left with six
slaves (valued at $2,050) and the
family farm.
The U.S. Civil War begins, and
Frank joins the Confederate
Army and later a band of
guerrillas. Jesse is too young to
fight and stays at the farm to
help his mother and stepfather.

78 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
 THE HOMESTEAD
The Missouri farmhouse where James was born
in 1847 (the gabled wing to the right was added
after his death). After James’s 1882 murder,
his body was interred here on the wishes of
his mother, and later moved to nearby Mount
Olivet Cemetery. Today the house is part of the
Jesse James Birthplace historic site.
MARK LEE GARDNER

On a trip to visit Zerelda’s mother and step- Growing Up FALLEN

father in western Missouri the next year, the The highly intelligent, once awkward college FATHER
couple liked the fertile country, and the frontier student became a powerful presence in the re- Robert James,
depicted in a 19th-
could always use another man of God. Leaving gion. When Robert became pastor of the New century painting
Zerelda in Missouri, Robert returned to Ken- Hope Baptist Church, its membership stood at (below), was a
tucky to complete his coursework, graduating 20; seven years later, that number had grown to pastor, farmer, and
with a bachelor’s degree on June 23, 1843 (he almost 300. In 1849 he was a founding trustee slave owner who
died when Jesse was
would earn his master’s five years later). When of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri,
a young child. The
he reunited with Zerelda that summer, she which operates to this day. But in 1850, Rob- loss of Robert hit the
greeted him with their first child: Alexander ert chose to leave his family and parishioners James family hard.
Franklin James. Robert purchased a 225-acre behind to join a party of Clay Countians bound
THE JESSE JAMES BIRTHPLACE/
farm in Clay County, Missouri, and it was on for California. Since the discovery of gold there MARK LEE GARDNER

that farm that Jesse Woodson James was born two years earlier, dreams of quick ffortunes had
on September 5, 1847. A daughter, Susan, fol- lured thousands over land and by b sea to the
lowed in 1849. new El Dorado. For Robert Jamess, though, an

1863 1864 1869

Searching for Frank, Union
troops visit the James farm.
They torture Jesse and his
stepfather to reveal Frank’s
location, cementing Jesse’s
hatred for the Union.
Jesse joins Frank and the
bushwhackers, and the two take
part in the Battle of Centralia.
Jesse will be seriously wounded
twice before the war’s end
in 1865.
9
Believed to have paarticipated
in several heists, Jeesse’s first
confirmed robbery occurs
in December at thee Daviess
County Savings Association
in Gallatin, Missouri.
 KANSAS-MISSOURI
MAYHEM

I
t sounded simple and fair: The people of Kan-
sas Territory would decide if it became a free or
slave state. That was the intent of the Kansas-
Nebraska Act of 1854. But neighboring Missouri,
which had entered the Union 33 years before, was largely
settled by people from slave states. The state’s central
Missouri River corridor, from St. Louis to Kansas City,
became known as Little Dixie. Pro-slavery Missourians
poured into Kansas to sway Pottawatomie Creek. The
the vote. Parties of North- violence of Bleeding Kan-
ern abolitionists—includ- sas, as this series of events
ing John Brown—did the is now known, continued
same. Open warfare soon for four years, resulting in
followed between the Mis- the deaths of more than 50
sourian “border ruffians” Americans. Kansas was
and the Kansan “jayhawk- admitted to the Union as a
ers.” A small army of Mis- free state in 1861, but the
sourians sacked Lawrence, Civil War would ensure
Kansas, a Free-Stater that the conflict between
stronghold, in May 1856. bushwhackers and jay-
Brown and his followers re- hawkers continued, leaving
A COLOR MAP OF THE U.S.A. taliated by murdering five the border region in up-
IN 1854 ILLUSTRATES THE pro-slavery settlers near heaval for much of the war.
KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT.
NORTH WIND PICTURE/ALAMY/ACI

even greater dream may have been the saving of
men’s souls.
A story handed down in the family tells how
littleJesseclungtohisfatherandbeggedhimnot
to leave. Once on his westward journey, Robert
dutifully wrote home.“Give my love to all in-
quiring friends,”he ended one letter to Zerelda,
“& take a portion of it to your self & kiss Jesse for
me & tell Franklin to be a good boy & learn fast.
I must close by saying live prayerful & ask god
to help you to train your children in the path of
duty. Fare-ye-well till my next letter.”That fall,
those loving letters stopped. Robert James had
succumbedtoanunknownillnessinaCalifornia
mining camp.
Despite the severe hardship of Robert’s death,
and a brief second marriage to a man who was
not fond of the children (he died after falling
from his horse), Zerelda made sure that Jesse
James and his siblings were well taken care
of on the family farm—and that the farm
remained under her control. She went so
far as to insist on a prenuptial agreement
with her third and last husband, Reuben
EARLY Samuel, a doctor and fellow Kentuckian, whom
DEVELOPMENT she married in 1855.
This photograph The woods and fields of Clay County were
of Jesse James
(below), taken when
the James boys’ playground, but there was a
he was around 15, dark underside to life at that time and place.
was made using Slavery was everywhere in western Missouri,
the ambrotype with its numerous tobacco and hemp farms.
technique on a Clay County counted 2,742 slaves in 1850, and
fragile glass plate,
which has cracked in six of those belonged to Reverend James (Rob-
several places. ert sold a young slave to help finance his trip
THE JESSE JAMES BIRTHPLACE/
MARK LEE GARDNER
to California). Only one of those six was an
adult, a 30-year-old woman named Charlotte,
whose work was likely confined to household
chores and caring for the children, both free and
enslaved.
The James Brothers’ Civil War
Although living less than 40 miles from the
Kansas border, Jesse’s family was fairly in-
sulated from the violence over whether the
Kansas Territory would enter the Union as a
free or a slave state. The outbreak of the Civil
War in 1861, however, was another matter.
“The people were all mixed up and

