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 most famous as a notorious
train robber and desperado.
Early life
Jesse Woodson James was born 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.[1]
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 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.
After the Civil War
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 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. 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.
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 afterwards, 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 supportive 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. However it is
known that John Newman Edwards was a notorious liar and drunkard whose claims and writings were entirely false about Jesse's
career as a guerrilla as well as Edwards' relationships with other guerrillas.
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 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.
Downfall of the gang
Jesse and his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms married on April 24 1874, and 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).
On September 7 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted their
most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank of 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 gang had been casing other locations in the area, as well.
The robbery was thwarted when Assistant Cashier Joseph Lee Heywood, left in charge
while the bank officers attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 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. Meanwhile, the citizens of Northfield
had taken notice of the robbery and were arriving with guns. Before leaving the bank, Jesse 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 (Heywood and a Swedish immigrant
named Nicholas Gustafson) 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 went to the Nashville, Tennessee 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, after eating breakfast, the Fords and James went into the living room. Before sitting down, James noticed a
crooked picture on the wall and stood on a chair to straighten it. James was not wearing his guns and Bob Ford took advantage of
the opportunity and shot James in the back of the head.
Robert Ford wired the governor to claim his reward. He then turned himself in to the law, but was dismayed to find he was
charged with first degree murder. The Ford brothers were tried and convicted. They were sentenced to death by hanging, but within
two hours were granted a full pardon by the Governor of Missouri. Ford then received a portion of the reward money.
Ford's letter to Governor Thomas Crittenden giving his version of how he killed Jesse James (April, 1882)
"On the morning of April 3, Jess and I went downtown, as usual, before breakfast, for the papers. We got to the house about
eight o'clock and sat down in the front room. Jess was sitting with his back to me, reading the St. Louis Republican. I picked up
the Times, and the first thing I saw in big headlines was the story about Dick Liddil's surrender. Just then Mrs. James came in
and said breakfast was ready. Beside me was a chair with a shawl on it, and as quick as a flash I lifted it and shoved the paper
under. Jess couldn't have seen me, but he got up, walked over to the chair, picked up the shawl and threw it on the bed, and
taking the paper, went out to the kitchen. I felt that the jig was up, but I followed and sat down at the table opposite
Jess.
Mrs. James poured out the coffee and then sat down at one end of the table. Jesse spread the paper on the table in front of
him and began to look over the headlines. All at once Jess said: "Hello, here. The surrender of Dick Liddil." And he looked
across at me with a glare in his eyes.
"Young man, I thought you told me you didn't know that Dick Liddil had surrendered," he said.
I told him I didn't know it.
"'Well," he said, "it's very strange. He surrendered three weeks ago and you was right there in the neighborhood. It looks
fishy."
He continued to glare at me, and I got up and went into the front room. In a minute I heard Jess push his chair back and
walk to the door. He came in smiling, and said pleasantly: "Well, Bob, it's all right, anyway."
Instantly his real purpose flashed upon my mind. I knew I had not fooled him. He was too sharp for that. He knew at that
moment as well as I did that I was there to betray him. But he was not going to kill me in the presence of his wife and children.
He walked over to the bed, and deliberately unbuckled his belt, with four revolvers in it, and threw it on the bed. It was the
first time in my life I had seen him without that belt on, and I knew that he threw it off to further quiet any suspicions I
might have. He seemed to want to busy himself with something to make an impression on my mind that he had forgotten the
incident at the breakfast table, and said: "That picture is awful dusty." There wasn't a speck of dust that I could see on the
picture, but he stood a chair beneath it and then got upon it and began to dust the picture on the wall.
As he stood there, unarmed, with his back to me, it came to me suddenly, 'Now or never is your chance. If you don't get him
now he'll get you tonight.' Without further thought or a moment's delay I pulled my revolver and leveled it as I sat. He heard
the hammer click as I cocked it with my thumb and started to turn as I pulled the trigger. The ball struck him just behind the
ear and he fell like a log, dead."
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, the Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities, pleaded guilty and 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
the unpopularity of Jesse James coward murder by Bob Ford, O'Kelley's sentence was commuted, and he was released on
October 3 1902. [2]
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 people believe that Jesse James hid in
the attic of a two story house in Dublin, Texas while he was hiding from the law. 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., entitled 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. [citation needed]
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. 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
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 (Illinois) Victorian Festival [1] 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]
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
-
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. In 1974 the
Off-Broadway musical "Diamond Studs" based on the life and times of Jesse James was produced in New York City. The musical was
created by Jim Wann and Bland Simpson.
