Taking a one-day break from my historical blog to vent about today's drivers and the large amount of angry people today!
Last Friday, I bit the bullet and finally took my late sister's car out to head to an appointment about 45 miles away. The day before I had gassed it up and driven it a few miles and decided the time had come. She had a 2004 Hyundai Sonata that was a humdinger of a nice car in its day. It had low miles and a V6 in it, so it had just enough pep to make it enjoyable to drive.
The major thing about that car was my sister's ties to it. She passed away in February after a very long battle with congestive heart failure, kidney failure and a number of major strokes. We spent a lot of time in her car going to various appointments, restaurants, a few genealogical trips back to our mother's hometown and quite a few jaunts to Jamesport, Missouri – a wonderful little Amish town about an hour north that has great shops.
That car still had some of her hair in it, her coins, her dryer sheets that she used instead of buying air fresheners, her little cutter she kept in the ashtray just in case she got into a jam and had to cut herself out of her own seatbelt, her CDs, her blanket and pillow - just in case, an emergency kit, maps – you name it – Pris had it in the car. Of course, the piece de resistance was her giant, sunglasses designed for old people who wore them over their own prescription glasses.
The car was still just like it was the last time she drove it – two days before she went into the hospital for the last time.
It was her car and the last time I drove it, I took her home from the hospital in it just weeks before she died.
It was a big deal to get back into that car and drive it. So, that morning I took a deep breath and got inside, buckled myself up and said to no one in particular, "Let's go Pris."
I pulled away from our house, went up to the end of the street and turned left. I only went about 200 feet before a white car shot out of a business to my right and stopped, right dead in front of me. He had backed out instead of pulling out and he never looked. He said later that his passenger yelled, "Look Out!" and so he stopped instead of moving out of the way.
I couldn't even see the pavement in front of the car, we were that close – maybe just 10 feet or so. I hit the brakes and said to myself, "Oh crap, I'm going to hit anyway ... Oh no, Prissy's car!"
Sure enough, with both hands on the steering wheel, right foot on the brake – bracing for impact, I slammed into the guy's car at about 25 mph. BANG! Then POP! The airbag deployed and I smelled smoke. 25 mph doesn't sound like much, but after seeing the damage to my arms, I couldn't even imagine hitting a vehicle or object any faster than what I did.
And just like everyone else says, it all happened in just a few seconds. One second I was driving along, my body in as perfect shape as a 56-year-old can be, and the next second I was not the same.
I realized I was stopped, my hands still on the steering wheel and they hurt. I looked at them and started screaming. Always one to remain calm under pressure, just the fact I was having hysterics was enough to make me have hysterics. Miss control freak that I am – couldn't even control myself that morning.
Not understanding how airbags deploy, the smell of smoke frightened me to no end so, thinking the car was catching on fire, I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the car, not even caring that I was leaving my purse and phone behind. So there goes the theory that I will always remember to grab them.
I was still in the middle of the road with no traffic either way. The car I'd hit, I had pushed back toward the business driveway he'd come out of and the driver was standing outside of his car staring at me, as was some 20-something woman who probably had never seen a gray-haired senior citizen having hysterics before, while simultaneously barking orders, "Call the police! Call the ambulance! Call my husband! Call somebody! Waaaaaaa!"
Immediately a wonderful worker from the Napa store came out and calmly escorted me inside so I could sit down. The manager, a woman – ran and got me icy wet towels to put on my wrists which were bright blue with busted blood vessels and so swollen that it looked like a blue deck of cards sitting atop my wrists. I was bleeding and burnt from where the accelerant from the airbag had gotten me. One of my rings was flattened on my right hand where I had gripped the wheel so hard that it bent the metal.
I had bruises on the back of my knuckles, my fingertips, surrounding my hands, insides of my elbows, and burns and bruises on my belly where my belt buckle, the seat belt and the airbag hit it. See what happens when your belly is bigger than your boobs?
Even though my glasses had been knocked off, my face was uninjured. For that I am so grateful as I am to the wonderful calming people in Napa.
I suddenly looked up and there were two gorgeous EMTs catering to my every need, though high on adrenaline, I was almost incoherent and talking unceasingly.
My husband was called - thankfully just around the corner - he hadn't left for work yet.
My insurance agent, her office just next door gave absolute perfect service with a smile by showing up and offering to handle that part of it. When State Farm commercials say they are THERE, they ARE.
The guy who hit me came up and looked terrified. I would be too - I was pretty scary with all the yelling I was doing - and I wasn't mad at him. It was an accident. But I told him my sister's car is gone now and he can never replace the sentimental value it had for me.
Somehow she had protected me and at least my injuries weren't worse.
It was a bad morning in our little town of 4,500. At 6 a.m. that morning, I'd been up having coffee and heard the Lifeflight helicopter flying overhead and said a quick prayer for whomever they were bringing in or taking out.
It turned out there had been a house fire in which an elderly couple had died. Even more bizarre, while I was in the ER awaiting a room, my dentist's assistant from a town 40 miles away, saw me sitting there and came in to see what was wrong – it was her grandparents who died. She took time out of her grief to see how I was doing and give me a hug.
The people that day were astoundingly wonderful to me. God graced me with his presence and watched over me.
Several hours later my wonderful chiropractor called to see how I was and offered to open his office over the weekend should I need a treatment before Tuesday (Monday being a holiday), and offered advice what to do for myself over the weekend ... ice, ice and more ice.
My closest local friend came over to sit with me all afternoon after clearing her schedule - without being asked. She'd been in a similar accident a few years ago and had had a heart attack after the accident due to the force of hitting the airbag knocking some cholesterol loose in her heart. She kept me going all afternoon while my husband dealt with the car, police report and insurance people.
My blood pressure after the accident was 218/118 - stroke levels as it was pointed out to me by the EMT who looked at me like he was going to have to revive me any second. He was pretty cute so I'm sure I wouldn't have minded, even at my age.
But I still wanted my husband and no one else.
I had to promise to go to the ER, but there was no chance I was NOT going to go – my arms were scary looking.
It took the entire weekend to get my BP back to a normal level.
And two days before I could sleep.
The day after the accident I had to give in and go to a jeweler to have my wedding and engagement rings of 27 years cut off my swollen fingers.
I still tend to babble a little incoherently.
Words don't come to me, guess my brain got all shook up – not a good thing for a 50-something writer.
What really shook me up? When my husband put me in his car and drove out of the parking lot to head to the hospital, we hadn't gone 300 feet when someone pulled out of the supermarket up the road and nearly T-boned us, just an eighth of a mile from where I'd just been hit.
While at the hospital, they had several more accidents incoming.
It wasn't even Friday the 13th.
Since then, I've been nearly creamed every day while driving through our little town. What gives? What's wrong with people? No turn signals. They don't wait until you pass before pulling out. Today the Schwan's food guy turned left in front of me - I was turning right and halfway into my turn when he shot out of a liquor store parking lot. He smiled and waved.
Glad I made HIS day. I nearly soiled my pants at the close call.
As I drove home today from my chiropractor's visit - feeling all good – I started taking account of how many people used their turn signals. In 43 miles, I only saw about 5 people use their signals. At one point, I was behind a lovely, bright blue Ford Fusion that made three turns in front of me and then a merge onto the highway - never once did she use a signal.
Yesterday a guy in a big red pick-up truck - bigger than my own SUV – cut me off at a 4-way stop sign when it was my turn to go and I was halfway through the intersection.
It's like I have a great big sign that says "HIT ME! I WAS JUST IN A CAR ACCIDENT! DO IT AGAIN!"
And of course I've realized that I'm the only human on the planet to be in a car accident, I laughingly told a pal today.
One of the things that I found sobering is that like most people, I've always felt that when someone says they've had someone go over the center line at them, a deer dart out in front or a car pull out in front of them and they had no time to react, that it was impossible. I always thought "you WILL have time to react." And I've always planned what I would do.
Then I found myself last Friday in the same place. Someone backed out in front of me at a high speed and I truly had no time to react and prevent the accident. I braced for the impact like I swore I would never do, knowing it causes more injury. I left my purse and phone in the car. I jumped out of my car, oblivious to the fact there could have been another car about to pass me. (there wasn't)
It's been 18 years since my last accident when a gal in a small car hit me head on in a snow storm. I was in an SUV and went into a snowbank - unhurt. The time before that I was hit head on in an accident similar to what I just went through, except I was going 55 and had the right of way that time too. Airbags didn't exist and I hit the seatbelt at 55 mph, pulling all the cartilage in my ribs – it took me over a year to recover.
I'm lucky it's been so long and lucky none of those accidents were my fault.
Well, it's really not luck. I pray for safe travel and God pretty much always answers those prayers and when he can't or won't – he sends an angel to make sure I'm OK and angels to look after me after the accident like he did that day.
I don't know why people are so careless, in a hurry or just plain don't care when they're driving. Sometimes they make stupid, careless mistakes and it costs someone their life.
Life is valuable and short. Take care when you drive, obey the laws, look both ways – a lot – before pulling out, drive the speed limit, be nice to your fellow drivers ... remember ... that other person is someone's loved one.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Sunday, September 1, 2013
The end is near for the illustrious Jesse James
To the 21st century person, age 34 is still incredibly young, but in the 1880s, it was already middle-aged. For Jesse James, after living over half his life on the run, suffering numerous shots, one that was near-fatal, and years of living with a lead ball in his right lung – he felt older than his years.
I can imagine Jesse sitting on the porch of the little house in St. Joseph, Missouri, in early spring 1882, atop a small hill – the sounds of his children, Jesse Jr., and Mary playing and listening to his wife, Zee, humming in the kitchen as she began cooking dinner. He may have sat back in his rocking chair quite satisfied ... or contemplated that the peaceful scene should be an every day occurrence. But that would be impossible, for he wasn't really Mr. Howard, he was Jesse James – feared outlaw and killer and wanted by half a dozen states, sheriff's, deputies, politicians, railroad barons and Pinkerton's men.
He could never run away from the truth.
The law was closing in and he could feel it to his very core.
Jesse didn't want to go down in a gunfight, he didn't want to be captured and lynched. He wanted to go down in a blaze of glory – somehow in a manner that would leave him remembered as a martyr.
