Jesse James was born on September, 5th 1847 to father Robert James (a hemp farmer and Baptist minister) and mother Zerelda James in Clay County, Missouri. The James family were prosperous slave owners and had 275 acres of farmland. Jesse's father Robert died when he was three and his mother remarried.
The US Civil War
Violence erupted across Kansas and into Missouri when the Civil War broke out. Vigilantes both Anti-slavery and Pro-slavery swept across the state in deadly raids and committed acts of extreme brutality and formed Guerrilla units that murdered civilians and executed prisoners.
The James family was sympathetic to the Confederacy and young Jesse’s older brother Frank James became an active member of one of these organizations and rode with famous and notorious commander “William Quantrill” and his Raiders.
When seventeen, Jesse became a “bushwhacker” and rode with Bloody Bill Anderson and in 1864 joined in several ambush massacres of Union troops. Jesse was seriously wounded near Lexington after the Confederacy surrendered.
The James Brothers Become Outlaws
Jesse recovered from his wounds while his old unit led by Archie Clement kept their bushwhacker unit together and refused to put down their arms. They began robbing banks in 1866 across the state of Missouri until they were all shot or captured.
Frank and Jesse James joined with the Younger brothers in 1868 and formed their own outlaw band “The James-Younger Gang.” In 1869 the gang gained notoriety when Jesse murdered a prominent man named John W. Sheets during a bank robbery believing him to be Samuel Cox who was responsible for the death of “Bloody Bill Anderson.”
This murder had great ramifications for the gang and gained them many powerful enemies such as, Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden who was outraged by their lawlessness an put out a reward for their capture.
By 1873 the “James-Younger Gang” was responsible for a string of bank robberies in Iowa, Texas, Kansas, and West Virginia and had expanded their horizons by turning to train robbery. These actions forced “The Adams Express Company” to hire the famous “Pinkerton Detective Agency” to bring the gang to heel.
In March of 1874 several Pinkerton detectives were killed trying to put a stop to the gangs exploits but were able to kill only one member of the gang, John Younger, although sustaining the loss of two men in that violent shootout.
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Allan Pinkerton, the agencies founder was infuriated by the loss of his agents and planned a vicious retaliatory raid on Jesse James’s family. On January 25, 1875 an explosive device was thrown into the home of Zerelda James Samuel (Jesse’s mother) and consequential caused the death of Jesse’s young half-brother Archie and also resulted in the loss of one of Zerelda’s arms which was blown off in the blast.
This brutal act caused the public to have sympathy for the outlaw gang and fostered their image as folk hero’s instead of the vicious killers that they were, who were responsible for the deaths of over a dozen innocent people during their crime spree.
The Northfield Raid
In September 1876 the Gang held-up the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. This heist turned out to be a devastating failure. Two members of the gang were gunned down and gang member Charlie Pitts was later shot dead by a posse and the Younger brothers were captured. The James brothers escaped but the gang was history.
The brothers resurfaced in 1879 and assembled a new crew of outlaws and continued to rob trains and banks. The new members were not the hardened “bushwhackers” who had ridden with them during the war and eventually feuds erupted between the members and Jesse killed one gang member and ran the others off.
Betrayal
In 1881 Jesse rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri with his family. He invited Charley Ford and his brother Bob Ford to move into his house so that he would feel safer having two trusted men to watch his back.
Unknown to Jesse however, the traitorous Ford brothers were secretly meeting with Jesse’s old enemy Governor Crittenden. On April 3, 1882 Bob Ford cowardly shot and killed an unarmed Jesse by shooting him in the back of the head as he straightened a picture on the wall.
The Governor lost credibility by being involved in the murder and the Ford brothers fled Missouri with their reward money and both eventually met a bad end, one by suicide the other by murder. Frank James surrendered in 1882 but was acquitted by sympathetic jurors and died in 1915 at the age of seventy-two.
For more information visit: Outlaw history
And be sure to read my article about outlaw Butch Cassidy
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