80 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
everybody was a spy for his side,” Frank James
recalled about the atmosphere in Clay Coun-
ty during the war. “You were for the South and
your neighbor was for Lincoln.”As slave owners
with Kentucky roots, there was little question
which side Jesse’s family would take. A neigh-
bor recalled that when news of the war came,
18-year-old Frank James “was wild, shooting
his pistol and hallooing for Jeff Davis.”
Jesse was far too young to enlist. Frank joined
the pro-Southern Missouri State Guard and in
less than five months’time fought in two major
Missouri battles, Wilson’s Creek and Lexing-
ton, both Confederate victories. But that win-
ter he was a patient in a military hospital, laid
low not by a bullet but by measles. Captured by
Federal forces, Frank was subsequently paroled
and sent home, bound by an oath not to take up
arms again against the Union. Yet as the war in
Missouri devolved into bloody atrocities and
reprisals, it was impossible for any able-bodied
young man to stay out of the fight.
In May 1863 Frank joined the command
of Southern guerrilla leader William Clarke
Quantrill. The guerrillas, also known as bush- WAR CRIME
whackers, acted as irregular cavalry, generally A chromolithograph
operating independently of the Confederate (above) depicts
army and devising their own objectives as their Union soldiers
leaders saw fit. They supported themselves torturing Reuben
Samuel, Jesse
through raiding and help from their kin, which James’s stepfather, in
is why Federal militia appeared at the James May 1863. Severely
farm soon after Frank joined the guerrillas. injured, Samuel
The militia believed Frank was hiding nearby agreed to reveal the
whereabouts of his
with other bushwhackers and ordered young
stepson Frank and a
Jesse to tell them where they were. When Jes- bushwhacker camp.
se refused to talk, the soldiers mercilessly beat MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
and whipped him. Next they tortured Jesse’s
stepfather, Reuben Samuel, stringing him up by
the neck until the poor man agreed to lead them
to the bushwhacker camp. The militia had not
come to take prisoners and immediately opened
fire on the guerrillas, killing two of them. Frank
ran like hell, barely escaping as bullets whizzed
around him.“After that day,”Frank would recall
years later, “Jesse was out for blood.”
But Jesse’s vendetta ride would have to wait
until the next year. He was only 15 and, more
importantly, a valuable tobacco crop on the
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 81
WILLIAM CLARKE QUANTRILL
IN AN ENGRAVING ON THE
FRONTISPIECE OF J. N. EDWARDS’
1877 BOOK, NOTED GUERRILLAS
MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
family farm required tending. Jesse raised and
harvested that crop with the help of a slave.
The following winter months found most of
the Missouri guerrillas encamped in Texas, but
they were back in the spring and looking for re-
cruits. Crops or no crops, nothing was going to
stop Jesse from enlisting this time. Like his big
brother Frank before him,he“went to the brush.”
The James boys began exacting their re-
venge in June 1864. Accounts vary, but Jesse
is reported to have killed Brantley Bond, one
of the militiamen who had whipped him and
hanged his stepfather. Bond surrendered to
the bushwhackers and begged for
his life, but Jesse, the story goes,
reminded Bond of his deeds and
then shot him dead. Another mi-
litia member, Alvis Dagley, was
found the next day working in a
field near his home. The guerrillas
marched him to the road, where
Frank put a bullet in him. “We
did burn the houses of Yanks,”
Frank admitted years later. “We
82 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
QUANTRILL’S
RAIDERS
W
ILLIAM CLARKE QUANTRILL
(1837-1865), a teacher
who turned to banditry be-
fore the outbreak of the Civil
War, began forming a guerrilla force after
deserting the Confederate Army in 1861. On
August 21, 1863, Quantrill swooped down
on Lawrence, Kansas, with more than 400
men, among whom were Frank James and
Cole Younger. This attack was claimed to be
in retaliation for the deaths and maiming of
several young women, guerrilla supporters,
who were being held in a makeshift prison
when it collapsed. In what became known
as the Lawrence Massacre, Quantrill and
his followers slaughtered more than 150
men and boys, most of them civilians. “We
knew he was not a very fine character,” re-
called Frank James, “but . . . We wanted to
destroy the folks that wanted to destroy us,
and we would follow any man who would
show us how to do it.”
RAIDERS’ shot spies. So does everybody. If we hadn’t we
REUNION wouldn’t have lasted a week.”
In the decades Jesse was wounded twice that summer. The
following the Civil more serious of the two injuries came when he
War, veterans would
gather at annual tried to steal a seemingly unattended saddle.
reunions. Quantrill’s The saddle’s owner, a German Unionist farmer,
Raiders (below, circa saw what was happening and got off a quick shot
1920) began holding from the doorway of his home,hitting the young
theirs in 1898 and
continued for more thief in the right chest. Jesse didn’t need a sad-
than 30 years. dle for the next few weeks. The second wound
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI occurred as Jesse was cleaning one of his revolv-
ers. The gun suddenly went off, blowing away
the tip of the middle finger on Jesse’s left hand.
As blood squirted everywhere, Jes-
se cried, “O, ding it! ding it! How
it hurts!” From that day forward,
Jesse James was known to family
and close friends as “Dingus.”
September found Jesse and
Frank riding with guerrilla lead-
er “Bloody Bill” Anderson, whose
men became infamous for tak-
ing the scalps of dead enemy sol-
diers. On the 27th, Anderson’s
bushwhackers sacked the town of Centralia,
Missouri, and murdered 24 Federals on furlough
who had the misfortune of being on a train that
arrived at the depot during the mayhem. Later
that day, Anderson’s guerrillas routed a force
of 115 Federals that had come in pursuit of the
bushwhackers. Jesse, on a fleet horse at the head
of the charge, galloped to within a few feet of
the Union commander and knocked him out of
his saddle with a pistol shot to the head. Only a
handful of the Federals survived.
Jesse’s feat would become famous, but Cen-
tralia would be the bushwhackers’ last bloody
hurrah. Anderson died in a skirmish with militia
the next month. After another winter in Tex-
as, the guerrillas returned to Missouri in the
spring for more looting of towns and killing of
Unionists, but the Confederacy was finished. So
was Jesse’s part in the war. In a May 15 firefight
with a Federal patrol near Lexington, Missouri,
a pistol ball ripped through Jesse’s right lung,
in nearly the same place as his wound of the
previous year. This time, however, the injury
nearly killed him.
Jesse’s family claimed he was on his way to DEATH COMES
surrender when his party was attacked. Re- TO LAWRENCE
gardless, surrender he did after being wound- A colored woodcut
ed again. A week later, as he lay on a Lexington (above) depicts the
hotel bed slowly recuperating from the gunshot, 1863 massacre in
Lawrence, Kansas.
Jesse James swore his allegiance to the United Led by William C.
States. Brother Frank surrendered in Kentucky Quantrill, it left
on July 26. more than 150
civilians dead in
its wake.
After the War
AKG/ALBUM
Jesse’s injury required several months to ful-
ly heal. When he returned to Clay County, he
found many of his Unionist neighbors weren’t
willing to let bygones be bygones. So, too, the
Radical Republicans who made up the Missouri
legislature. They drew up a new state constitu-
tion in 1865 that forbade slavery. It also forbade
any citizen from voting, holding public office,
or teaching school unless they took the noto-
rious “Ironclad Oath.” This pledge was entirely
different from the oath of allegiance required
of former Rebel soldiers. A person taking the
Ironclad swore that he or she had never fought
for, supported, or even sympathized with the
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 83

ROBERT “BOB”
YOUNGER
(1853-1889)
SCIENCE SOURCE/ALBUM
A Band of Younger Brothers
THE FOUR YOUNGERS, Cole, Jim,
John, and Bob, were the sons of the
prosperous Missouri farmer, mer-
chant, and mail contractor Hen-
ry Washington Younger. A slave
owner who opposed secession,
Henry fell victim to both the Kan-
sas jayhawkers, who seized goods
from his business, and the Missouri
militia who put three bullets in his
back in July 1862. At the time of
his father’s murder, Cole, aged 18,
was already riding with Quantrill,
where he met Frank James. Jim
Younger joined the bushwhackers
two years later. After the war, the
Youngers, along with the Jameses,
wouldbenamedinseveralbankand
JAMES HARDIN
“JIM” YOUNGER
(1848-1902)
ALAMY/ACI
THOMAS COLEMAN
“COLE” YOUNGER
(1844-1916)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/GETTY IMAGES
train robberies. Although the core Pinkerton operatives
of the “gang” eventually formed in 1874. The remain-
around the two sets of brothers, ing brothers were
robbery participants varied with captured and im-
each holdup (for some, the exact prisoned along with
identities still remain a guessing Cole following the
game). Cole and Frank never told Northfield Raid. Bob
of their bandit exploits, nor those died in prison of tu-
of their accomplices. Frank denied berculosis in 1889.
ever robbing anyone and was never Cole and Jim were
convicted of a crime. Cole claimed paroled in 1901, and
that his only criminal act was the Jim committed sui-
one he went to prison for: the bun- cide shortly after. Cole was released WILLIAM WARD’S
gled robbery of the First National from parole in 1903 and returned to “PROFUSELY
ILLUSTRATED” 1908
Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, on Missouri, where he headed a short- ACCOUNT OF THE
EXPLOITS OF THE
September 7, 1876. The Youngers, lived Wild West show with his old YOUNGER BROTHERS
however, did pay for their outlawry. friend Frank James. He outlived MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
John was killed in a gun battle with Frank by one year, dying in 1916.
South. Because former guerrillas and their fam-
ilies could not legitimately make that pledge,
they were, for a time, left with no voice or place
in postwar Missouri.
Not unlike their old leaders Quantrill and
Bloody Bill, a few of the disenfranchised chose
to make their own rules. On February 13, 1866,
10 to 12 men rode into Liberty, Missouri, and
robbed the Clay County Savings Association
of $60,000 in gold, currency, and government
bonds (largely the savings of Unionists) and shot
dead a bystander. The local newspaper reported
that the robbers were believed to be “a gang of
old bushwhacking desperadoes.” Jesse wasn’t
involved in the holdup, but brother Frank likely
was, along with another former guerrilla by the
name of Cole Younger.
Why the Jameses and Youngers took up ban-
ditry following the Civil War when thousands of
their fellow soldiers returned to their homes and
pursued peaceful occupations has always been
a question. The answer endlessly put forth by
Jesse and Frank was that their enemies wouldn’t
allow them to resume their old lives.“[M]y life
was threatened daily,”Jesse later told a journalist CRIME SCENE
about his return to the Clay County farm,“and The Missouri bank
I was forced to go heavily armed.”Frank argued, of Jesse James’s first
“We had as much chance of settling down, till- confirmed crime was
a shoe store in 1904,
ing our farms and being decent as a tallow dog when Gallatin’s early
chasin’an asbestos cat through hell.” residents (above)
Another answer Jesse and Frank might have gathered there for a
given, perhaps one more readily believed, was photograph. Seated third
that robbing banks and trains was easy money, from the left is Samuel P.
Cox, whom James
and they were good at it. mistakenly believed he
killed in the robbery.
Jesse’s First Robbery LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/GETTY IMAGES
There are many robberies in which Jesse was
named as a participant, but hard evidence of
his participation is often as elusive as the out-
law was himself. The first bank job in which
Jesse James can positively be identified came
three years after the Liberty affair, although the
“robbery”may have actually been a planned as-
sassination.On December 7,1869,two men en-
tered the Daviess County Savings Association
in Gallatin, Missouri, killed the cashier for no
apparent reason,and then grabbed a small metal
box and fled. One of the robbers’horses threw
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 85
 John Newman Edwards
Creates a Legend
FEW MEN IN POSTWAR Missouri had as much popular influence
as newspaperman John Newman Edwards (1839-1889). A
former Confederate officer and staunch Democrat, Edwards
made the James and Younger boys heroes to Missouri’s pro-
Southern population chafing under the bitterness of defeat.
“They are outlaws, but they are not criminals,” Edwards wrote.
Without naming names, he described the perpetrators of one
robbery as “men who risk Edwards was an editor. The
much, who have friends in Times published subsequent
high places, and who go riding missives from the outlaw as
over the land, taking all the well, all of which Edwards
chances that come in the way, enhanced to a certain extent,
spending lavishly tomorrow if not penning some outright.
what is won today at the His crowning achievement
muzzle of a revolver.” Exactly as the James brothers’ chief
when and how Edwards’s apologist was negotiating
relationship with Jesse Frank James’ headline-
James began is unknown, grabbing surrender six months
but Jesse’s first public letter after Jesse’s death. He then
proclaiming his innocence served as Frank’s PR man while
appeared in the Kansas City Frank awaited trial for murder
Times, the newspaper where for which he was acquitted.