Jesse's last few months on this earth would be to move toward that end. And succeed he did.
As Jesse aged, his beliefs and obsessions became even more bizarre. By the time he was living in St. Joseph, he believed in out of the body experiences, sorcery, precognition, eating grass when sick and, in contrast, he would flip through the worn pages of his late father's Bible and read whatever verses he would land upon – pondering their meaning and how they applied to him.
If anyone failed to grow up and mature, it was Jesse James. Today we would call it Peter Pan syndrome. He lived the concept to the fullest.
He was vain about his looks and exercised fanatically. Even at 34 and suffering from that errant shot to his lungs in 1865, he was strong and muscular.
He played with his children and wooed his wife. He was polite while out and about, presenting himself as a genteel man of the highest breeding. No one ever suspected who he truly was.
His voice was rather high-pitched and could be annoying when he got excited – bringing the Missouri twang with it. He was left-handed and was missing a part of his left middle finger having shot it off just prior to joining Quantrill's Raiders in 1864. He always kept that hand out of sight – it was an identification marker for law enforcement.
Jesse's emotions and personality ran the gamut from quiet and serene to gregarious and irrational. A vibrant aura clung to him and made heads turn when he entered a room. Indeed, Jesse James commanded a room – he was larger than life.
He was handsome and most likely resembled his father, though no known photographs of Robert James exist to this day. Jesse looked nothing like his older brother, Frank, who had a large nose and even larger ears that protruded from his head.
Jesse's bright blue eyes darted nervously all the time – his eyes blinking constantly. One could almost picture his entire body a little herky jerky with movement, the blood coursing through his veins a little bit faster than everyone else's, his heart pounding harder, his brain firing like sparks.
As Jesse reached his 34th birthday on September 5, 1881, he was, for all intents and purposes – dying and he knew it.
In my opinion, after 17 years of living with a lead minie ball in his right lung, Jesse was suffering from lead poisoning. Symptoms include: abdominal pain, headaches, difficulty in thinking, concentrating or making decisions, pale skin, fatigue, muscle weakness, personality changes, mood swings and trouble sleeping and Jesse had nearly all of those symptoms.
He suffered greatly from insomnia and his mood went from upbeat and positive to moody and paranoid, he worked out frantically – possibly because he felt his muscles weakening daily and his muscular stature had kept him in the saddle all those years. He personality changed constantly, which included the oddball obsessions he worked over and over in his mind.
Since the last robbery, known as the Blue Cut, on Sept. 7, 1881, the gang had scattered. Frank had taken Annie and Bob and gone to Maryland. And Jesse grew more and more nervous about one of the gang going to the authorities. None of the gang members were former war comrades. They were all younger and had no sense of loyalty to the James brothers.
By the first of the year, Wood Hite, Jesse's cousin, had been shot dead by Bob Ford – unbeknownst to Jesse at the time. And Jesse had paid a visit to Ed Miller, former gang member Clell Miller's brother, and Ed had conveniently disappeared – his body discovered sometime after Jesse's visit.
Jesse was unaware that Bob Ford had shot his cousin. In fact, Hite had been quarreling with Dick Liddil over Liddil's wooing of Hite's young stepmother. Ford got in the middle of it when Hite turned his gun on Liddil and he shot Hite dead. The shooting had taken place at the home of Ford's sister, Mattie Bolton in Richmond, Mo.
They first wrapped Wood's body in blankets and dumped him into an stream. Later his body would be allegedly dumped in one of the farm's wells.
Several years ago I interviewed Pat Faulkner of Kearney, Mo., who had grown up in the old Bolton/Ford house in the 1940s and professed it to be haunted. Pat told me that when her father moved them into the house, the owners at the time informed her father they weren't to drink out of one of the wells as it was the "body" well.
She also said that from time-to-time, she had witnessed ghostly activity, things moving in one of the upstairs rooms, a shadow in the upstairs window and an awful smell coming from a tunnel they discovered that led to the other side of the pasture – likely an escape tunnel from the James days.
Besides Wood Hite being murdered in that house, it was the same house in which Charlie Ford shot himself a few years after Jesse's death. Unfortunately, the house was torn down in the 1950s and a new one built in its place.
Bob Ford had begun hanging around the gang around the time of the Blue Cut robbery. He was young, only 18 years of age and given to hero worship of Jesse. For years he had collected the comic book renderings of the James gang and fancied himself knowledgable on all things Jesse and Frank.
Frank wouldn't give Bob the time of day, but Jesse seemed to like the attention and adoration, even though at times it got quite uncomfortable, such as when Bob told Jesse that they had many things in common that were oddities: Jesse had had twin sons – Bob had twin sisters; Jesse's father was minister – Bob's father was a part time minister; Jesse's father was named Robert – Bob was actually Robert; they had the same number of letters and syllables in their names; they both had blue eyes, were of the same height and weight. It was scary and Jesse froze solid when Bob told him all of this.
With Jesse as slippery as he'd been for all those years, as astute as he was in discerning who was friend or foe, as much as those who couldn't be trusted could get his hackles up – he didn't seem to see Bob Ford as dangerous.
Or did he?
Did Jesse knowingly set himself up to be taken down by Bob Ford, placing him forever in the history books and western lore as a Robin Hood character – a person to be heralded as a sympathetic character? Or was he duped?
We shall soon see.
I can imagine Jesse sitting on the porch of the little house in St. Joseph, Missouri, in early spring 1882, atop a small hill – the sounds of his children, Jesse Jr., and Mary playing and listening to his wife, Zee, humming in the kitchen as she began cooking dinner. He may have sat back in his rocking chair quite satisfied ... or contemplated that the peaceful scene should be an every day occurrence. But that would be impossible, for he wasn't really Mr. Howard, he was Jesse James – feared outlaw and killer and wanted by half a dozen states, sheriff's, deputies, politicians, railroad barons and Pinkerton's men.
He could never run away from the truth.
The law was closing in and he could feel it to his very core.
Jesse didn't want to go down in a gunfight, he didn't want to be captured and lynched. He wanted to go down in a blaze of glory – somehow in a manner that would leave him remembered as a martyr.
Jesse's last few months on this earth would be to move toward that end. And succeed he did.
As Jesse aged, his beliefs and obsessions became even more bizarre. By the time he was living in St. Joseph, he believed in out of the body experiences, sorcery, precognition, eating grass when sick and, in contrast, he would flip through the worn pages of his late father's Bible and read whatever verses he would land upon – pondering their meaning and how they applied to him.
If anyone failed to grow up and mature, it was Jesse James. Today we would call it Peter Pan syndrome. He lived the concept to the fullest.
He was vain about his looks and exercised fanatically. Even at 34 and suffering from that errant shot to his lungs in 1865, he was strong and muscular.
He played with his children and wooed his wife. He was polite while out and about, presenting himself as a genteel man of the highest breeding. No one ever suspected who he truly was.
His voice was rather high-pitched and could be annoying when he got excited – bringing the Missouri twang with it. He was left-handed and was missing a part of his left middle finger having shot it off just prior to joining Quantrill's Raiders in 1864. He always kept that hand out of sight – it was an identification marker for law enforcement.
Jesse's emotions and personality ran the gamut from quiet and serene to gregarious and irrational. A vibrant aura clung to him and made heads turn when he entered a room. Indeed, Jesse James commanded a room – he was larger than life.
He was handsome and most likely resembled his father, though no known photographs of Robert James exist to this day. Jesse looked nothing like his older brother, Frank, who had a large nose and even larger ears that protruded from his head.
Jesse's bright blue eyes darted nervously all the time – his eyes blinking constantly. One could almost picture his entire body a little herky jerky with movement, the blood coursing through his veins a little bit faster than everyone else's, his heart pounding harder, his brain firing like sparks.
As Jesse reached his 34th birthday on September 5, 1881, he was, for all intents and purposes – dying and he knew it.
In my opinion, after 17 years of living with a lead minie ball in his right lung, Jesse was suffering from lead poisoning. Symptoms include: abdominal pain, headaches, difficulty in thinking, concentrating or making decisions, pale skin, fatigue, muscle weakness, personality changes, mood swings and trouble sleeping and Jesse had nearly all of those symptoms.
He suffered greatly from insomnia and his mood went from upbeat and positive to moody and paranoid, he worked out frantically – possibly because he felt his muscles weakening daily and his muscular stature had kept him in the saddle all those years. He personality changed constantly, which included the oddball obsessions he worked over and over in his mind.
Since the last robbery, known as the Blue Cut, on Sept. 7, 1881, the gang had scattered. Frank had taken Annie and Bob and gone to Maryland. And Jesse grew more and more nervous about one of the gang going to the authorities. None of the gang members were former war comrades. They were all younger and had no sense of loyalty to the James brothers.
By the first of the year, Wood Hite, Jesse's cousin, had been shot dead by Bob Ford – unbeknownst to Jesse at the time. And Jesse had paid a visit to Ed Miller, former gang member Clell Miller's brother, and Ed had conveniently disappeared – his body discovered sometime after Jesse's visit.
Jesse was unaware that Bob Ford had shot his cousin. In fact, Hite had been quarreling with Dick Liddil over Liddil's wooing of Hite's young stepmother. Ford got in the middle of it when Hite turned his gun on Liddil and he shot Hite dead. The shooting had taken place at the home of Ford's sister, Mattie Bolton in Richmond, Mo.
They first wrapped Wood's body in blankets and dumped him into an stream. Later his body would be allegedly dumped in one of the farm's wells.
Several years ago I interviewed Pat Faulkner of Kearney, Mo., who had grown up in the old Bolton/Ford house in the 1940s and professed it to be haunted. Pat told me that when her father moved them into the house, the owners at the time informed her father they weren't to drink out of one of the wells as it was the "body" well.
She also said that from time-to-time, she had witnessed ghostly activity, things moving in one of the upstairs rooms, a shadow in the upstairs window and an awful smell coming from a tunnel they discovered that led to the other side of the pasture – likely an escape tunnel from the James days.
