James-Younger Gang: Jesse James My Father, ch8

What follows is the text of a book published in 1899 by Jesse Edwards James, son of Jesse James and Zee Mimms James. The first half of the book is Jesse Jr.'s remembrances of his famous father, who he didn't know was the famous outlaw until after his death. He includes all he remembers plus stories told to him by his family. The second half of the book (not to be included on this website) is the story of his own problems being accused of train robbery. Copies of the complete book may be found at ABEBOOKS:

FOR sixteen years of his life, beginning with 1866 and ending April 3, 1882, when he was killed, my father was outlawed, and police officials and detectives were searching for him everywhere, except in the right place to find him. In these long years he had many thrilling adventures, some amusing ones, and many narrow escapes, none of which have ever been told in print before, Owing to the fact that my father had only two photographs ever taken and that these were in the hands of his family and were never seen by those who were searching for him, no correct picture of him was over printed, and consequently his features were unknown to all except a few, and nearly all of these were loyal friends who could be depended on never to betray him under any circumstances. My father used to live in Kansas City and other cities, and go and come on the busiest streets in broad daylight, as any other citizen would, even when a large reward was offered for his capture. Of course he was in great danger of discovery at all times, and he was always heavily armed.

While the officers were hunting for him at one time there was an agricultural county fair held in Kansas City, and among the prizes offered was one for the best ladies saddle horse, which must be shown in action before the judges at the fair. My father attended this fair and entered his favorite horse, "Stonewall," for the prize. In the competition for the prize "Stonewall" was ridden by Miss Annie Ralston, and the horse took first prize. At that very moment there was a big reward offered for my father's capture.

At another time my father entered a horse in the races at the Jackson, Miss., fair. The race was in three heats. My father was quite sure that his was a better horse than any in the race, but in the first heat he failed to win. My father suspected that the jockey was holding the horse in deliberately and for the purpose of making him lose the race, so my father himself rode the horse in the last two heats and won the race and the purse.

A year or two after the close of the war my father and a companion who had been with him in Quantrell's command, were riding on horseback through the mountain districts of Tennessee. They stopped for dinner at a house along a country road, and while resting there learned that the woman of the house was a widow whose husband had also been a guerrilla with Quantrell, and had died a short time before of wounds received in one of the skirmishes of the last days of the war. My father noticed that the widow was very despondent, and he supposed it was because of the death of her husband. He talked to her in a consoling way, and she told him that what worried her most just then was that her house and little farm was mortgaged for five hundred dollars, the loan fell due that very day, and she expected the sheriff and the money-lender to come that afternoon, and foreclose the mortgage and order her off the place. My father had fought in the same company with her husband in the war. He had five hundred dollars with him, but it was about all he did have, and he was a stranger in a strange land and could not spare the money. But he was determined to aid the widow of his old comrade in some way. He said to her:

"Suppose you had the five hundred dollars to pay the money-lender when he came, would you know how to sign up the papers and get your receipts all correct so there would be no flaw in it?"

She told him she did. He then gave her five hundred dollars, with instructions to be very particular to see that the mortgage was taken up. My father inquired from her the road by which the sheriff and mortgagee would drive out, and then he and his companion bade the woman good-bye and rode away. But they did not go far. They dismounted not far from the widow's home, and led their horses into the brush and concealed themselves. They saw two men go past in a buggy driving in the direction of the widow's hone. In an hour or two when these two men came driving back over the same road they were halted by my father and his companion.

The sheriff and the money-lender obeyed and were relieved of the five hundred dollars, and then were told to drive on. This act of my father's was certainly open to criticism, but by it the widow's home and farm were saved to her and any father regained the money which he had to have to continue his journey. I give this as an example of how desperate chances Jesse James would take to aid the widow of a comrade in distress.

