Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5, 1847 in Clay County Missouri, near the site of present day Kearney. As an adult Jesse was of medium height, of slender but solid build, with a bearded, narrow face, and prominent blue eyes. Until his later years, when he became abnormally suspicious and moody, he was good-natured and jocular, though quick-tempered. He always justified his criminal activities by the claim that he had been driven into it by persecution.
His father, Robert James was a farmer and Baptist minister from Kentucky who helped found William Jewel 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 (pic left) 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 had four half-siblings: Sarah Louisa Samuel (sometimes Sarah Ellen), John Thomas Samuel, Fannie Quantrill Samuel, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Sarah married a man named John C. Harmon.
The James farm was supposedly visited in 1863 by Federal troops looking for information regarding Confederate guerrilla groups. James claimed the soldiers beat him and hanged 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.