JOHN NEWMAN
EDWARDS its rider, forcing the two to escape on a single
MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
mount. During their flight through the country,
the robbers boasted to more than one person
they met how they had slain Gallatin resident
Maj. Samuel P. Cox. Cox was the commander
of the militia that had killed Bloody Bill Ander-
son, and he was targeted so as to avenge their
former leader.
Unfortunately for the dead cashier, it was a
case of mistaken identity. Instead of Cox, the
robbers had killed John W. Sheets. There was no
mistake, however, in identifying the fine mare
abandoned by the bandits: It was a champion
racehorse named Kate, and its owner was one
Jesse James.
A grand jury indicted both Jesse and Frank
James for the murder of John W. Sheets the fol-
lowing May, prompting Jesse to write to the
state’s governor to defend his case. In his letter,
Jesse denied that he or Frank had anything to
do with the holdup, and he assured the gover-
nor that he could prove his whereabouts on the
day of the robbery by “some of the best men of
Missouri.” “Governor,” he continued, “when I

86 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
think I can get a fair trial, I will surrender myself
to the civil authorities of Missouri. But I will
never surrender myself to be mobbed by a set
of bloodthirsty poltroons.”
Jesse James, age 22, was now an outlaw. Over
the next 12 years there would be more hard rid-
ing, more robberies and more innocent victims,
more letters denying involvement, and more
offers of surrender in return for the guarantee
of a fair trial. Jesse, his brother Frank, and their
brothers in crime became the most wanted, the
most despised, and the most celebrated outlaws
in the nation. But on a spring day in 1882, Jesse’s
run finally came to an end. With the promise of
a large reward from Missouri’s governor, gang
member Charlie Ford fired one momentous shot
into the back of the outlaw leader’s skull.
But the bullet that killed Jesse James had
been fired years before Ford pulled the trigger
on his revolver. While still a youth, Jesse’s life
was dramatically upended by the violence of a
horrendous civil war, which in turn had been
brought about by the tragedy and violence of
slavery. Like his fellow bushwhackers, many of
CAPITOL them teenagers as well, Jesse became numb to
CRIME the bloodshed and fixated on revenge. He killed
The deeds of Jesse men, and men tried to kill him. He learned to
James and his steal and pillage, justifying his actions with his
partners in crime
are immortalized own skewed moral code. Such are the things
in Thomas Hart that make an outlaw.
Benton’s 1936 mural Newspaperman and James brothers’defend-
cycle “A Social er John Newman Edwards conceded that Jesse
History of the State of
Missouri,” displayed and Frank were“bad citizens.”But,he explained,
at the Missouri State “they are bad because they live out of their time.”
Capitol (above). More than 150 years later, Jesse James seems to
MARK LEE GARDNER. have escaped time altogether, for the life and
©BENTON TESTAMENTARY TRUSTS/UMB
BANK TRUSTEE/VEGAP, BARCELONA, 2018 deeds of the Baptist minister’s son turned out-
law appear to be forever etched in the American
consciousness.
MARK LEE GARDNER, A MISSOURI NATIVE, IS AN AWARD-WINNING
AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN LIVING AT THE FOOT OF COLORADO’S PIKES
PEAK. HE IS CURRENTLY WRITING A DUAL BIOGRAPHY OF LAKOTA
LEADERS CRAZY HORSE AND SITTING BULL.
Learn more
BOOK
Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid,
and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape
Mark Lee Gardner, William Morrow, 2013.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 87
 OUTLAW TALES OF THE OLD WEST

Jesse took a long time to recover from the bullet that hit his lung and had to
be nursed back to health by his cousin, who like his mother was named Zerelda.
Jesse called her “Zee.” As the former guerrilla lay recovering, the two fell in love
and got engaged, although the wedding wouldn’t happen for another nine years.
Frank, on the other hand, had more serious business to attend to. Appar-
ently he couldn’t adjust to peacetime life and on February 13, 1866, rode into
Liberty with about a dozen men. They wore Union-style blue army overcoats,
and some wore wigs and false beards and mustaches. Two of them walked into
the Clay County Savings Association Bank, asking the cashier for change for a
ten-dollar bill. When the man turned to address them, he found himself staring
at the business end of a pistol. They pushed the cashier and clerk into the vault
and cleaned out the money before closing the vault door on them.
The robbers hadn’t actually locked the door, however, and the cashier ran to
a window to call for help as the bandits mounted up. Just then a student at Wil-
liam Jewell College, which Frank’s father had helped found, passed by. He took
up the call and one of the robbers shot him dead. They galloped out of town as
the citizens of Liberty gathered a posse.
It was too late: The robbers were well ahead, and a snowstorm soon blew in
and obscured their tracks. The gang got away with more than fifty-seven thou-
sand dollars in cash, gold, and government bonds.
The choice of the bank hadn’t been random. Frank knew the area well, and
the bank’s president had been a Union informant during the Civil War, causing
trouble for Dr. Samuel and friends of the James family. Liberty had another bank,
but Frank had a score to settle with this one.
While Jesse has been said to have joined in the robbery, he was still recover-
ing from his gunshot wound and unlikely to have been up for the job. He seems
to have lived a quiet life at the time, joining the local Baptist church. Frank may
or may not have engaged in other robberies in the state, but generally seems to
have kept a low profile except for the occasional bender in town.
On a rather ominous note, in September 1869 Jesse made a formal request
to be taken off the rolls at his Baptist church, saying he was unworthy.
In December of that year, Frank and Jesse committed what may have been
their first robbery together. They and possibly one other man rode into Gallatin,
hitched their horses in an alley near the Daviess County Savings Association, and
walked inside. They shot cashier John Sheets before running to their horses. One
of the men, probably Jesse, had trouble mounting up and got his foot caught in
the stirrup. The horse dragged him down the street before he could break free.
Battered and covered in dust, the robber staggered to his feet.
“Let’s get him!” someone shouted, and an angry crowd closed in on him. He
pulled out a pistol and the townspeople fled in all directions. The bandit vaulted
onto the back of a companion’s horse and they rode away.