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| This is the Bob Ford home (owned by his sister, Mattie Bolton), before its 1955 destruction. It was about two miles east of Richmond on Highway 10. The site is now occupied by the Waller family. Charley Ford shot himself in the east bedroom (right side of photo) on the second floor in 1884. (Photo courtesy of Pat Faulkner) |
Besides Wood Hite being murdered in that house, it was the same house in which Charlie Ford shot himself a few years after Jesse's death. Unfortunately, the house was torn down in the 1950s and a new one built in its place.
Bob Ford had begun hanging around the gang around the time of the Blue Cut robbery. He was young, only 18 years of age and given to hero worship of Jesse. For years he had collected the comic book renderings of the James gang and fancied himself knowledgable on all things Jesse and Frank.
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| A young Bob Ford. (Photo courtesy of the Jesse James Farm & Museum) |
Frank wouldn't give Bob the time of day, but Jesse seemed to like the attention and adoration, even though at times it got quite uncomfortable, such as when Bob told Jesse that they had many things in common that were oddities: Jesse had had twin sons – Bob had twin sisters; Jesse's father was minister – Bob's father was a part time minister; Jesse's father was named Robert – Bob was actually Robert; they had the same number of letters and syllables in their names; they both had blue eyes, were of the same height and weight. It was scary and Jesse froze solid when Bob told him all of this.
With Jesse as slippery as he'd been for all those years, as astute as he was in discerning who was friend or foe, as much as those who couldn't be trusted could get his hackles up – he didn't seem to see Bob Ford as dangerous.
Or did he?
Did Jesse knowingly set himself up to be taken down by Bob Ford, placing him forever in the history books and western lore as a Robin Hood character – a person to be heralded as a sympathetic character? Or was he duped?
We shall soon see.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Jesse James was born to be an outlaw – he just never succeeded at anything else
Somehow when Jesse discovered horse racing while living in Tennessee, I've wondered what his evangelical father would have said about it. Horse racing requires betting, which the Bible frowns upon. Nevertheless, Robert James would most likely disapproved of the way both his sons turned out – robbers and killers.
It's all Robert's fault – if he hadn't been so insistent on heading to the gold fields of California in 1850 and dying there, life would have been different for the James family. But then, Zerelda wouldn't have married Reuben Samuel and some of my current friends – descendants of the Samuel clan – wouldn't be here today.
Jesse adopted the name Dave Howard and settled in Humphreys County, Tennessee (west of Nashville). In addition to horse racing, Jesse tried to carry himself off as a gentleman farmer and grain speculator. He and Zee were popular and held many a party and attended many a church social – no one in their circle ever guessed their true identities.
Jesse was a chameleon and could adapt to any circumstance in which he found himself. Surprisingly, that was probably due to his years as a bushwhacker – pretending to be a Union soldier, getting out of difficult situations quickly and perfecting the art of escape from the robberies he committed.
Jesse's horse, Red Fox, was rumored to be the fastest in Humphreys County and one of the fastest in the state – only Jesse would have strived for that nugget. But it also served him a purpose – should he need a quick escape, Red Fox would be able to get him away and fast.
Jesse, AKA Mr. Howard, still had to look over his shoulder constantly and be on alert every minute. He always kept people from coming up behind him by standing with his back against the wall, or positioning himself at a table on the far side where he could look out at the room.
He carried a pistol at all times, though that was fairly common in the late 1870s. He was still Jesse, however, and there were a few occasions where he showed off his incredible marksmanship by killing a dog at a BBQ who had stolen some food and by joining a contest at a fair in which men were trying to shoot the flame off a candle. He also occasionally challenged another man, but would catch himself just in time and insert a little humor into the situation – narrowly avoiding a confrontation.
It went against Jesse's genetic make-up to behave. He just couldn't do it and he was very lucky to not have been discovered.
Meanwhile, Frank and Annie finally made it to Tennessee, where they rented some land near Whites Creek, just north of Nashville. It was said that Frank was known to put in at least 10 hours a day working the land. I'm sure it gave him plenty of time to think about the direction his life had taken and to thank his lucky stars that they were living a quiet life for a while.
Frank went by the name of Ben J. Woodson (there's that Woodson name again – the boy's paternal Uncle Drury's middle name was Woodson and it was Jesse's middle name too). Annie added an "F" to her name, making her Fannie Woodson.
Jesse wasn't the only one who found it difficult to let go of the outlaw lifestyle of living on the run. Frank also had his troubles.
One day, a son of a neighbor came to visit Frank while he was in the fields planting corn. The young man yelled to Frank, who hollered back "who is it?" When the young fella didn't respond quick enough, he quickly found himself looking down the barrel of not one, but two six-shooters.
Frank's finely honed skills in his guerrilla and outlaw lifestyles also crept into play occasionally as when he would sit down to a game of poker. One friend said, "Although Frank (Ben) looked like a preacher, he could play poker like a politician."
Even Annie forgot herself. She once offered a neighbor woman an opportunity to pick an item from her jewelry box to wear to a party and the woman was astounded by the amount of high quality jewelry a simple sharecropper's wife had in her possession.
Still, no one ever suspected the friendly couple Ben and Fannie Woodson of any shady past or present. They were well-liked by all of their acquaintances, as were Jesse and his wife.
Typical Jesse, however, quickly got himself involved in one too many financial binds, overspent, and over-played several friends and business acquaintances, finding himself being sued for bounced checks and accruing other debts. The hot water was rising and he was chaffing to make a change.
He was used to earning money the quick way – by stealing it – not by the old-fashioned way of having to work for it.
Jesse got to feeling a little too bold and was letting his guard down too frequently and by December of 1878, he realized it was getting a bit too "hot" for him in Humphreys County. So, he packed up his family and headed to Nashville where he could reconnect with his brother.
In late 1878 or early 1879, Frank rented a farm east of the Clarksville Pike, northwest of Nashville, which stood on a knoll overlooking the pike. It created a great outlook for Frank to see who was approaching the property.
It was to Frank's new home that Jesse, Zee and their children headed after leaving Humphreys County.
I've found the following a very interesting description of the two men as something that fit not only their known personalities, but that of two men on the run from something very bad.
"They were very quiet men. They spoke very little and attended their own business ... Frank was the quieter of the two, though Jesse never talked a great deal ... Frank used to sit off by himself on the track (race track) and whittle a stick and seemed to think a great deal. Neither of the men ever joked and they laughed but little (proof that the art of living on the run and incognito was wearing on the brothers). They both gambled a great deal. They were said to play poker right smart and play all sorts of games big and little." (Aleck Ament, bartender at the Crockford Saloon, Nashville - Nashville Daily American, Oct. 12, 1882 edition)
Jesse was getting itchy again, however. He liked robbing trains and banks and he liked the lifestyle it afforded him. Early in the summer of 1879, he made a trip west of the Mississippi that took him to the railhead of the brand new Santa Fe line at Las Vegas – perhaps to look for a new place to settle down, far away from Missouri law enforcement, or to look for new gang members.
It is said that while in Vegas, Jesse met another notorious man – William McCarty, AKA "Billy the Kid." However, one can rest assured that Jesse remained known as Mr. Howard during this meeting because of other, questionable people present.
Still, legend has it that Jesse did reveal himself to Billy the Kid and had sought him out to see if he would join the gang. But Billy was not into robbing trains or banks, he preferred rounding up the livestock of others and taking it for his own.
Something tells me no gang would have had enough room for the personalities of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
It seems that Las Vegas was too big for the likes of Jesse, as he witnessed other gangs that had been lured to the wild western town – mostly known as the Dodge City Boys. They began robbing a number of stagecoaches and some trains, so Jesse hightailed it back to Missouri.
And there, back in his old stomping grounds ... Jesse assembled what would be the last James gang and the beginning of the end.
It's all Robert's fault – if he hadn't been so insistent on heading to the gold fields of California in 1850 and dying there, life would have been different for the James family. But then, Zerelda wouldn't have married Reuben Samuel and some of my current friends – descendants of the Samuel clan – wouldn't be here today.
Jesse adopted the name Dave Howard and settled in Humphreys County, Tennessee (west of Nashville). In addition to horse racing, Jesse tried to carry himself off as a gentleman farmer and grain speculator. He and Zee were popular and held many a party and attended many a church social – no one in their circle ever guessed their true identities.
Jesse was a chameleon and could adapt to any circumstance in which he found himself. Surprisingly, that was probably due to his years as a bushwhacker – pretending to be a Union soldier, getting out of difficult situations quickly and perfecting the art of escape from the robberies he committed.
Jesse's horse, Red Fox, was rumored to be the fastest in Humphreys County and one of the fastest in the state – only Jesse would have strived for that nugget. But it also served him a purpose – should he need a quick escape, Red Fox would be able to get him away and fast.
Jesse, AKA Mr. Howard, still had to look over his shoulder constantly and be on alert every minute. He always kept people from coming up behind him by standing with his back against the wall, or positioning himself at a table on the far side where he could look out at the room.
He carried a pistol at all times, though that was fairly common in the late 1870s. He was still Jesse, however, and there were a few occasions where he showed off his incredible marksmanship by killing a dog at a BBQ who had stolen some food and by joining a contest at a fair in which men were trying to shoot the flame off a candle. He also occasionally challenged another man, but would catch himself just in time and insert a little humor into the situation – narrowly avoiding a confrontation.
It went against Jesse's genetic make-up to behave. He just couldn't do it and he was very lucky to not have been discovered.
Meanwhile, Frank and Annie finally made it to Tennessee, where they rented some land near Whites Creek, just north of Nashville. It was said that Frank was known to put in at least 10 hours a day working the land. I'm sure it gave him plenty of time to think about the direction his life had taken and to thank his lucky stars that they were living a quiet life for a while.
Frank went by the name of Ben J. Woodson (there's that Woodson name again – the boy's paternal Uncle Drury's middle name was Woodson and it was Jesse's middle name too). Annie added an "F" to her name, making her Fannie Woodson.
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| This is one of the more famous photos of Jesse James and is authentic. It shows what he actually looked like at the age of about 28, and is believed to have been taken in Nebraska. Note the lines on his neck and ruddy complexion – he was probably quite tan from living outside and looked older than his 28 years. |
Jesse wasn't the only one who found it difficult to let go of the outlaw lifestyle of living on the run. Frank also had his troubles.