In the later years of his life my father stopped at the home of General Jo Shelby in Lafayette County, to rest himself and his horse from a long journey. General Shelby had a negro boy whom he thought a great deal of. This boy was a waif of the war who had drifted into General Shelby's camp during the war to got something to eat, and Shelby had adopted him. This boy had gone that day to a near-by town with a load of firewood to sell. On a former trip to town this negro boy had been set upon and beaten by the white boys of the town, and this time he took with him an old army pistol that he had taken from the General's room. When he reached town the boys set upon him again, and the negro boy pulled out his pistol and shot one of them in a leg. The wounded boy ran away howling, and the other boys followed him. The negro boy knew that the white folks would get after him for this, so he hurriedly unhitched his mules, mounted one of them and started on a run for General Shelby's house. He was within a mile of the house when a posse of white men on horseback hove in sight on his trail. The boy urged his mule into a faster run, and had just reached the gate at the foot of the lane leading to General Shelby's house when the mob caught him, and dragged him from the mule and started away with him.

My father had taken one of General Shelby's shot guns and was out beyond in a pasture hunting quail when he saw the mob ride up to the gate. He very naturally supposed that the mob had discovered that he was there and had come after him. He went on a run for the stable to get his horse, but before he reached there he saw the mob riding away with the negro boy.

General Shelby was not at home, but his wife was there and she was almost distracted when she saw the mob capture her negro boy and ride away with him. My father declared that he would go and rescue the boy. She begged him not to do it. But he felt in duty bound, as the guest of his friend General Shelby, to protect his servants in his absence, so he saddled his horse and went on a gallop after the mob. There were more than a dozen men in the mob. My father overtook them as they had halted on a high bridge over a creek and were getting ready to lynch the young negro. All of these men were armed, but my father rode right in among them and demanded:

"He shot a white boy. The niggers are getting too bold and we're going to make an example of this one!"

"No, you are not," my father said. "That is General Shelby's boy and I am General Shelby's friend. If that boy has harmed a white man he must have a fair trial for it."

The argument might have lasted longer and become more pointed and animated but a man in the mob recognized my father and exclaimed:

"The best thing for you to do is to take this boy to Lexington and turn him over to the sheriff and have him put in jail, and let him get the same sort of a fair trial that a white boy would get. That will satisfy General Shelby, it will satisfy me, and it ought to satisfy you."

The men in the mob agreed to it and went to Lexington and did as agreed. My father rode behind them to the outskirts of Lexington, and then rode away. The negro boy was tried by a jury and acquitted.

Henry Clay Campbell was a soldier in Marmaduke's brigade of Price's army. He surrendered at Shreveport, La., and returned to his former home in Cooper County, Mo. A man who lived four miles from Butler, in Bates County, owed Campbell $1,000 since before the war, and at the close of the war Campbell went there to collect the debt. This man who owed him had been a soldier in the Federal army, and when Campbell carne to collect the $1,000 this rascal set a gang of fifteen Federal soldiers upon him to kill him. These soldiers, on horseback, were pursuing Campbell, who was also on horseback, along a country road. My father, Arch Clements, Oll Shepherd, and two others saw the pursuit and they ambushed themselves near the road, and as the Federals rushed by six of them were shot and killed, and the rest gave up, the chase of Campbell and escaped.

As narrow an escape as my father ever had from capture was in the 70's when he and a companion were riding through Jackson County one warm day in August. They had been riding all day and were tired and dusty when they came to the Little Blue river, and decided to halt there and take a plunge bath. They tied their horses in the brush, undressed and left their clothing on the bank and plunged into the water. They were in the water up to their necks and were talking to each other, and never dreaming of danger, when suddenly from the bank came the stern command:

Jesse James and his companion turned their heads quickly, and there on the bank was standing a man with a double-barreled shot gun to his shoulders and the two muzzles pointing fair at the men in the water. There was nothing for the two naked men to do but to obey the command, and up went their hands. It was the, first and only time my father ever put up his hands at the command of anyone, and it was the first and only time that he was ever captured. This time he was caught sure enough. His clothing and revolvers were on the river bank behind the determined looking man with the shot gun.

There was not time to form a plan of operation. But my father and his companion were used to surprise and to the necessity of quick action. Experience together in different "tight places," had sharpened their wits so that each almost divined what was going on in the mind of the other, and without either having spoken a word to the other they acted in concert on a plan of escape.