140
 Frank and Jesse James

Outside of town they came upon an unsuspecting traveler and relieved him
of his horse, then kidnapped a traveling preacher to guide them for part of the
way. The robbers boasted to him that they had killed Major Samuel Cox, who
had led the militia that killed Bloody Bill Anderson near the end of the Civil
War. The raid on Gallatin may have only been for revenge because, contrary to
the first newspaper reports, apparently no money was taken.
Actually they had killed Sheets, thinking he was Cox, but their desire to
kill Cox implicated the James brothers in the robbery. Both had ridden with
Anderson. The third robber may have been Jim Anderson, another former bush-
whacker and Bloody Bill’s brother. The authorities traced the horse that one of
the robbers left behind to Jesse James. Furthermore, a posse that went after them
lost the trail but noted they were headed in the direction of Clay County, home
of the James/Samuel family.
Four men showed up at the James farm to capture them, but just as they
arrived a young boy ran to the stable, opened the door, and Frank and Jesse
galloped out, guns blazing. One of the posse’s horses was killed and they lost the
chase.
The James brothers laid low for a while, with Jesse writing to the newspa-
pers protesting his innocence and saying he had fled because he didn’t want to
get lynched. The horse found at Gallatin, he claimed, had been sold to a “man
from Kansas.” Otherwise, they seem to have drifted from state to state. The law
accused them of other robberies, but it is hard to separate fact from fiction. By
this time the brothers had become famous, and any major heist usually got laid
at their door. Furthermore, other bandits would claim to be them, either to
enhance their reputations or direct suspicion away from themselves. So many
stagecoach, train, and bank robberies happened at this time that they couldn’t
have all been done by the Jameses, but a few probably were, including the Bank
of Columbia in Kentucky and the infamous heist at the Kansas City Exposition.
That last robbery, certainly their most daring, guaranteed their national fame.
The editor of the Kansas City Times, an alcoholic ex-Confederate soldier named
John Newman Edwards, turned the thieves into noble Robin Hoods out of some
epic ballad, effusing, “These men are bad citizens but they are bad because they
live out of their time. The nineteenth century with its Sybaric civilization is not
the social soil for men who might have sat with Arthur at the Round Table, ridden
at tourney with Sir Launcelot or won the colors of Guinevere. . . . What they did
we condemn. But the way they did it we can’t help admiring.”
Edwards would continue in this vein throughout the James brothers’ careers,
and his paper often received letters from the bandits themselves. Sometimes
they would sign their own names, claiming their innocence. At other times they
signed themselves “Dick Turpin, Jack Shepherd, and Claude Duval,” famous
English highwaymen from the previous century. They even offered to pay the

141
 OUTLAW TALES OF THE OLD WEST

medical expenses of the girl they accidentally shot at the Kansas City Exposition.
It’s not recorded if her family ever took the robbers up on their offer.
In 1874 the gang resurfaced in Arkansas, robbing a stagecoach at Malvern
before heading north to hold up a train at Gads Hill, Missouri, pulling off the
state’s first peacetime train robbery. This last crime got the Pinkerton detective
agency on their trail. The Pinkertons had gained a reputation for success in track-
ing down outlaws, and the railroad hired them to get the James brothers in case
they decided to repeat their trick on another train.
While the Pinkertons claimed to be crack detectives, they didn’t go about
collaring Frank and Jesse James in a very intelligent manner. At first only a single
agent, Joseph Whicher, went off to the James farm, posing as a farmhand looking
for work. He must not have been very convincing, because his body turned up in
another county. Next they sent two more agents, along with a local deputy sher-
iff, but the Younger brothers, former bushwhackers and accomplices of Frank
and Jesse, got to them first and killed the deputy and one of the agents.
All this bloodshed didn’t seem to affect Frank’s and Jesse’s personal lives
much. On April 24, 1874, Jesse finally married his beloved Zee, and Frank mar-
ried Annie Ralston sometime later that summer. The two couples enjoyed a fine
honeymoon in Texas with their stolen money.
But things started heating up for the brothers. Their daring robberies had
become a political issue, with the Republicans demanding they be brought to
justice, while the Democrats, mostly made up of former Confederates, pointed
out that corrupt Republican politicians and railway tycoons stole far more than
the James brothers could ever dream of. Reward money, offered by the railroads,
various banks, and eventually the state, began to pile up.
Unlike the politicians, the Pinkertons didn’t just talk. They had lost two
agents and wanted revenge. On the night of January 25, 1875, a group of
Pinkerton detectives snuck up to the James farm, thinking the bandits were
inside. Actually, only their stepfather, Dr. Samuel, their mother, Zerelda, and
their thirteen-year-old half-brother, Archie, were at home. The lawmen broke
open a window and tossed in an incendiary device. It rolled into the fireplace
and exploded, killing Archie and mutilating Zerelda’s hand so badly that it had
to be amputated.
The Pinkertons claimed they were “only” trying to burn the house down, but
the senseless killing of a young boy and the maiming of an aging woman enraged
the population. The Pinkertons worked for the railroads, the corrupt companies
that overcharged farmers for freight and had put dozens of counties deep into
debt. Edwards and other newspapermen wrote scathing editorials denouncing
the Pinkertons as child killers. Sympathy for the James brothers rose to an all-
time high. One of their neighbors, who apparently helped out in the raid, turned
up dead.

142
 Frank and Jesse James

While Frank and Jesse had become legends in their own time, law-abiding
citizens began to stock up on guns and get ready in case the outlaws visited their
town next. The brothers would find their heists becoming increasingly danger-
ous. When Frank James, Cole Younger, Tom Webb, and Tom McDaniel hit a
bank in Huntington, West Virginia, netting more than ten thousand dollars in
cash, a posse got on their trail right after they left town. The robbers fled into
Kentucky, where a second posse chased them halfway across the state while the
telegraph wires hummed across the countryside, warning citizens to be on the
lookout. They fought at least three gun battles, and McDaniel got killed before
the rest made good their escape.
Worse was to come in 1876 when the James brothers once again teamed up
with the Younger brothers to raid a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Northfield
citizens greeted them with a hail of gunfire, and Frank and Jesse barely got away
with their lives. The Youngers got the worst of it.
The Northfield affair badly shook the brothers and their new wives. They
decided to take on aliases and settle as farmers in Tennessee. Mr. and Mrs. Wood-
son (Frank and Annie) and Mr. and Mrs. Howard ( Jesse and Zee) did well for a
time, racing horses and tending crops, but they acted too differently from their
run-of-the-mill neighbors to escape notice for long. People began remarking that
the men seemed a bit jumpy and that the women had a lot more jewelry than
people of their station would be expected to have. In one episode Jesse James/
John Howard attended a county fair and watched a contest where men tried to
blow out a candle by shooting at it with pistols. As contestant after contestant
missed the mark, Jesse could stand it no longer and went up, drew his revolver,
and shot out the candle on the first try. Jesse, always more showy than his quiet
and reserved brother, was beginning to make people talk. This, combined with
various lawsuits from creditors, made him pick up stakes and move in with Frank.
But settled life didn’t sit well with Jesse, and soon he headed down to New
Mexico Territory to assemble another gang. He briefly tried to get Billy the
Kid to join, but Billy preferred cattle rustling to bank robbery and turned him
down. Jesse did manage to collect a group of outlaws, but of inferior quality to
the old crew. They included Bill Ryan, who had no previous criminal record and
spent much of his time drunk; Dick Liddil, a horse thief; Tucker Bassham, a
slow-witted farmer; Ed Miller, brother of Clell Miller, who had died at North-
field; and Jesse’s cousin Wood Hite. Another cousin, Clarence Hite, would join
later. Their first holdup was of a train at the Glendale station, just south of Inde-
pendence, where the express mail netted about six thousand dollars. This heist
led the United States Express Company to offer a twenty-five-thousand-dollar
reward, and the Chicago and Alton Railroad offered another fifteen thousand
dollars. With all the rewards that had accumulated on Jesse’s head, anyone who
nabbed him would be a rich man.