One day, a son of a neighbor came to visit Frank while he was in the fields planting corn. The young man yelled to Frank, who hollered back "who is it?" When the young fella didn't respond quick enough, he quickly found himself looking down the barrel of not one, but two six-shooters.
Frank's finely honed skills in his guerrilla and outlaw lifestyles also crept into play occasionally as when he would sit down to a game of poker. One friend said, "Although Frank (Ben) looked like a preacher, he could play poker like a politician."
Even Annie forgot herself. She once offered a neighbor woman an opportunity to pick an item from her jewelry box to wear to a party and the woman was astounded by the amount of high quality jewelry a simple sharecropper's wife had in her possession.
Still, no one ever suspected the friendly couple Ben and Fannie Woodson of any shady past or present. They were well-liked by all of their acquaintances, as were Jesse and his wife.
Typical Jesse, however, quickly got himself involved in one too many financial binds, overspent, and over-played several friends and business acquaintances, finding himself being sued for bounced checks and accruing other debts. The hot water was rising and he was chaffing to make a change.
He was used to earning money the quick way – by stealing it – not by the old-fashioned way of having to work for it.
Jesse got to feeling a little too bold and was letting his guard down too frequently and by December of 1878, he realized it was getting a bit too "hot" for him in Humphreys County. So, he packed up his family and headed to Nashville where he could reconnect with his brother.
In late 1878 or early 1879, Frank rented a farm east of the Clarksville Pike, northwest of Nashville, which stood on a knoll overlooking the pike. It created a great outlook for Frank to see who was approaching the property.
It was to Frank's new home that Jesse, Zee and their children headed after leaving Humphreys County.
I've found the following a very interesting description of the two men as something that fit not only their known personalities, but that of two men on the run from something very bad.
"They were very quiet men. They spoke very little and attended their own business ... Frank was the quieter of the two, though Jesse never talked a great deal ... Frank used to sit off by himself on the track (race track) and whittle a stick and seemed to think a great deal. Neither of the men ever joked and they laughed but little (proof that the art of living on the run and incognito was wearing on the brothers). They both gambled a great deal. They were said to play poker right smart and play all sorts of games big and little." (Aleck Ament, bartender at the Crockford Saloon, Nashville - Nashville Daily American, Oct. 12, 1882 edition)
Jesse was getting itchy again, however. He liked robbing trains and banks and he liked the lifestyle it afforded him. Early in the summer of 1879, he made a trip west of the Mississippi that took him to the railhead of the brand new Santa Fe line at Las Vegas – perhaps to look for a new place to settle down, far away from Missouri law enforcement, or to look for new gang members.
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| This photo has been circulating for a long time and alleges that it is of Billy the Kid (left) and Jesse James (second from right). It is not Jesse in this photo and clearly does not even resemble him. There are tons of photos out there alleging to be of Jesse and/or Frank and even some of their family and many of them are fakes. |
Still, legend has it that Jesse did reveal himself to Billy the Kid and had sought him out to see if he would join the gang. But Billy was not into robbing trains or banks, he preferred rounding up the livestock of others and taking it for his own.
Something tells me no gang would have had enough room for the personalities of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
It seems that Las Vegas was too big for the likes of Jesse, as he witnessed other gangs that had been lured to the wild western town – mostly known as the Dodge City Boys. They began robbing a number of stagecoaches and some trains, so Jesse hightailed it back to Missouri.
And there, back in his old stomping grounds ... Jesse assembled what would be the last James gang and the beginning of the end.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Fifteen years until his death – bold, brave and feared by many – who was Jesse James?
The images appear before my mind like a vignette from an early 1900s movie. Jesse age 2 1/2 clinging to his father's leg, Jesse age 15 – plowing the field and beaten near to death by enemy soldiers. Jesse growing angrier by the day over the injustices done to neighbors as well as his own family. Jesse watching his stepfather being hung repeatedly to torture him into disclosing where Frank and fellow bushwhackers are hiding. Jesse's mother pregnant and being hauled off to jail. Jesse at war, a hole shot in his chest and spending that cold, frightening night in the creek.
These things defined the boy who became a very angry man. The man Jesse became is the one we are still talking about 131 years after his death.
He was complex, youthful, gregarious, aggressive, a prankster, a bloodthirsty killer, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a vengeful desperado.
It's easy to criticize what Jesse and his brother did throughout those years following the war. Like other guerrillas, the war didn't end for them, it continued and they seemed to want to keep it alive.
They wanted to keep their hatred alive and right the wrongs they saw during the war. This is where they've gotten the Robin Hood image and it's a distorted one. They didn't rob from the rich and give to the poor. They went after entities that they felt wronged them. Once in a while they were lenient on a victim, other times they weren't.
As the boys drifted between the states of Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska and Kentucky, and occasionally, somewhere on the east coast, during the years leading up to 1874, they sometimes committed the robberies of which they've been accused and other times they did not – though they were blamed.
It would have been easy to lay the blame on the James gang.
One needs to remember too, that greed and sleazy doings were occurring all over the United States and not just being committed by criminals, but by those appearing to be upstanding citizens. Somehow, somewhere the romanticism of the James gang was cast at them and it stuck, forever cementing them in the minds of the public – then and now – as the first, the baddest, the biggest, the meanest bandits in the world.
Over these ensuing years, the boys were on the run – a lot. They had to live off the land, they rode hard, and they had to constantly be looking over their shoulders.
They aged very quickly. By 1873, Frank was 30 years old, just about middle-aged for the mid-19th century and he had to be growing tired of the lifestyle by now ... longing to settle down with a wife and children and stop looking over his shoulder. Frank would marry Anna Ralston of Independence in June of 1874.
Jesse was still in a very long engagement to his cousin Zee, who herself, had to be tired of waiting for her man to decide to settle down. They wouldn't marry until April 24, 1874.
Jesse just wasn't the type to settle down. He was always looking for the next hit, the next kick, the next con he could come up with. He was adept at lying, at discerning who was friend or foe and he was good at what he did, as was Frank.
These two just never got caught.
In January of 1875, the horrific attack at the James/Samuel house in Kearney by the Pinkerton detectives left the boy's little brother, Archie dead and their beloved mother without her right arm.
It was one more travesty enacted on their family that added to their anger and fueled their thirst for revenge.
In September of 1876 when Jesse and Frank, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger, Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell headed to Northfield, Minnesota to rob the bank, little did they know that they would create the perfect storm of mistakes and choose a town that stood up and fought them tooth and nail.
Only two of the eight men would escape.
Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell were killed right in Northfield. Inside the bank, Frank got tired of the clerk who wouldn't open the safe, Joseph Heywood, and with mayhem erupting in the street between citizens standing up to the crooks who were supposed to be the lookouts, Frank put a gun to Heywood's head and shot him dead.
Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant who understood and spoke little English, was killed in the crossfire in the streets. That left four dead in Northfield – two robbers and two innocent men and the citizens and law enforcement out for more blood.
Cole, Bob and Jim Younger escaped with Jesse and Frank, along with Charlie Pitts, but the three Younger men were injured. Jim was shot in the jaw, a bullet lodged in the roof of his mouth and Bob's elbow was shattered, rendering his firing hand useless. Cole was shot in the thigh, and Frank had been shot in the leg as well.
The men all took off, but their horses quickly became winded and were frothing at the mouth. Day after day passed as the men rode through swamps, pouring rain, through field and forest just a bare step ahead of the posses that had been assembled and were chasing them with vengeance on their minds.
Finally, after several days of attempting to escape, exhausted, hungry and the three injured Younger men vowing they couldn't go any further, Jesse and Frank split from the Youngers, and Pitts, who was so tired he just couldn't go any further.
It wasn't long before the posse caught up to the Youngers and Pitts. Gunfire erupted and Pitts was quickly shot dead. The Youngers surrendered and surprisingly, were not lynched, but instead tried and sentenced to life in prison. It was as if the men were so exhausted and beat from their wounds and being on the run that they'd had enough and relieved in a way, to be caught.
They led lives in Stillwater prison as model prisoners. The youngest, Bob Younger, would died in prison of tuberculosis in 1889, while Jim and Cole would be paroled in 1901. However the tragedy continued. Jim committed suicide on Oct. 19, 1902 when he realized that as a condition of his parole, he could not return to Missouri and marry his love. In 1903, Cole's parole conditions were changed and he was told he was to leave Minnesota, but must never return.
Throughout it all, Cole Younger refused to divulge the identity of the two men who got away.
It was always ... honor among thieves.
Returning to September 1876, as Jesse and Frank parted from the Youngers and Pitts, they cut a wide trek through Minnesota and neighboring states (Dakota territory, Iowa, Nebraska) until they found their way back to Missouri – the posse coming extremely close to catching them, but never quite getting close enough.
They were the slipperiest of crooks.
Frank and Jesse spent many days and nights in the cold and rain, with little food or sustenance, and Frank himself was suffering from a bullet wound to the leg. Sometimes the boys had horses to ride, sometimes they walked. Their boots, made for riding not walking, were worn through and the prosperity they expected to reap from the robbery in Northfield a distant memory as the only thought in their heads was to keep going and elude the men after them.
I am guessing, however, that their years of riding with Quantrill had built these two brothers into men who could endure just about any condition – for they not only escaped like ghosts in the night, they survived the conditions as well.
Little is known about the men during the winter after Northfield. It has been rumored that they went to Adairville, Kentucky and stayed with their Hite cousins. Other rumors had them in Arkansas. Still, after the botched robbery and the capture of their most trusted gang members, it appeared that life on the lam was about over.
It was over 10 years since the war had ended and Reconstruction had come to an end. Life was changing in the U.S., people were moving forward and there was a lot less sympathy for Frank and Jesse James.
The men took their families – Jesse, Zee and Jesse Jr., and Annie, Frank and young Robert James, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland for a time, then left Maryland and headed to Nashville, Tennessee.
It was time to lay low. It would be one of the few times the two brothers attempted to live normal lives with their wives and children – trying to hold down jobs, and always ... always ... under an alias.
Meanwhile, Jesse discovered horse racing.
His frenetic mind was always thinking, conniving and planning.
These things defined the boy who became a very angry man. The man Jesse became is the one we are still talking about 131 years after his death.
He was complex, youthful, gregarious, aggressive, a prankster, a bloodthirsty killer, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a vengeful desperado.
