Jesse James

keving

,United States

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Jesse Woodson James was born in Kearney, Missouri on September 5, 1847. His father, the Rev. Robert James, was a Baptist minister who helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. When Jesse was seventeen he joined the Confederate Army to help fight for independence from the union. He served the entire Civil War in a group of raiders led by the notorious William Clarke Quantrill. The group of men rode horseback into Kansas, conducting raids and harassing union sympathizers. He once killed eight people on the same day. Jesse returned to Missouri and formed a gang of outlaws. The gang became known as the James Gang and included his brother Frank and several people that had been in Quantrill's Raiders.

They robbed stagecoaches, banks, trains, and stole everything they could take with them. Their reputation grew quickly and caused many people to chase them, but the gang managed to evade capture. They received a lot of media attention that created a lot of fans. The press wrote about him as if he was a hero. A militia formed to fire at the gang, killing some of them and capturing everyone else except for Jesse and his brother. The two fled and returned home to Missouri, where the two met up with their wives. Jesse and his wife moved to Saint Joseph, Missouri and he changed his name to Tom Howard. In April of 1882, he began seeking out people to help him rob a bank in Platte City. he found two brothers named Robert and Charles Ford and invited

them to his house in order to discuss how best to perform the operation. The men came to his house on April 3, 1882. During the meeting, Jesse noticed a picture on his wall was crooked and stood on a chair to correct it. When he had his back turned, the two men drew their pistols and shot him. Robert's bullet hit Jesse in the back of the head, killing him instantly. They had expected to receive the full $10,000 reward, but were only given a small amount of money and charged with murder. They were sentenced to hang for murdering Jesse, but the governor of Missouri pardoned them. Jesse was buried in his hometown cemetery and his mother wrote the following epitaph: ''In loving memory of my beloved son, murdered by a traitor and coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.''

Charles Ford, when he heard that Frank James was searching for them and planned to kill them in revenge for his brother’s death, began to move from town to town. For the next two years he ran like a scared rabbit, changing his name several times, until finally he could take it no more and committed suicide in 1884. In the meantime, Bob Ford was capitalizing on his betrayal of Jesse James, taking to the stage, appearing in an act entitled Outlaws of Missouri. Night after night, Ford retold his story, carefully omitting that he had shot James in the back. June 8th, in walked a man by the name of Edward O. Kelly with a sawed off shotgun. As Ford's back was to the door, Kelly said ''Hello, Bob,'' and as Ford turned around to see who

had addressed him, Kelly shot him with both barrels, killing him instantly. Kelly was arrested and tried for murder. He was convicted and given a twenty-year sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary. However, after serving ten years, he was released in 1902. Two years later, in January, 1904, Kelly was shot down in the streets of Oklahoma City by lawmen.