143
 OUTLAW TALES OF THE OLD WEST

Things began to turn ugly for the new gang. Bassham got captured and sen-
tenced to ten years for the Glendale robbery. Ed Miller died under mysterious
circumstances, and everyone believed Jesse killed him so he wouldn’t talk. The
gang continued to rob stagecoaches, trains, and payroll shipments, but often
got away with very low stakes. Soon Ryan also found himself behind bars, after
foolishly shooting off his mouth while on a bender. Jesse’s earlier successes were
due in no small part to the fact that he allied himself with former bushwhack-
ers such as the Younger brothers whose skill and daring helped them get out
of almost any scrape. Now Jesse kept company with lowlifes and amateurs. It
would cost him.
Meanwhile, political pressure had been growing to do something about the
new James gang. Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden got the railroads to
offer another fifty-thousand-dollar reward. State law prohibited Crittenden from
offering a large reward himself, but he’d be a key player in stopping the gang’s
crime spree.
But by this time there wasn’t much of a gang left to chase. Liddil got into an
argument with Jesse’s cousin Wood Hite and gunned him down for allegedly tak-
ing more than his share in a robbery. Two new gang members, Bob and Charlie
Ford, were there too. Bob got into the gunplay and his bullet might have actually
killed Jesse’s cousin. The three men dreaded what Jesse might do if he found out.
The Fords decided to stay close and watch Jesse’s every move. Hiding out first
in St. Joseph and then at the James farm near Kearney, the bandit leader planned
more robberies, but Bob Ford had secretly met with Governor Crittenden, who
promised him a rich reward for Jesse’s capture. Bob claimed it was to bring in the
bandit “dead or alive,” something the governor would vigorously deny.
Soon Dick Liddil surrendered to police, and this made Jesse nervous. While
he was still ignorant of Liddil’s part in his cousin’s murder, he didn’t trust him
and worried he might talk. Jesse discussed killing Liddil and acted more and
more suspicious of those around him. Bob and Charlie Ford realized they needed
to get him soon.
They got their chance on April 3, 1882, as the Fords and Jesse sat in the liv-
ing room in Jesse’s home in St. Joseph. Jesse complained about the heat and took
off his coat and threw open the windows. Worried someone outside might see
his gun belt, he took that off too. Then he stepped onto a chair to dust a picture
on the wall. Bob gave Charlie a wink and they both drew their pistols. Jesse heard
them cock their revolvers and began to turn just as a single shot from Bob’s gun
took Jesse in the back of the head. He fell to the floor, dead in an instant. Zee
raced into the room, and Charlie claimed that a pistol had accidentally gone off.
“Yes,” she snapped, “I guess it went off on purpose.”
The Fords beat a hasty retreat and turned themselves in to the law. Within
hours of the news being made public, a stream of visitors came to the James

144
 Frank and Jesse James

farm to view the body of America’s most famous outlaw. The Fords were initially
charged with murder but gained a pardon from Governor Crittenden.
The press, of course, took sides. The Democratic papers, led by John New-
man Edwards, railed against Crittenden, calling him an assassin. The Republican
press was just as eager with their praises for the termination of the state’s worst
outlaw.
Frank, meanwhile, was still living the quiet life in Virginia. He hadn’t partic-
ipated in a robbery in several years and hoped this clean living would help him
get pardoned. He sent out feelers to Governor Crittenden via Edwards, and the
newspaperman reassured him that if he gave up, he would be given a fair trial and
not be extradited to other states to face charges there.
Frank decided to take a chance and turned himself in to the governor, hand-
ing over his pistols and telling him he would fight no more. People thronged to
see the famous outlaw, and when he went to trial, he was found innocent of all
charges. His case was helped by the fact that so many fellow gang members, the
only ones who could truly say what he had done and when, were dead or on the
run. The cases may have also been helped along by the governor himself, who felt
convinced that Frank had turned over a new leaf and simply wanted the whole
affair to be over. Frank walked out of jail a free man.
While the legend of Frank and Jesse James had been made in their lifetime,
with cheap novels about their exploits being published while they were still out
robbing banks, it would continue to grow to the present day, helped in no small
part by those involved. Frank eventually joined Cole Younger in a Wild West
show, and Jesse’s son, Jesse James Jr., would make a silent Western movie in which
he played his father. This would be followed by dozens of others, few having any-
thing to do with the real story. Charlie and Bob Ford even toured with a theater
troupe, playing themselves in a production called The Killing of Jesse James. In
one performance they were booed offstage to the shouts of “Murderers!” and
“Robbers!”
Frank and Jesse’s mother, still living on the James farm, buried Jesse in the
yard and erected a fine monument over his grave. She sold tickets to tour the
farm, regaling visitors with tales of Jesse and Frank’s nobility and the evils of the
Pinkertons. One stop on the tour was Jesse’s grave, where she offered pebbles
from the grave at a quarter apiece. When the supply got low, she’d go to a nearby
creek and gather more.
A distinctly American bandit has been remembered in a distinctly American
fashion, through tourism, mass media, and show business.

145
 The Other
James Brother
Forever in Jesse’s long shadow, Frank James may have been
the more cunning and cold-blooded of the pair
F
rank James heard Cole
Younger yell at him, again,
to come out of the bank.
Bob Younger and Charlie
Pitts (real name Samuel
Wells) had already jumped the counter
and bolted out the door into the street,
where two of the James-Younger Gang
lay dead, shot down by the plucky citi-
zens of Northfield, Minnesota. As Frank
jumped up on the counter, he turned
and glared at the man who had pre-
vented him from getting at the money
in the bank’s safe—acting cashier Joseph
Lee Heywood.
Heywood, bloodied and dizzy from a
blow Frank had given him with the butt
of a pistol, staggered toward his desk.
Seething with anger, Frank raised his
revolver and fired at Heywood. Despite
the proximity, his shot missed. Hey-
wood fell into his chair, or perhaps he
was dodging behind his desk. It didn’t
matter. Frank cocked his revolver and,
“with the expression of a very devil in
his face,” recalled the only eyewitness,
“put his pistol almost at Heywood’s
head and fired the fatal shot.”
In the nearly 137 years since the in-
famous September 7, 1876, Northfield
bank raid, most writers have identified
not Frank but brother Jesse James as
Heywood’s murderer. Only a few days
after the raid Detective Larry Hazen,
who had been on the trail of the James-
Younger Gang since their Missouri Pa-
cific train robbery near Otterville, Mo.,
30 WILD WEST AUGUST 2013
By Mark Lee Gardner
two months earlier, told a St. Paul re-
porter, “Jesse James is always ready for
murder, and he is undoubtedly the one
who fired the fatal shot at Heywood.”
It made sense. Jesse could be hothead-
ed and vengeful, a deadly combination,
and as the supposed leader of the gang,
he must have been in the bank. But in a
Frank, seated, and Jesse pose here in
Nashville, Tenn., probably in June 1867.
ABOVE: STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI; OPPOSITE: MARK LEE GARDNER
sworn affidavit previously unknown
to scholars, Frank Wilcox, the bank’s
assistant bookkeeper and the only eye-
witness to the shooting, named Frank
James as the murderer—and this after
visiting Frank in temporary custody at
the Jackson County Jail in Indepen-
dence, Mo., in November 1882.
Yet most people today think of Frank—
if they think of him at all—as the “better”
of the two James boys, for several rea-
sons. After being acquitted of murder
and robbery in highly publicized crim-
inal trials in 1883, Frank lived for more
than 30 years as a peaceable citizen.
He demonstrated time and again that
he was a hardworking family man.
Many of those who met the former
bandit thought he resembled a preach-
er or, according to one journalist, “the
president of a rural bank.” Could the
lanky, white-haired gentleman with
the hooked nose, who in his last years
charged .50 cents to tour the James
family home, really have been a cold-
blooded killer? You bet.
N
early everyone knows how
a teenage Jesse Woodson
James cut his teeth in the
killing business riding
alongside Missouri Bushwhacker Wil-
liam T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson and other
Rebel guerrilla leaders in the Civil War.
It’s a seminal chapter in the Jesse James
saga. But we tend to forget that brother
Alexander Franklin James had identical
experiences, and that he got a good more handsome of the two, Jesse had died in a California gold camp from an
head start in the savagery that marked clear blue eyes that seemed to move unknown illness in 1850. Jesse’s nature
the fighting along the Kansas-Missouri constantly—almost nervously. more closely resembled that of his
border. When guerrilla chieftain Wil- One of the more interesting descrip- strong-willed Southern partisan mother,
liam Clarke Quantrill swooped down on tions of Frank and Jesse in their prime Zerelda James Samuel.
Lawrence, Kan., in August 1863 (see re- comes from John Newman Edwards, While the ever-cautious Frank was
lated story, P. 38), Frank James rode with the booze-loving newspaperman and loath to draw attention to himself, Jesse
him. Quantrill’s men gunned down close former Confederate soldier who was loved the notoriety generated by their
to 200 men and boys, mostly civilians. the James boys’ chief defender—and daring robberies and escapades. In ca-
Jesse was at home tending crops and the main architect of their legend. He sual conversations with strangers Jesse
would not join the Bushwhackers until interviewed the outlaws in 1873; Frank seldom failed to bring up the James-
nearly a year later. was 30, Jesse 26. Younger Gang so he could hear what
Frank generally shied away from talk- they had to say about the outlaw band.
ing about Lawrence, but he would dis- Jesse laughs at everything—Frank at And he frequently wrote letters to vari-
cuss Quantrill and the violence of the nothing at all. Jesse is lighthearted, ous newspapers, always denying the
Bushwhackers. “We knew he was not reckless, devil-may-care—Frank sober, involvement of the James brothers in
a very fine character,” Frank told a re- sedate, a dangerous man always in one bold holdup or another and railing
porter, referring to the guerrilla lead- ambush in the midst of society. Jesse against those who hunted them, claim-
er, “but we were like the followers of knows there is a price upon his head ing he and Frank were being unjustly
[Pancho] Villa or [Victoriano] Huerta: and discusses the whys and wherefores persecuted when all they wanted was
We wanted to destroy the to live normal lives.
folks that wanted to de-