It's easy to criticize what Jesse and his brother did throughout those years following the war. Like other guerrillas, the war didn't end for them, it continued and they seemed to want to keep it alive.
They wanted to keep their hatred alive and right the wrongs they saw during the war. This is where they've gotten the Robin Hood image and it's a distorted one. They didn't rob from the rich and give to the poor. They went after entities that they felt wronged them. Once in a while they were lenient on a victim, other times they weren't.
As the boys drifted between the states of Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska and Kentucky, and occasionally, somewhere on the east coast, during the years leading up to 1874, they sometimes committed the robberies of which they've been accused and other times they did not – though they were blamed.
It would have been easy to lay the blame on the James gang.
One needs to remember too, that greed and sleazy doings were occurring all over the United States and not just being committed by criminals, but by those appearing to be upstanding citizens. Somehow, somewhere the romanticism of the James gang was cast at them and it stuck, forever cementing them in the minds of the public – then and now – as the first, the baddest, the biggest, the meanest bandits in the world.
Over these ensuing years, the boys were on the run – a lot. They had to live off the land, they rode hard, and they had to constantly be looking over their shoulders.
They aged very quickly. By 1873, Frank was 30 years old, just about middle-aged for the mid-19th century and he had to be growing tired of the lifestyle by now ... longing to settle down with a wife and children and stop looking over his shoulder. Frank would marry Anna Ralston of Independence in June of 1874.
Jesse was still in a very long engagement to his cousin Zee, who herself, had to be tired of waiting for her man to decide to settle down. They wouldn't marry until April 24, 1874.
Jesse just wasn't the type to settle down. He was always looking for the next hit, the next kick, the next con he could come up with. He was adept at lying, at discerning who was friend or foe and he was good at what he did, as was Frank.
These two just never got caught.
In January of 1875, the horrific attack at the James/Samuel house in Kearney by the Pinkerton detectives left the boy's little brother, Archie dead and their beloved mother without her right arm.
It was one more travesty enacted on their family that added to their anger and fueled their thirst for revenge.
In September of 1876 when Jesse and Frank, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger, Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell headed to Northfield, Minnesota to rob the bank, little did they know that they would create the perfect storm of mistakes and choose a town that stood up and fought them tooth and nail.
Only two of the eight men would escape.
Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell were killed right in Northfield. Inside the bank, Frank got tired of the clerk who wouldn't open the safe, Joseph Heywood, and with mayhem erupting in the street between citizens standing up to the crooks who were supposed to be the lookouts, Frank put a gun to Heywood's head and shot him dead.
 |
| Joseph Lee Heywood, the bank clerk from the Northfield, Minn. robbery who refused to open the safe for Frank James. James shot Heywood in the head, killing him instantly, when he was urged to hurry up and leave, due to the gun battle raging outside in the street between citizens and outlaws. |
Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant who understood and spoke little English, was killed in the crossfire in the streets. That left four dead in Northfield – two robbers and two innocent men and the citizens and law enforcement out for more blood.
Cole, Bob and Jim Younger escaped with Jesse and Frank, along with Charlie Pitts, but the three Younger men were injured. Jim was shot in the jaw, a bullet lodged in the roof of his mouth and Bob's elbow was shattered, rendering his firing hand useless. Cole was shot in the thigh, and Frank had been shot in the leg as well.
The men all took off, but their horses quickly became winded and were frothing at the mouth. Day after day passed as the men rode through swamps, pouring rain, through field and forest just a bare step ahead of the posses that had been assembled and were chasing them with vengeance on their minds.
Finally, after several days of attempting to escape, exhausted, hungry and the three injured Younger men vowing they couldn't go any further, Jesse and Frank split from the Youngers, and Pitts, who was so tired he just couldn't go any further.
 |
| Cole Younger after his capture by the posse from the botched Northfield, Minn. bank robbery. He was shot in the head, which caused the swollen right eye. |
They led lives in Stillwater prison as model prisoners. The youngest, Bob Younger, would died in prison of tuberculosis in 1889, while Jim and Cole would be paroled in 1901. However the tragedy continued. Jim committed suicide on Oct. 19, 1902 when he realized that as a condition of his parole, he could not return to Missouri and marry his love. In 1903, Cole's parole conditions were changed and he was told he was to leave Minnesota, but must never return.
Throughout it all, Cole Younger refused to divulge the identity of the two men who got away.
It was always ... honor among thieves.
Returning to September 1876, as Jesse and Frank parted from the Youngers and Pitts, they cut a wide trek through Minnesota and neighboring states (Dakota territory, Iowa, Nebraska) until they found their way back to Missouri – the posse coming extremely close to catching them, but never quite getting close enough.
They were the slipperiest of crooks.
Frank and Jesse spent many days and nights in the cold and rain, with little food or sustenance, and Frank himself was suffering from a bullet wound to the leg. Sometimes the boys had horses to ride, sometimes they walked. Their boots, made for riding not walking, were worn through and the prosperity they expected to reap from the robbery in Northfield a distant memory as the only thought in their heads was to keep going and elude the men after them.
I am guessing, however, that their years of riding with Quantrill had built these two brothers into men who could endure just about any condition – for they not only escaped like ghosts in the night, they survived the conditions as well.
Little is known about the men during the winter after Northfield. It has been rumored that they went to Adairville, Kentucky and stayed with their Hite cousins. Other rumors had them in Arkansas. Still, after the botched robbery and the capture of their most trusted gang members, it appeared that life on the lam was about over.
It was over 10 years since the war had ended and Reconstruction had come to an end. Life was changing in the U.S., people were moving forward and there was a lot less sympathy for Frank and Jesse James.
The men took their families – Jesse, Zee and Jesse Jr., and Annie, Frank and young Robert James, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland for a time, then left Maryland and headed to Nashville, Tennessee.
It was time to lay low. It would be one of the few times the two brothers attempted to live normal lives with their wives and children – trying to hold down jobs, and always ... always ... under an alias.
Meanwhile, Jesse discovered horse racing.
His frenetic mind was always thinking, conniving and planning.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
The war is over, but Jesse James' life is fragile and fraught with pain for years to come
The last few days of the War Between the States, would mark the end of good health for Jesse James and scar him for the rest of his life, contributing – I believe – to his early death at the hands of Robert Ford on April 3, 1882.
On May 11, 1865, Archie Clement wrote a letter to the commander, Maj. B.K. Davis, at Lexington, in which he threatened retaliation if any of his friends were hurt.
"Sir: This is to notify you that I will give you until Friday morning, 10 a.m., May 12, 1865, to surrender the town of Lexington. If you surrender, we will treat you and all taken as prisoners of war. If we have to take it by storm we will burn the town and kill the soldiers. We have the force and are determined to have it. I am, sir, your most obedient servant. A. Clement"
So polite when making threats!
May 12 came and went without so much as a burp on the radar.
There were, however, about 100 guerrillas that had made it known they wanted to surrender, but wanted to be treated as citizens and not punished for war crimes. Nevertheless, according to James friend and biographer, Jesse Edwards, Jesse and Archie Clement were not in favor of surrender.
So it was that on May 15, 1865, part of the Third Wisconsin and perhaps a few of the Johnson County militia skirmished with guerrillas southeast of Lexington, in the area now known as Tabo Creek.
A Major Davis reported that he believed Clement was on the Missouri River scouting for a way to cross and that he and his group were fired upon the previous day about six miles out on Salt Pond Road as they returned from the Missouri River.
Jesse himself said that he and a handful of guerrillas were headed for Lexington to surrender when they ran into some drunken soldiers.
"My horse was killed and I was shot through the breast," he said. "I was running through the woods, pursued by two men on horseback ... they were pressing me hard, every jump that I made, the blood would spurt out of my wound.
"That ended the fight. I was near a creek. I lay in the water all night, it seemed that my body was on fire. The next morning I crawled up the bank and a man was plowing nearby and he helped me get to my friends."
While the guerrillas had been looking for a way to cross the river, it seems they were looking to flee to Mexico instead of surrendering. No matter what the plans were, Jesse now was in no shape to surrender.
The farmer who found Jesse, took him to a Mr. Bradley's home on Tabo Creek, where Bradley's wife nursed him back to a point where they could bring him into Lexington to surrender.
About 18 months ago, a group of us researchers went looking for Salt Pond Road and believe we found it – a narrow gravel road right off Tabo Creek that is still marshy and surrounded by cornfields. I can never pass this area without thinking of Jesse lying in that creek throughout that night after being shot.
Fellow guerrilla and sometime James gang member Jim Cummins later remarked about the location and that it was not far from the Higginsville Confederate home and indeed, that is true.
Jesse was cared for by the kindly farmer's wife until May 21, when he was put in a wagon and driven to Lexington, about nine miles north of Tabo Creek, where he surrendered at the Virginia Hotel. It was there that he also took the oath.
It is believed that John Jones of the Third Wisconsin is the man who shot Jesse and allegedly, Jesse met the man before he departed Lexington. Oh to know what was said betwixt the two!
This was the second shot to the right lung that Jesse had sustained in a short period of time. This shot, however, left a lead minie ball in his lung – something that I believe caused much of his bizarre behavior in distant years from lead poisoning.
His wound was very serious and it was over a month before he could travel anywhere, but a Captain Rogers, upon learning of Jesse's mother and stepfather's exile to Nebraska, arranged passage on a steamboat up the Missouri to Kansas City where Jesse was to stay with his aunt and uncle, Mary James and John Mimms. These are the same folks who cared for him after his 1864 shot to the same lung.
And, they were the parents of Jesse's future wife, Zee Mimms – Jesse's first cousin, whom he would later marry.
Jesse stayed with the Mimms' through the rest of June and first half of July. Jesse recounted that, "Dr. Johnson Lykins ... visited me daily and did everything for my wound possible ... So did Dr. Jo Wood ... on the 15th of July, 1865, I went up the river to Rulo, in Nebraska, where my family were."
The trip was hard on Jesse and despite having a physician for a stepfather, Jesse's wound was very bad. His mother reported that "Jesse was often so near death in the eight weeks he was with me in Nebraska that I would bend over his bed and put my ear to his breast to see if he was breathing or his heart was beating."
