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 by Union militia when he attempted to surrender in Lexington, Missouri a few months after the war's end, leaving him badly wounded. His first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (named after his mother), nursed him back to health, and he started a nine-year courtship with her. She eventually became his wife. 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 (pic top right). During this raid, Jesse deliberately shot a bystander student of William Jewell College (see Wellman, 1961). James claimed the reason he robbed the bank was to get back the deed to his land. The gang robbed the Alexander Mitchell Bank in Lexington shortly thereafter, and staged several more robberies over the next few years, though state authorities (and local lynch mobs) had decimated the ranks of the older bushwhackers.
October 22, 2007
A First--Jesse James
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 by Union militia when he attempted to surrender in Lexington, Missouri a few months after the war's end, leaving him badly wounded. His first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (named after his mother), nursed him back to health, and he started a nine-year courtship with her. She eventually became his wife. 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 (pic top right). During this raid, Jesse deliberately shot a bystander student of William Jewell College (see Wellman, 1961). James claimed the reason he robbed the bank was to get back the deed to his land. The gang robbed the Alexander Mitchell Bank in Lexington shortly thereafter, and staged several more robberies over the next few years, though state authorities (and local lynch mobs) had decimated the ranks of the older bushwhackers.
October 12, 2007
The Begining...--Jesse James
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.
October 05, 2007
Who was Jesse James?
Of Jesse Woodson James, crime historian Jay Robert Nash asserts, "Millions of words would be written about this handsome, dashing and utterly ruthless bank and train robber. To many of his peers, he would appear a folklore hero who took vengeance in their name upon an industrial society that was grinding the old agrarian lifestyle to ashes. To others, Jesse James and his band represented the last vestiges of the Old South and its lost cause of secession...He was at large for sixteen years. He committed dozens of daring robberies and killed at least a half-dozen or more men. He died at the age of thirty-four."Every century brings its heroes and its villains. Every now and then, however, a character lurches forth with a combination of the two; maybe because the world doesn't know whether to love or hate him or her, he or she becomes a milestone in the study of complex mankind. Nitty, gritty, but with the spirit of a conquering warrior. In short, a legend is born.
Such is the legend of Jesse James...
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