I
stroy us, and we would t is Jesse’s strident
follow any man who would letters to the press
show us how to do it. Be- that have generally
sides, I was young then. led to the belief he
When a man is young, was the true leader of the
his blood is hot; there’s gang. And there is evi-
a million things he’ll do dence that Jesse was more
then that he won’t do often the leader than not.
when he’s older.” Descriptions of the ban-
Frank would not discuss dits involved in the July 7,
his and Jesse’s long career This is how the James farmhouse near Kearney, Mo., looked in 1877. 1876, Rocky Cut train rob-
as outlaws, at least not bery leave no doubt as to
publicly. To do so would have put him of it—Frank knows it, too, but it chafes the identity of the leader with the small
at risk of being arrested for any number him sorely and arouses all the tiger that hands (he wore a No. 7 glove) and strik-
of crimes. “I neither affirm nor deny,” is in his heart. Neither will be taken alive. ing blue eyes that seemed to blink more
was his typical non-answer to journal- than normal (Pete Conklin, the train’s
ists who probed him about various rob- Jesse James’ brother-in-law, Thomas baggage master, concluded that Jesse
beries. But there were plenty of others, Mimms, echoed Edwards’ observations. conducted the robbery in the train cars
including former gang members, who “Frank was quieter and more reserved while Frank directed the men outside).
had lots to say about the James boys. than Jesse,” Mimms told a reporter. It’s also clear Jesse was the one behind
Frank and Jesse were strikingly differ- “Jesse was of a roving disposition, rest- the subsequent trip to Minnesota. Once
ent, in both looks and personality, so less and daring. He liked some reckless there, he learned that carpetbagger and
much so that an ugly rumor spread that expedition.…He was more reckless in former Union Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames
the men were the offspring of different going among strangers than Frank. Jesse was connected to Northfield’s First
fathers. Frank was four years older and, would often put up at a house where National Bank, so he pushed for that
at approximately 6 feet, slightly taller he knew nothing of the character of the bank as the gang’s target. In the wake
than Jesse. Frank was also slim, almost people. Frank would never stop any- of the botched holdup, which left gang
effeminate looking, with a small neck where but at the house of a friend in members Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell
and a long, narrow face flanked by large whom he had confidence. Frank never dead in the street, eyewitness descrip-
ears. “Spare but sinewy” was how one gave any clues as to his whereabouts.” tions of the gang’s flight through Minne-
reporter described him. An uncle of the James boys said Frank’s sota’s Big Woods also point to Jesse as
Jesse was more sturdily built and heav- personality was very much like that of the one giving orders.
ier than Frank. He had an oval face and his father, the cultured, college-educat- But while Jesse promoted himself as
a slightly turned-up, or pug, nose. The ed Baptist minister Robert James, who the leader and does seem to have given