One day, after two months in Nebraska, Jesse shakily whispered to his mother that he didn't want to be buried in a Northern state. So Zerelda arranged careful passage for Jesse to return to Kansas City.
He was in such poor shape and so weak that four men had to carry him to the steamboat landing and get him on a boat. Even with being carried, Jesse fainted dead away. When he awoke, he asked his mother where he was going and she said he was on a boat going home.
"Thank the Lord," he said.
Zerelda took Jesse back to Harlem, now Kansas City, where the Mimms' lived. She said that he was "wounded so badly he could not sit up in bed."
Cousin Zee nursed Jesse through the end of August and into the latter part of October and it was during this time that the two cousins fell in love with each other – becoming secretly engaged. It wasn't until the end of October before Jesse could even begin to walk a little and at that time, he returned to his family's farm in Kearney.
For a while, Jesse remained at the family farm recuperating from his wound. In 1866, he joined Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, was baptized, and "for a year or two, acted as if he was a sincere and true Christian," said Dr. W.H. Price, a resident of Kearney at the time. "After he came out of the army, he was quiet, affable and gentle in his actions. He was liked by every one who knew him."
If one considers the extent of the wound Jesse had in his chest – remembering that it was a SECOND shot to the right lung – he was having difficulty recovering. His mother once recalled that every time he breathed, pus would come out of the wound. He was in a great deal of pain, weak and fragile and lost a lot of muscle weight that he'd had while living as a guerrilla during the war.
It is my personal opinion that Jesse was too fragile, too weak and not in a place during the first couple of years after the war, where he could ride a horse and rob banks, while living on the run. That means I am of the opinion that he did not commit the first daylight robbery of the bank in Liberty, nor the bank in Richmond, Missouri (May 23, 1867) in which several men were killed.
Jesse was simply too unwell to carry these deeds out.
In fact, by June of 1867, Jesse was still so incapacitated by his wound, that it was recommended that he consult with the famous Confederate surgeon, Dr. Paul Eve, of Nashville, Tenn. Eve, among his other great accomplishments, was renowned for performing the world's first successful hysterectomy, along with his record with war wounds.
"I went there in June 1867 and remained under his care for three weeks," recounted Jesse.
Despite the skills of this most famous surgeon, the doctor did not have a good prognosis for Jesse James.
"He told me that my lung was so badly decayed that I was bound to die and that the best thing I could do was to go home and die among my people," said Jesse.
However, in later years, Jesse would remember that he did not intuitively feel he was going to die from this wound, but he left Eve's care anyway and went to stay with relatives in Adairville, Kentucky, where his father was from.
At some point in Kentucky, Jesse was joined by his brother, Frank, and the boys decided to head to Paso Robles, California, where their father's brother, Drury Woodson James, was living and co-owner of a large ranch that contained some mineral waters of which Jesse hoped to partake.
Known for their curative powers, the springs contained sulfur – much as the later-discovered many springs in Excelsior Springs would produce by 1880 – two years before Jesse was killed. Excelsior Springs was an area that Jesse and Frank had, many a time, traveled through – indeed – it now houses the golf course on which the two Battles of Fredericksburg were held in 1863. However, in 1867, the springs were unknown to the James boys and they headed to California.
It is believed they traveled by sea from New York via Panama. And while in California, the boys attempted to find the grave of their father, but were unable to locate it.
Gaining some healing from the sulfur waters did help his constantly infected lung begin to heal, though it never was the same again and breathing was difficult at best.
Jesse and Frank returned from California in the fall of 1868 and Jesse requested that Mount Olivet Baptist Church remove his name from its membership. Perhaps he was feeling spiffy enough to get out on the road and start robbing a few banks and trains.
His withdrawal from the church was "for the stated reason that he believed himself unworthy," according to an April 11, 1874 Kansas City Star article.
Jesse always did have a strong sense of intuition, one that would develop as the years began to pass, his life on the run began to take its toll and that old lead minie ball began to leach poison throughout his body ... day by day.
On May 11, 1865, Archie Clement wrote a letter to the commander, Maj. B.K. Davis, at Lexington, in which he threatened retaliation if any of his friends were hurt.
"Sir: This is to notify you that I will give you until Friday morning, 10 a.m., May 12, 1865, to surrender the town of Lexington. If you surrender, we will treat you and all taken as prisoners of war. If we have to take it by storm we will burn the town and kill the soldiers. We have the force and are determined to have it. I am, sir, your most obedient servant. A. Clement"
So polite when making threats!
May 12 came and went without so much as a burp on the radar.
There were, however, about 100 guerrillas that had made it known they wanted to surrender, but wanted to be treated as citizens and not punished for war crimes. Nevertheless, according to James friend and biographer, Jesse Edwards, Jesse and Archie Clement were not in favor of surrender.
So it was that on May 15, 1865, part of the Third Wisconsin and perhaps a few of the Johnson County militia skirmished with guerrillas southeast of Lexington, in the area now known as Tabo Creek.
A Major Davis reported that he believed Clement was on the Missouri River scouting for a way to cross and that he and his group were fired upon the previous day about six miles out on Salt Pond Road as they returned from the Missouri River.
Jesse himself said that he and a handful of guerrillas were headed for Lexington to surrender when they ran into some drunken soldiers.
"My horse was killed and I was shot through the breast," he said. "I was running through the woods, pursued by two men on horseback ... they were pressing me hard, every jump that I made, the blood would spurt out of my wound.
"That ended the fight. I was near a creek. I lay in the water all night, it seemed that my body was on fire. The next morning I crawled up the bank and a man was plowing nearby and he helped me get to my friends."
While the guerrillas had been looking for a way to cross the river, it seems they were looking to flee to Mexico instead of surrendering. No matter what the plans were, Jesse now was in no shape to surrender.
The farmer who found Jesse, took him to a Mr. Bradley's home on Tabo Creek, where Bradley's wife nursed him back to a point where they could bring him into Lexington to surrender.
About 18 months ago, a group of us researchers went looking for Salt Pond Road and believe we found it – a narrow gravel road right off Tabo Creek that is still marshy and surrounded by cornfields. I can never pass this area without thinking of Jesse lying in that creek throughout that night after being shot.
Fellow guerrilla and sometime James gang member Jim Cummins later remarked about the location and that it was not far from the Higginsville Confederate home and indeed, that is true.
Jesse was cared for by the kindly farmer's wife until May 21, when he was put in a wagon and driven to Lexington, about nine miles north of Tabo Creek, where he surrendered at the Virginia Hotel. It was there that he also took the oath.
It is believed that John Jones of the Third Wisconsin is the man who shot Jesse and allegedly, Jesse met the man before he departed Lexington. Oh to know what was said betwixt the two!
This was the second shot to the right lung that Jesse had sustained in a short period of time. This shot, however, left a lead minie ball in his lung – something that I believe caused much of his bizarre behavior in distant years from lead poisoning.
His wound was very serious and it was over a month before he could travel anywhere, but a Captain Rogers, upon learning of Jesse's mother and stepfather's exile to Nebraska, arranged passage on a steamboat up the Missouri to Kansas City where Jesse was to stay with his aunt and uncle, Mary James and John Mimms. These are the same folks who cared for him after his 1864 shot to the same lung.
And, they were the parents of Jesse's future wife, Zee Mimms – Jesse's first cousin, whom he would later marry.
Jesse stayed with the Mimms' through the rest of June and first half of July. Jesse recounted that, "Dr. Johnson Lykins ... visited me daily and did everything for my wound possible ... So did Dr. Jo Wood ... on the 15th of July, 1865, I went up the river to Rulo, in Nebraska, where my family were."
The trip was hard on Jesse and despite having a physician for a stepfather, Jesse's wound was very bad. His mother reported that "Jesse was often so near death in the eight weeks he was with me in Nebraska that I would bend over his bed and put my ear to his breast to see if he was breathing or his heart was beating."
One day, after two months in Nebraska, Jesse shakily whispered to his mother that he didn't want to be buried in a Northern state. So Zerelda arranged careful passage for Jesse to return to Kansas City.
He was in such poor shape and so weak that four men had to carry him to the steamboat landing and get him on a boat. Even with being carried, Jesse fainted dead away. When he awoke, he asked his mother where he was going and she said he was on a boat going home.
"Thank the Lord," he said.
Zerelda took Jesse back to Harlem, now Kansas City, where the Mimms' lived. She said that he was "wounded so badly he could not sit up in bed."
Cousin Zee nursed Jesse through the end of August and into the latter part of October and it was during this time that the two cousins fell in love with each other – becoming secretly engaged. It wasn't until the end of October before Jesse could even begin to walk a little and at that time, he returned to his family's farm in Kearney.
For a while, Jesse remained at the family farm recuperating from his wound. In 1866, he joined Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, was baptized, and "for a year or two, acted as if he was a sincere and true Christian," said Dr. W.H. Price, a resident of Kearney at the time. "After he came out of the army, he was quiet, affable and gentle in his actions. He was liked by every one who knew him."
If one considers the extent of the wound Jesse had in his chest – remembering that it was a SECOND shot to the right lung – he was having difficulty recovering. His mother once recalled that every time he breathed, pus would come out of the wound. He was in a great deal of pain, weak and fragile and lost a lot of muscle weight that he'd had while living as a guerrilla during the war.
It is my personal opinion that Jesse was too fragile, too weak and not in a place during the first couple of years after the war, where he could ride a horse and rob banks, while living on the run. That means I am of the opinion that he did not commit the first daylight robbery of the bank in Liberty, nor the bank in Richmond, Missouri (May 23, 1867) in which several men were killed.
Jesse was simply too unwell to carry these deeds out.
 |
| This photo, taken while Jesse and Frank were in Kentucky after the war, shows a very gaunt, skinny Jesse – evidence of the toll his lung injury took on his health. From left is their old guerrilla buddy Fletch Taylor, Frank (sitting and in Confederate clothing) and Jesse. |
"I went there in June 1867 and remained under his care for three weeks," recounted Jesse.
Despite the skills of this most famous surgeon, the doctor did not have a good prognosis for Jesse James.
"He told me that my lung was so badly decayed that I was bound to die and that the best thing I could do was to go home and die among my people," said Jesse.