Bluesman John Lee Hooker recored a song called "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 "
"I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford)" from Elton John's 1975 album, "Rock of the Westies," refers to Bob Ford,
the killer of Jesse James. In his 1976 song "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", Warren Zevon wrote "she
really worked me over good, just like Jesse James". The next year, when Linda Ronstadt
covered the song, she changed the gender to "he really worked me over good, just like Jesse James", which probably made more
sense anyway. The 1976 self-titled album "Warren Zevon" also included the song "Frank and Jesse James", a romantic tribute to the
James Gang's exploits, expressing much sympathy with their "cause". Its brilliantly wry lyrics encapsulate the many legends that
grew up around the life and death of Jesse James. In his 2006 release "We Shall
Overcome: The Seeger Sessions", Bruce
Springsteen includes the song "Jesse James". In The Magnetic Fields song "Two
Characters In Search of a Country Song," Stephin Merritt sings, "You were Jesse James, I was William Tell." The Celtic-influenced
rock 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." A reference to the
circumstance in which Jesse James died was made in the second stanza of Bob Dylan's "Outlaw Blues," released in 1965 on the LP
"Bringing It All Back Home." Jesse James is also mentioned in the lyrics of the worldwide hit 'The Power', released by the
rap-band Snap in 1990. "Radical mind day and night all the time, Seven to fourteen wise divine,
Maniac brainiac winning the game, I'm the lyrical Jesse James".
In her album Heart of Stone (1989), the
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. Jesse James was
also mentioned in the popular Toby Keith song Should`ve Been a
Cowboy. In the CD All The Roadrunning by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, the song "Belle Starr" includes lines about Jesse James. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's album Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy features the song, "Jesse
James" recorded on a wire recorder.
Films
There have been numerous portrayals of Jesse James in film and television.[3]
- 1921: Jesse James Under the Black Flag, played
by Jesse James, Jr.
- 1921: Jesse James as the Outlaw, played by Jesse James, Jr.
- 1927: Jesse James, played by Fred Thomson
- 1939: Jesse James, played by
Tyrone Power with Henry Fonda as Frank
James
- 1939: Days of Jesse James, played by
Roy Rogers
- 1941: Jesse James at Bay, played by
Roy Rogers
- 1947: Jesse James Rides Again,
played by Clayton Moore
- 1949: I Shot Jesse James, played by
Reed Hadley
- 1957: True Story of Jesse James, played by
Robert Wagner
- 1966: Jesse James Meets
Frankenstein's Daughter, played by John Lupton
- 1972: The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, played by Robert Duvall
- 1980: The Long Riders, played by
James Keach
- 1986: The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, played by Kris Kristofferson with Johnny Cash as Frank James and
Willie Nelson as Gen. Jo Shelby
- 1994: Frank and Jesse, played by
Rob Lowe
- 1999: Purgatory, played by
J.D. Souther
- 2001: American Outlaws, played by
Colin Farrell
- 2005: Just like Jesse James is the title of a movie that appears in Wim Wenders'
Don't Come Knocking, in which Sam
Shepard plays an aging western movie star whose first success was with that movie.
- 2005: , Discovery
HD, played by Daniel Lennox
- 2007: The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford, played by Brad Pitt, with Casey
Affleck as Bob Ford
Television
- In an episode of The Twilight Zone, "Showdown with Rance McGrew" (aired February 2, 1962). Jesse James is played by Arch Johnson and Bob Kline plays an actor playing Jesse James for TV.
- In an episode of The Brady Bunch titled "Bobby's Hero" (aired February 2, 1973), Bobby upsets his parents and teachers when he
decides to idolize Jesse James as a hero. His father locates an old man(played by Burt
Mustin) 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 the episode of Little House on the Prairie titled
"The Aftermmath" (aired November 7, 1977), Jesse
(Dennis Rucker) and Frank James (John Bennett Perry)
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 American Western series The Young Riders (1989-1992), Jesse James is
portrayed by the late actor Christopher Pettiet. He appears in 17 episodes of the
last season (91-92) as one of the Pony Express riders. In the show, this occurs before he becomes an outlaw.
- In an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures
of Superman titled "Tempus Fugitive" (aired 26 March
1995), Superman (Clark Kent) goes back in time and meets Jesse James (played by Don
Swayze).
- In the fifth segment (titled "Mysterious Strangers") of episode 33 of Beyond
Belief: Fact or Fiction? (aired June 27, 2002), 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."
- Jesse James appeared in Springfield's graveyard in the "Treehouse of Horror
XIII" episode (aired November 3, 2002) of The Simpsons.
- Jesse G. James of the TV Series Monster
Garage (2002–2006) is a distant cousin of the outlaw.
- PBS released a documentary on 6 February 2006 in its American Experience series dedicated to James (played by Mitchell
McCann).
- 2006:
(documentary)
- 2007:
(History Channel documentary)
- Jesse James is mentioned in the opening song in Smokey and the Bandit
("You've heard about the legend of Jesse James…")
- In the U.S. version of the Pokémon anime series, the characters Jessie and James are named after him.
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.
[2]
- 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. [3]
- 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. [4]
- 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, Ireland - 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
- ^ "Jesse Woodson James", Dictionary of American Biography. American
Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.
- ^ 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)
- ^ Jesse James (Character) at the IMDb
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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