THE NORTHFIELD TRAGEDY COVER COURTESY OF ROBERT G. MCCUBBIN; OTHER IMAGES FROM THE MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION AUGUST 2013 WILD WEST 33
orders in the field, Frank may have had
a more significant role than gener-
ally believed. John Samuel, Jesse and
Frank’s half brother, said Frank and
Cole Younger were the acknowledged
“brains” of the outfit. “It was claimed,”
Samuel said, “that Frank planned and
Jesse executed. Frank was certainly the
cool man of the two, and Jesse was a
little bit excitable.”
Former gang member George Shep-
herd told a reporter that Frank “is the
most shrewd, cunning and capable; in
fact, Jesse can’t compare with him.…It’s
Frank that makes all the plans and per-
fects the methods of escape. Jesse is a
fighter, and that’s all.”
But while Frank might have been the
brains, he was not as popular with gang
members and associates as Jesse. Char-
ley Ford said that although both Frank
and Jesse wanted to be leaders, the men
preferred Jesse because he was “bolder.”
And they enjoyed Jesse’s keen sense of
humor, as well as his boisterous talk—
even if it was usually about himself.
Frank always seemed to be arguing
about something with Jesse and the
rest of the gang, and he “cared nothing
for his men.” After a raid, Ford recalled,
Frank “would pocket all the money he
could and let his men shift for them-
selves,” while Jesse “looked after his
men and was always willing to share
his spoils with them.”
“Frank James put on too much, any-
how,” said Jim Cummins, another as-
sociate of the James boys, although
whether or not he participated in any
of their robberies is debatable. “He used
to spout Shakespeare when we were
all a-hidin’ out, and that didn’t go down
with me. What’d Shakespeare have to do
with sidesteppin’ a bunch o’ Pinkertons
or a posse o’ deputies, I want to know?”
Frank indeed was a fan of Shakespeare
and was also known to quote the Bible.
In addition to reading, his other great
pleasure was tobacco; it was rare when
he didn’t have a chew in his mouth. In
his later years the former outlaw re-
portedly never touched liquor, but
that’s not what Charley Ford remem-
bered. “Frank would get dead drunk,”
he said. Not Jesse, though, who never
touched liquor when on a raid.
34 WILD WEST AUGUST 2013
Gang members probably liked Jesse, here
in a circa 1871 portrait, more than Frank.
Zerelda James Samuel, in black mourning
dress, stands by the grave of son Jesse.
Although Frank may not have been
as popular with the gang, no one ques-
tioned his nerve—or his willingness
to kill. “Frank was a bad man in a fight
and … a great deal more cunning than
Jesse,” claimed Bob and Charley Ford.
After the Ford brothers assassinated
Jesse in St. Joseph, Mo., on April 3, 1882,
they received several threatening let-
ters signed “Frank James.” A reporter
asked the Ford brothers if these letters
worried them. With grim seriousness in
his voice, Charley replied, “Frank James
is not in the habit of sending notices;
he generally carries them himself.”
John Nicholson, a grandson of Jesse
and Frank’s half sister, never forgot a
chilling comment his grandfather made
about the outlaw brothers: “I heard my
granddad say that Frank was the cold-
bloodedest one of the two. If he said he
was going to kill ya, he would kill you,
but you could talk Jesse out of it.”
W
as Frank James a psy-
chopath? No, and nei-
ther was Jesse for that
matter, surprising as it
may seem. One only has to look to their
loved ones, particularly their wives and
children, to see that Frank and Jesse
do not fit the definition of antisocial or
unhinged. Annie Ralston James eloped
with Frank in 1874 and remained mar-
ried to him until his death more than
40 years later. “No better husband ever
lived,” she told reporters after Frank
died. And little Jesse Edward James,
who was 6 when his father was killed,
recalled the infamous outlaw as being
“very kind to mother and to sister and to
me. I remember best his good-humored
pranks, his fun-making and his play-
ing with me.”
Yet at the same time Frank and Jesse
were also violent killers. A key to un-
raveling this contradiction is found in
something newspaperman Edwards
observed in 1873. The outlaw brothers,
he said, were “creatures of the war.” The
James boys’ defenders have often cited
the bitter effects of the Civil War to ex-
cuse their outlawry, but their Bush-
whacker experiences certainly numbed
them to violence, to the taking of human
life. Consequently, whoever stood in
ALL IMAGES FROM THE MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
This postcard is a colorized version of a photograph taken at the James farm in November 1914, three months before Frank’s death.
Frank and Jesse’s way, or worked against
them, or harmed them or a family mem-
ber was the enemy. And whether that
enemy was a bluecoat, a Pinkerton or a
stubborn bank cashier, the James boys
never hesitated to pull the trigger.
As the brothers fled through Iowa
following the Northfield debacle, Frank
used his murder of acting cashier Hey-
wood as a teaching moment. He sug-
gested to a Sioux City physician they
encountered (and temporarily held cap-
tive) that he “tell the bankers of Sioux
City when we come there not to do as
Heywood did but to give up the keys,
and there will be no trouble.”
Five months after Jesse’s death Frank,
with the considerable help of Edwards,
turned himself in to Missouri Governor
Thomas T. Crittenden in a carefully
crafted PR tour de force. Before an audi-
ence of dignitaries in Crittenden’s pri-
vate office, Frank unholstered a Model
1875 Remington revolver and presented
it to the governor. “I make you a present
of this revolver,” Frank said before the
36 WILD WEST AUGUST 2013
stunned crowd, “and you are the first,
except myself, who has laid hold of it
since 1864.” The scene came off very
much like a defeated general presenting
his sword to the victor.
When Charley Ford learned of Frank’s
speech about the pistol, he was incred-
ulous. “Why, I put Frank’s pistols on and
he put mine on, to see how they would
fit, when I was at his mother’s, in June
1881.” Of course, the more obvious
problem was that the Model 1875 did
not exist in 1864. It made for an unde-
niably breathtaking moment, though.
Frank’s subsequent stay in the Jack-
son County Jail, awaiting arraignment
on various charges for murder and rob-
bery, proved another PR coup. Crowds
flocked to see the outlaw. They were
already inclined to be sympathetic to-
ward Frank because of how Jesse had
been killed—the way Crittenden had
colluded with Bob and Charley Ford to
eliminate the bandit leader seemed
underhanded and cowardly. But when
they saw Frank with his wife and son
and how he lovingly held his boy and
laughed and played with the young-
ster, they could not help but like the
man. Frank even made it a point to po-
litely shake hands with each visitor,
telling them he was glad to meet them.
“Your stay in jail has been worth mil-
lions to you as far as public opinion is
concerned,” an ecstatic Edwards wrote
Frank. “In fact, it was the best thing
that could have happened. You can have
no idea…how rapidly public sentiment
is gravitating in your favor. You have
borne yourself admirably, and every
man who has seen you has become your
friend. Do not refuse to see anybody,
and talk pleasantly to all.”
Frank faced trial for only two offenses:
the murder of a passenger on a train the
gang robbed near Winston, Mo., in 1881,
in which Frank may very well have fired
the fatal shot; and the robbery of a U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers paymaster in
northern Alabama, also in 1881, and
of which Frank was actually innocent.
Each trial ended in acquittal. By March
ALL IMAGES FROM THE MARK LEE GARDNER COLLECTION
1885 prosecutors had dropped all other
cases, including an indictment for the
Rocky Cut robbery.
Opportunities were limited for a for-
mer outlaw of Frank’s notoriety, but
to his credit he turned down most—
though not all—offers to appear onstage
over the next three decades. For more
than five months in 1903 he and Cole
Younger, who spent nearly 25 years in
the Minnesota State Prison for his role
in the Northfield bank raid, toured in
The Great Cole Younger and Frank James
Historical Wild West Show. Mostly,
though, Frank worked variously as a
shoe store clerk, a starter at racetracks,
a doorman for a St. Louis theater and a
farmer, happy to let the big shadow of
Jesse deflect attention away from him.
In his last years Frank became what
was surely the best tour guide the old
James farm near Kearney, Mo., ever saw
—certainly the most authentic. “In his
manner there is a strong note of the
showman,” wrote one visitor to the farm.
“It is not at all objectionable, but it is
there, in the same way that it is there
in Buffalo Bill [Cody].…He is clearly an
intelligent man, but he has been looked
at and listened to for so many years as
a kind of curiosity that he has the air
of going through his tricks for one—of
getting off a line of practiced patter.”
That patter never fooled old Jim Cum-
mins, though. He said that Frank had
pulled the wool over people’s eyes.
“Frank posed for years as the best of
the two [brothers],” Cummins said from
a chair at the Confederate Home in
Higginsville, Mo., in 1915, months after
Frank’s death. “He let the whole world
say and believe that Jesse was the worst
of the two. He never opened his mouth
to correct it. I knew them, and I tell you
that both of them were bad enough,
but Jesse was the better of the two.”
Author Mark Lee Gardner profiled Pat
Garrett in the August 2011 Wild West
and the book To Hell on a Fast Horse: The
Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Gar-
rett. He recently released the CD Outlaws:
Songs of Robbers, Rustlers and Rogues
[www.cdbaby.com/cd/markleegardner].
His Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the
Northfield Raid and theWildWest’s Great-
est Escape, is due in July (see review, P. 77).