However, in later years, Jesse would remember that he did not intuitively feel he was going to die from this wound, but he left Eve's care anyway and went to stay with relatives in Adairville, Kentucky, where his father was from.
At some point in Kentucky, Jesse was joined by his brother, Frank, and the boys decided to head to Paso Robles, California, where their father's brother, Drury Woodson James, was living and co-owner of a large ranch that contained some mineral waters of which Jesse hoped to partake.
Known for their curative powers, the springs contained sulfur – much as the later-discovered many springs in Excelsior Springs would produce by 1880 – two years before Jesse was killed. Excelsior Springs was an area that Jesse and Frank had, many a time, traveled through – indeed – it now houses the golf course on which the two Battles of Fredericksburg were held in 1863. However, in 1867, the springs were unknown to the James boys and they headed to California.
It is believed they traveled by sea from New York via Panama. And while in California, the boys attempted to find the grave of their father, but were unable to locate it.
Gaining some healing from the sulfur waters did help his constantly infected lung begin to heal, though it never was the same again and breathing was difficult at best.
Jesse and Frank returned from California in the fall of 1868 and Jesse requested that Mount Olivet Baptist Church remove his name from its membership. Perhaps he was feeling spiffy enough to get out on the road and start robbing a few banks and trains.
His withdrawal from the church was "for the stated reason that he believed himself unworthy," according to an April 11, 1874 Kansas City Star article.
Jesse always did have a strong sense of intuition, one that would develop as the years began to pass, his life on the run began to take its toll and that old lead minie ball began to leach poison throughout his body ... day by day.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Jesse James, handsome, fit, charismatic, yet a killer ... he was a desperado
He was known for his piercing blue eyes. With no color photography prior to 1882, it's hard to imagine the known photos of Jesse James – picturing these intense blue eyes that have been written about for 150+ years.
Yet, I find myself studying those men whose photos I come across who have piercing blue eyes and wonder whether Jesse's looked like this one or that one. The actor Bradley Cooper comes closest to what I believe Jesse looked like – next time you see a photo of Cooper, check out his eyes.
When you become an historian of people like the James family, you find yourself hungering for more and more information. You want to know height, weight, hair color, eye color, personality, voice inflections, habits.
Jesse had many habits and oddly, reports of those have been recorded, so I have gotten an image in my head of Jesse James and I guess one could say I've become fixated. That is one of the caveats of studying these men as perhaps my Jesse pal, Michelle, would say – it's a controversy. Jesse and Frank were, after all, bushwhackers and outlaws. They robbed and killed many a man. Yet they were human beings with feelings – they had dreams, aspirations and each was married to the love of their lives, two surviving children for Jesse and one for Frank.
The things Jesse's piercing blue eyes saw in his 34 years can boggle the mind even today. At the age of 2 1/2, a young, Jesse James clung to his father's leg as he prepared to leave for California, just as any child would, were a parent getting ready to leave on a lengthy journey. Perhaps deep down, the toddler knew he would never see his father again.
He was right and that would forever change his life.
Little is known about Jesse and Frank from those early years. They attended school, their mother remarried and promptly filed for divorce, her second husband dying before divorce proceedings could move forward. Zerelda married again, this time for good – to Dr. Reuben Samuel – a gentle country doctor. At least this union would be a happy one for her and for her three children by Robert James.
The boys seemed to like their stepfather for he was good to them and importantly, good to their mother.
As the 1850s grew to a close and the Missouri/Kansas border wars grew hotter and hotter, one could almost hear the talk around the supper table – Zerelda hot-headed and opinionated, Frank quiet, studious, yet fired up to defend the Confederate cause; and Jesse - only 13 1/2 when the war broke out in 1861 – hormones raging, even more opinionated than Frank and Zerelda together, and ready to go out and kill himself a bunch of Federals.
It was Frank who would go off to war first, being four years older than Jesse. Frank first served in the Missouri State Guard, fighting in the bloody Battle of Lexington (Missouri), also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, in which the Confederates won, and the Battle of Wilson's Creek. After that battle he contracted measles and ended up being sent home.
Frank signed the loyalty oath to the Union and paid a $1,000 bond on it, but it was just a piece of paper and soon he was hooting and hollering with the rest of the Rebels, heading off to join William Quantrill and his raiders in early 1863.
One can imagine Jesse, a young teenager, sitting rapt at the kitchen table listening to his brother's tales of guns firing, cannons blasting, the blood flying, men falling, the screams, the terror of battle – making Jesse swell with determination and pride that he would go out and join in the fight.
And so he did.
After the terrible beating Jesse took around May 25, 1863, following the Missouri City raid in which several Union soldiers were ambushed and killed, resulting in a unit of Federals coming to the James farm looking for the bushwhackers, Jesse's ire was up and he was determined to join Quantrill.
It would be a while before he could, yet he probably had plenty of time to fester on what was happening all around him. Southern sympathizers were being burned out of their homes, crops razed, families displaced, and in many cases, the Federals were raping the women, while killing the menfolk.
Jesse had seem some of this first-hand when, after beating him and leaving him for dead in the field of hemp in which he was working, Union soldiers – two of whom were former neighbors – proceeded to torture Jesse's stepfather by hanging him until he nearly passed out ... three times ... until they got him to confess as to the whereabouts of Frank and his fellow bushwhackers.
Jesse had spent time practicing with his gun, to the point that early on, he shot off the tip of his left middle finger, either while cleaning his gun or due to a misfire. The incident most likely made him more determined to become an expert for he was frequently described as such. He became proficient with firearms and accurate in hitting his targets.
He had to be efficient – or be killed.
Once Jesse left home to ride with Quantrill and then Bloody Bill Anderson, he never came back to live permanently. From the age of 16 until he died at 34, he never lived anywhere for very long. He spent most of his time living on the run – in the fields and forests, foraging for food along the way, often depending on the kindness of strangers who opened their doors and fed the outlaws.
He saw a lot in those years with Anderson. I've written about some of the atrocities committed. It is unknown what Jesse actually participated in. Knowing his charismatic, take-charge personality, I frankly think he may have been right up there participating. No one will ever know. It's not something he ever disclosed, nor did any of his fellow bushwhackers. Their code prohibited it.
In fact, even after the three Younger brothers, Cole, Bob and Jim, were captured after the Northfield, Minnesota raid in September 1876, they all steadfastly refused to name Jesse or Frank as the two that "got away," even though they knew they themselves were going away for a long time.
Every time I drive past Tabo Creek a few miles south of Lexington, I think of Jesse, lying wounded in the creek, a bullet in his right lung – the same lung in which he'd been shot less than a year before. The creek was muddy, cold, and had critters in it. I imagine he could hear Union soldiers searching for him, perhaps far off gunfire and he knew his comrade Archie Clement was dead.
The thoughts that must have run through his head ... did he think he would survive the night? What was going to happen to him if he did? And then there was the deflating knowledge that the war was ending and the northerners were going to win. He would have believed that all that fighting, all the blood that was shed, it was all for nothing.
He knew Frank was in Kentucky with Quantrill. Anderson was dead as was Clement. Jesse's family was in Nebraska in exile – he had to have felt more alone that night than any other time previous. And he probably thought he was going to die alone.
Did he stare up at the stars wondering if God existed? Did he wonder if he would join his father in heaven or had his heinous deeds cancelled out any hope of eternity for this young boy, not yet 18. Did he regret anything? Did he simply want his mother?
How blue were those eyes that night as he lay in that creek? Were they dark with evidence of his pain or fading as he struggled to breathe. His breathing was, at most, difficult and wheezy. He had been living off the land for nearly two years by now and despite being wiry and strong, it was a hard life – even for a 17-year-old. He'd been shot several times by now, beaten, and I've often wondered if he just wanted to give up that night in Tabo Creek. Did he think he could just close his eyes and let God take him home?
Not Jesse James. The fire that kept him going all the years after the war was already in him during the war and must have grown strong that night. For in the morning a farmer found him, took him home and nursed Jesse's wound until he was strong enough to be brought into Lexington, now in Union hands – where he could surrender.
The war was over, but it would not end for Jesse until the coward Robert Ford put a bullet in the back of his head 17 years later.
Yet, I find myself studying those men whose photos I come across who have piercing blue eyes and wonder whether Jesse's looked like this one or that one. The actor Bradley Cooper comes closest to what I believe Jesse looked like – next time you see a photo of Cooper, check out his eyes.
When you become an historian of people like the James family, you find yourself hungering for more and more information. You want to know height, weight, hair color, eye color, personality, voice inflections, habits.
Jesse had many habits and oddly, reports of those have been recorded, so I have gotten an image in my head of Jesse James and I guess one could say I've become fixated. That is one of the caveats of studying these men as perhaps my Jesse pal, Michelle, would say – it's a controversy. Jesse and Frank were, after all, bushwhackers and outlaws. They robbed and killed many a man. Yet they were human beings with feelings – they had dreams, aspirations and each was married to the love of their lives, two surviving children for Jesse and one for Frank.
The things Jesse's piercing blue eyes saw in his 34 years can boggle the mind even today. At the age of 2 1/2, a young, Jesse James clung to his father's leg as he prepared to leave for California, just as any child would, were a parent getting ready to leave on a lengthy journey. Perhaps deep down, the toddler knew he would never see his father again.
He was right and that would forever change his life.
Little is known about Jesse and Frank from those early years. They attended school, their mother remarried and promptly filed for divorce, her second husband dying before divorce proceedings could move forward. Zerelda married again, this time for good – to Dr. Reuben Samuel – a gentle country doctor. At least this union would be a happy one for her and for her three children by Robert James.
The boys seemed to like their stepfather for he was good to them and importantly, good to their mother.
As the 1850s grew to a close and the Missouri/Kansas border wars grew hotter and hotter, one could almost hear the talk around the supper table – Zerelda hot-headed and opinionated, Frank quiet, studious, yet fired up to defend the Confederate cause; and Jesse - only 13 1/2 when the war broke out in 1861 – hormones raging, even more opinionated than Frank and Zerelda together, and ready to go out and kill himself a bunch of Federals.
It was Frank who would go off to war first, being four years older than Jesse. Frank first served in the Missouri State Guard, fighting in the bloody Battle of Lexington (Missouri), also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, in which the Confederates won, and the Battle of Wilson's Creek. After that battle he contracted measles and ended up being sent home.
Frank signed the loyalty oath to the Union and paid a $1,000 bond on it, but it was just a piece of paper and soon he was hooting and hollering with the rest of the Rebels, heading off to join William Quantrill and his raiders in early 1863.
One can imagine Jesse, a young teenager, sitting rapt at the kitchen table listening to his brother's tales of guns firing, cannons blasting, the blood flying, men falling, the screams, the terror of battle – making Jesse swell with determination and pride that he would go out and join in the fight.
And so he did.
After the terrible beating Jesse took around May 25, 1863, following the Missouri City raid in which several Union soldiers were ambushed and killed, resulting in a unit of Federals coming to the James farm looking for the bushwhackers, Jesse's ire was up and he was determined to join Quantrill.
It would be a while before he could, yet he probably had plenty of time to fester on what was happening all around him. Southern sympathizers were being burned out of their homes, crops razed, families displaced, and in many cases, the Federals were raping the women, while killing the menfolk.
Jesse had seem some of this first-hand when, after beating him and leaving him for dead in the field of hemp in which he was working, Union soldiers – two of whom were former neighbors – proceeded to torture Jesse's stepfather by hanging him until he nearly passed out ... three times ... until they got him to confess as to the whereabouts of Frank and his fellow bushwhackers.
Jesse had spent time practicing with his gun, to the point that early on, he shot off the tip of his left middle finger, either while cleaning his gun or due to a misfire. The incident most likely made him more determined to become an expert for he was frequently described as such. He became proficient with firearms and accurate in hitting his targets.
He had to be efficient – or be killed.
 |
| Jesse James, about 1864 – age 16, wearing a guerrilla shirt with multiple pockets – to hold the extra pistols needed. You can see his eyes, intense, penetrating – a handsome youth, not yet jaded by years of living in the wild, on the run and witnessing the horrors yet to come. |
He saw a lot in those years with Anderson. I've written about some of the atrocities committed. It is unknown what Jesse actually participated in. Knowing his charismatic, take-charge personality, I frankly think he may have been right up there participating. No one will ever know. It's not something he ever disclosed, nor did any of his fellow bushwhackers. Their code prohibited it.
In fact, even after the three Younger brothers, Cole, Bob and Jim, were captured after the Northfield, Minnesota raid in September 1876, they all steadfastly refused to name Jesse or Frank as the two that "got away," even though they knew they themselves were going away for a long time.
Every time I drive past Tabo Creek a few miles south of Lexington, I think of Jesse, lying wounded in the creek, a bullet in his right lung – the same lung in which he'd been shot less than a year before. The creek was muddy, cold, and had critters in it. I imagine he could hear Union soldiers searching for him, perhaps far off gunfire and he knew his comrade Archie Clement was dead.
The thoughts that must have run through his head ... did he think he would survive the night? What was going to happen to him if he did? And then there was the deflating knowledge that the war was ending and the northerners were going to win. He would have believed that all that fighting, all the blood that was shed, it was all for nothing.
He knew Frank was in Kentucky with Quantrill. Anderson was dead as was Clement. Jesse's family was in Nebraska in exile – he had to have felt more alone that night than any other time previous. And he probably thought he was going to die alone.
Did he stare up at the stars wondering if God existed? Did he wonder if he would join his father in heaven or had his heinous deeds cancelled out any hope of eternity for this young boy, not yet 18. Did he regret anything? Did he simply want his mother?
How blue were those eyes that night as he lay in that creek? Were they dark with evidence of his pain or fading as he struggled to breathe. His breathing was, at most, difficult and wheezy. He had been living off the land for nearly two years by now and despite being wiry and strong, it was a hard life – even for a 17-year-old. He'd been shot several times by now, beaten, and I've often wondered if he just wanted to give up that night in Tabo Creek. Did he think he could just close his eyes and let God take him home?
Not Jesse James. The fire that kept him going all the years after the war was already in him during the war and must have grown strong that night. For in the morning a farmer found him, took him home and nursed Jesse's wound until he was strong enough to be brought into Lexington, now in Union hands – where he could surrender.
The war was over, but it would not end for Jesse until the coward Robert Ford put a bullet in the back of his head 17 years later.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Order #11 – Blood and Ashes Program – 150th anniversary of the order
Today is a simple blog to inform anyone in the Kansas City area about the events occurring in Kansas City on Tuesday, August 27 regarding Order #11 - the 150th anniversary of that order.
It should be interesting to note that Zerelda Cole James Samuel and her husband, Reuben Samuel and their young children were exiled even though they did not live is the counties expected to be depopulated – they were in Clay County, but it was their ties to Frank and Jesse James, thus Quantrill and his raiders that caused them to be sent away. They went to Nebraska and stayed there until the end of the war. However, they were lucky enough that they did not lose their lands nor their home.
Elizabeth Rains Johnson
Below is the press release I received through the Friends of the James Farm from the Alexander Majors House and Wornall House, hosts, along with the Jackson County Historical Society.
It should be interesting to note that Zerelda Cole James Samuel and her husband, Reuben Samuel and their young children were exiled even though they did not live is the counties expected to be depopulated – they were in Clay County, but it was their ties to Frank and Jesse James, thus Quantrill and his raiders that caused them to be sent away. They went to Nebraska and stayed there until the end of the war. However, they were lucky enough that they did not lose their lands nor their home.
Elizabeth Rains Johnson
Below is the press release I received through the Friends of the James Farm from the Alexander Majors House and Wornall House, hosts, along with the Jackson County Historical Society.
HISTORIC HOUSES LAUNCH NEW AND BOLD EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
(Kansas City, MO)— On Tuesday, August 27 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., the Alexander Majors House Museum (8201 State Line Road, Kansas City) will offer a lecture, panel discussion, and two living history tours that comprise the second event for Blood & Ashes: A Civil War Trilogy, a series of commemorative programs observing the 150th anniversary of General Order No. 11 issued by Union General Ewing on August 25, 1863. Blood & Ashes is being produced by the Jackson County Historical Society in cooperation with The Wornall/Majors House Museums, Wide Awake Films, Wine Walk on Delaware, and The Rice-Tremonti Home.
In 1863, eighty percent of the population in the Missouri counties along the Kansas border were supporters of Southern guerrillas. In an effort to suppress the secessionists, the Federal commander issued General Orders No. 9 and No. 10 compelling Southern sympathizers to be forcibly removed from the state and their property, including slaves, confiscated. Following the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, Order No. 11 instituted the complete evacuation and depopulation of all citizens regardless of their political support for the south or the north from the western border counties of Missouri located within the District of the Border (the Counties affected were Jackson, Cass, Bates and Vernon County, north of the Osage River).
On August 27, the Alexander Majors House, located at 8201 State Line Road, Kansas City, will offer two living history tours with vignettes at 6:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. in the Majors House and operational blacksmith’s shop; a lecture by Dr. Diane Mutti Burke at 7:00 p.m. in the Majors Barn; and a panel discussion immediately following the lecture with Dr. Mutti Burke, Dr. Timothy Westcott, and Ralph Monaco in the Majors Barn. Dr. Mutti Burke’s lecture will place General Order No. 11 in the context of the larger refugee crisis that emerged in western Missouri during the Civil War. The panel discussion and tours will explore the socio-economic, racial, and political complexities of Orders No. 9, 10, and 11.
Dr. Mutti Burke is an associate professor of history at the University of Missouri – Kansas City and is currently serving as the Director of UMKC’s Center for Midwestern Studies. Dr. Timothy Westcott is the Associate Professor of History and Department Chair of Social Sciences at Park University. Ralph Monaco is the Vice President of Living History and Programming at the Jackson County Historical Society. The vignettes are by local author and Wornall/Majors board member Hibberd Kline.
Tickets are $10 per person and $5 for children ages twelve and under for both a tour and the lecture/panel discussion. Tours will start at 6:00 p.m. (preceding the lecture) and 8:30 p.m. (following the lecture/panel discussion). The lecture and panel discussion will start at 7:00 p.m. To purchase tickets, call (816) 444-1858 or visit www.wornallhouse.org to make an online payment using PayPal. Advance registration is recommended.
“The Wornall and Alexander Majors Houses are vaulable educational resources. Our August 27 program at the Majors House will launch a new series of dynamic and inclusive educational opportunities that we will offer over the next few years, especially with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Westport in 2014,” says executive director Anna Marie Tutera. “Our goal is to create bold and enriching programs that appeal to a multigenerational and multicultural audience and that are created in collaboration with a diverse group of community residents including youth. We strongly believe that understanding your history is a critical compenent of building self-confidence and being a socially responsible member of society. We are confident that we have the capacity to provide meaningful programs about history that also help to build community and foster both youth development and civic unity.”
The other two events comprising Blood & Ashes will take place on Saturday, August 17 from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Pacific House and Delaware Street and Saturday, September 14 at the Rice-Tremonti Home. On August 17, there will be a reading of Order No. 11 by General Ewing, the debate between General Ewing and George Caleb Bingham, period music, Union soldiers, and other period activities. On September 14, there will be an all-day living history event showing the devastating effect of General Orders 9, 10, and 11 at the Rice-Tremonti Home, 8801 E. 66th St., Raytown, Mo. 64133, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. followed by a candlelight tour from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. For more information on these events, please visit www.ordernumber11.org.
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The John Wornall House and The Alexander Majors House merged in 2011 and formed The Wornall/Majors House Museums, a nonprofit organization with a mission to “engage community by bringing history to life through innovative, hands-on programs and experiences.” The Museums boast an impressive record of achievement, reaching over 8,000 visitors and program participants annually with a 2012 operating budget in excess of $250,000. The Houses feature hands-on tours, including popular “ghost” tours and Holiday festivities. Field trips by dozens of local schools introduce thousands of students to history and what it means to them. The grounds of both Houses are filled with children’s laughter during sold-out summer camp sessions and often bustle with activity as history buffs and educators reenact the lives of Civil War soldiers and civilians. Concerts and readings by regional authors and re-enactors round out the Houses’ programs. For more information about The John Wornall House, log on to www.wornallhouse.org. For more information about The Alexander Majors House, go to www.alexandermajors.com.
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