Frank James on Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett

I
n 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Pat kill one otherwise. He killed when he was doing his duty as
Garrett, the former Lincoln County sheriff who killed an officer of the law, and he either had to kill or be killed.”
Billy the Kid, the collector of customs at El Paso. Garrett’s As for Garrett, Frank felt the “president did the right thing
appointment was met with considerable criticism. there; he chose the right man, and the result is less smuggling
Four years later a strong recommendation from Roosevelt and less lawbreaking in Garrett’s district than there ever was
led to the appointment of former before.” Frank added: “Masterson
Dodge City lawman Bat Masterson and Garrett are men of the same
as deputy U.S. marshal for the class. They are not troublemakers;
Southern District of New York, which I dare say neither of them has en-
again stirred up the press. New York’s gaged in a saloon brawl, never went
Evening World proclaimed, “The around with a chip on his shoulder
president likes killers.” looking for trouble, never ‘shot up a
Of all the articles and opinions town,’ never posed as a bully or des-
generated by these controversial perado. They are cool men—not
appointments, the most unusual reckless; they don’t court danger;
one came out of St. Louis in Feb- they don’t shoot if it is not necessary.
ruary 1905 (see part of that article They are the kind of men that keep
at right, from the February 20, 1905, the peace. They are necessary men
Los Angeles Herald). A newspaper and they make good officers.
reporter, for reasons unknown, “[A] brave man like Masterson or
decided that retired outlaw Frank Garrett shows discretion as well as
James would make for a good inter- courage; he keeps cool; he realizes
view on the subject and bombarded The unusual article included this image of Frank. the necessity of the occasion; he does
the man with questions. not act hastily, although he doesn’t
Frank said he had met Masterson two or three times but was make the fatal mistake of being too slow.…They are always
not a personal acquaintance. Still, he believed wholeheartedly in perfect control of themselves. They are not boasters.”
that Masterson was right for the New York job. “There are more Finally, speaking to the critics of the Garrett and Masterson
bad men in the East than there are in the West,” Frank com- appointments, Frank made a folksy observation that came
mented. “Therefore, men like Masterson, who know their duty from personal experience: “No man who amounts to anything
and are not afraid or slow to do it, are needed more in that is without enemies or ‘knockers.’ If the Savior should come
section of the country than they are needed out here. Master- back to earth today, he couldn’t please everybody; somebody
son never killed a man without justification. He never will would be ‘knocking’ him within 24 hours.” M.L.G.
Seeking Peace
Frank officially ended his outlaw
career with a dash of chivalry, presenting
his gun belt to the governor with these
words, “I want to hand over to you that
which no living man except myself has
been permitted to touch since 1861, and
to say that I am your prisoner.”
Why would Frank take such a risk to
turn himself in to face his outstanding
warrants in Missouri and Alabama?
Frank was no longer a solitary man.
He was no longer the young man from 17
to 21, willing to “do desperate work or to
lead a forlorn hope,” one of those boys
who “will go anywhere in the world you
will lead them,” as he told the St. Louis
Republic on August 5, 1900. “As men
grow older they grow more cautious, but
at that age, they are regular daredevils.”
Frank was a family man. He had
married Annie Ralston in Omaha,
Nebraska, on June 6, 1874, just six weeks
after Jesse married his first cousin,
Zerelda or Zee. Annie gave birth to their
only child, a son, Robert Franklin James,
on February 6, 1878. When Jesse was
killed in 1881, Frank must have looked at
three-year-old Robert and said, “I have to
get out of this life.”
The letters that Frank wrote during
his prison stay as he awaited his trials
convey the deep love he felt for his
wife and child, and they for him. On
Valentine’s Day in 1884, while he sat in a
jail in Huntsville, Alabama, having been
acquitted of the Missouri charges, but
still waiting for his trial over the Muscle
Shoals payroll robbery in 1881, Frank
concluded his letter to Annie with, “Kiss
Rob and remember me to Ma and all the
family. Hoping to hear from you soon.
will say good night.”
When Frank was still in Missouri, in
Gallatin, awaiting his trial, on March 24,
1883, he sent a drawing of a bird to his
son Robert, printing on the reverse, “God
Bless My Little Man From Papa.”
When Frank sent Annie a pen and
ink sketch he made of him kissing her
through the jail bars, his dear wife he so
desperately missed and wished to hold
once more, she added a Maggie May
T R U E
20 W E ST
Danehy poem to his
drawing and wrote, on
the reverse side, “Still
my griefs are mine.”
Annie was the
one who had
corresponded with
Missouri Gov.
Crittenden to feel him
out over her husband
Frank surrendering
to him. Crittenden’s
response on June
2, 1882, by way of
his secretary F.C.
Carr, stated that the
governor “can take
no action upon your
bare suggestion,” yet
“desires to see you
in person, and hear
you freely, as to
your proposals etc.”
Frank surrendered
on October 4, 1882,
and four years later, he walked out a free Journalists, historians and novelists
man. “The issue of Frank James being have paid more attention to Jesse’s story
allowed to go free after so public a life than Frank’s. One notable exception was
of crime is still hotly contested today,” Wide Awake Library, which capitalized
Marley Brant wrote in The Outlaw on Jesse’s death by publishing a series
Youngers. of James Gang dime novels between
She added, “Edwards used every 1881 and 1883, including this one
personal political connection, favor, featuring both brothers, “The James
and influence at his disposal to see that Boys as Guerrillas.”
Frank James went free. Those who
were selected to represent Frank, most
of them without fee, later went on to
become members of congress and to hold
Frank James, dressed in
various judicial offices. A Democratic
a Confederate uniform
jury was permitted, and people such as
(seated), posed with younger
Gen. JO Shelby and the maimed Zerelda
brother Jesse (in light-
James Samuel were allowed to witness, colored hat) and guerrilla
characterizing Frank as a Southern comrade Fletch Taylor in this
hero and Jesse James as one who was circa 1867 photograph taken
methodically hunted down and murdered by C.C. Giers of Nashville,
by the state of Missouri for little cause Tennessee.
other than the fact that he was a former – TRUE WEST ARCHIVES –
Confederate. The surrender and terms
of trial were so well planned that there
was never really any doubt as to their
favorable (to Frank) outcome.”
When John S. Marmaduke took on
the role of governor in Missouri in 1885,
Edwards convinced him not to extradite
Frank to Minnesota for
any charges that dealt with
crimes committed in that
state. Minnesota, of course,
was home to the Northfield
raid, where citizens
armed themselves and
courageously fought back,
yet lost two of their men in
the bloodshed.
Frank left behind his life
of crime and found work
in various jobs, as a shoe
salesman, a Burlesque
ticket taker (the theatre
promoted, “Come get your
ticket punched by the
legendary Frank James”),
an AT&T telegraph
operator, the betting
commissioner for a horse
racetrack and a berry
picker at a Washington
ranch. He even joined
up with his old comrade,
Cole Younger, on a Wild
West show tour through
the South, and gave
lectures on how crime
does not pay.
Frank lived in
Nashville, Tennessee,
in various places in
Missouri (including St.
Louis during the 1890s)
and in Oklahoma from
1907 to 1912, says Roy
B. Young, the first
vice president of the
Wild West History Association. In his “I have been in Ohio, Pennsylvania Dressed in a dark frock coat,
groundbreaking article about Frank and other states we learned to hate Frank James stands in front of
James’s Oklahoma years, published because they gave birth to the federal the James family cabin with
in the March 2017 issue of the WWHA troops we hated so well, and their Tom Frigitt and John Samuel,
Journal, Young revealed why Frank people have treated me like a man,” stepbrother to Frank and Jesse.
moved with Annie to Oklahoma, where Frank told the war-scarred veterans.
their son Robert lived, from his home “But here in Missouri, among my own
state of Missouri, sharing a speech people, I am unhonored and unsung,
Frank gave at the August 1904 reunion then why should I not turn to the belief
of Quantrill’s men in Independence, of the people who have, in my declining
Missouri. years, proved my friends?”

t r u e
22 w e st
 His mother’s death brought Frank
back to the James family farm in
Kearney, where his story had begun all
those years ago. After his mother died
on February 10, 1911, on her way home
from visiting him in Oklahoma, Frank
planned to summer in Missouri and
winter in Oklahoma, which he did, until
1913, whereafter he stayed in Missouri
permanently.
At the James family farm, Frank gave
25-cent tours and sold souvenir pebbles
to folks who stopped by to visit the grave
of Jesse James and his childhood home. A
man perpetually outshone by his younger
brother in the annals of history, Frank
left behind his wife, Annie, and their son,
Robert, dying from a stroke, at the age of
72, on February 18, 1915.
The Outlaw Glorified
Frank had long ago shed the outlaw
persona that froze his brother in the
limelight. Would Jesse have done the
same, if Frank had been killed all those
years ago, instead of him?
Perhaps we all grow
up into those crotchety
old men yelling, “Get
off my front lawn,” and
into those wretched old
women who over worry
about imagined terrors. Zerelda Elizabeth
In 1902, a nearly 60-year- (Cole) James Simms
old Frank sought a court Samuel, mother of
order to prevent the play, notorious James
The James Boys in Missouri, from being brothers, sits with tourists outside
the James family farm, with her right
shown on stage in Kansas City, Missouri.
arm sleeve pinned up. Her right arm had
He voiced his concern:
to be amputated at the elbow after the
“The dad-binged play glorifies these
Pinkerton raid on the James family farm
outlaws and makes heroes of them…. I am
in 1875 that killed her eight-year-old son
told the Gilliss Theatre was packed to the Archie (inset). Also shown is one of the
doors last night, and that most of those souvenir pebbles Frank James handed out
there were boys and men. What will be the to tourists, when he took over managing
effect on these young men to see the acts the farm after his mother’s death.
of a train robber and outlaw glorified?”
– ZERELDA WITH TOURISTS PHOTO COURTESY HERITAGE AUCTIONS,
JUNE 13, 2008 –
Meghan Saar is the editor of True West Magazine. She
wishes to thank Roy B. Young, Eric James and Mark
Lee Gardner for their research assistance. Wilbur Zink
passed on to the great beyond before he could finish his
Frank James book, but you can learn more about the
researcher in the magazine’s profile of him, published on
TWMag.com, “Collecting American Outlaws.”
T R U E
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