At the command of the man behind the shotgun my father waded slowly ashore, talking and arguing all the time with the man on the bank to distract and confuse him. The other man stayed in the water with his hands above his head, watching father and the man with the shot gun. My father walked up the bank, demanding earnestly all the while to know why two gentlemen enjoying a quiet bath after a day's horseback ride should be disturbed in this rude manner.

As seen as my father reached the side of the man on the bank, his companion, who was in the water, gave a shrill war whoop and dived beneath the surface. This shrill yell so surprised and disconcerted the man with the shot gun that he turned his head quickly away from my father, and looked at the man in the water. That was the chance my father had been waiting for. Quick as a flash he sprang upon the man, grabbing his shot gun and him at the same time, and they rolled over in the woods locked together in a fierce wrestling match. They had hardly grappled each other before the man in the water was out and got hold of one of his own revolvers, and the rest of it was easy.

The man turned out to be a country constable who was out hunting for horse thieves. He come upon the two horses in the brush and jumped at the conclusion that the two men in the water were horse thieves, and determined to capture them. He never once suspected who the men really were that he had captured. My father dipped his shot gun in the water so it could not be fired, took away all his ammunition, and gave him a good ducking in the Blue and lot him go his way.

My grandmother was greatly harrassed in these times by detectives who came to her home searching for my father. She learned to suspect every stranger who came there, and to be very wary in her talks with them. At one time during the war Fletcher Taylor and eight guerrillas who were traveling through Clay County near her home were very tired and hungry. They knew of only one house to which they might safely go and ask for food, and that was my grandmother's. Taylor had been there before with my father, and he supposed, of course, that my grandmother would recognize him and it would be all right. It was late at night when he and his eight companions rode up to the house and knocked at the door. My grandmother inquired from within:

In those perilous times Federal soldiers often went in the guise of guerrillas, to the homes of Southern patriots and asked for food or water, and if it was given them the people who gave it were reported and punished for giving aid and sustenance to the rebels. So my grandmother was very auspicious and cautious.

"But I am Fletcher Taylor, who was here with your son Jesse." "That is a good lie. I never saw or heard tell of Fletcher Taylor," she answered.

"But don't you remember, Mrs. Samuels, the good gooseberry pie and clean pair of socks that you gave me."

My grandmother knew then that it was all right, and she threw open the door and prepared a meal for the hungry soldiers.

One time after the war my father was at home and was lying on the flour reading a book, when his mother discovered three men coming up on horseback. She called to my father; he got up and looked out the window and saw that it was the sheriff. He went out the back door, and as he went my grandmother said to him:

She gave him that advice because a little before that time two men who had been with Quantrell were arrested and put in jail at Richmond, and a mob had taken them out and hanged them.

My father got to his horse and was closely chased so that he had to turn in his saddle and shoot the collar off the sheriff's neck. That ended the pursuit.

Among the many cruel falsehoods that have been told and retold, and printed and reprinted about my father is that he murdered Whicher, a Pinkerton detective, near my grandmother's home and then carried the body to the banks of the Missouri river, fourteen miles distant, and ferried it across the river and left it in Jackson County. Some writers have embellished this story and made it the more horrible by telling that my father hobbled the detective first and started him to running and then shot at him as he ran, clipping off pieces of his flesh; and that after the man was dead, my father sliced off his ears and carried them around in his vest pocket.

This story is absolutely false; and not only that, it is so ridiculous that any one would know it was false who cared to look at it in a fair way. It is a fact that Whicher was found dead in Jackson County, twenty miles or more from my father's home and on the other side of the river. He had simply been shot without any mutilation. If he had been shot near my father's home is it likely that whoever killed him would have gone to the trouble of carrying the body away across to where it was found? It would have been much easier to have buried the body where it was killed.

That story of Whicher's killing was concocted by Pinkerton detectives who knew my father had no hand in the killing. The man who killed Whicher is living in Texas to-day.

Pinkerton's detectives, in the pursuit of my father and their harrassment of my grandmother, were guilty of as wanton and cruel a murder as was ever done anywhere. I can deny that my father ever killed a Pinkerton detective, and my denial bears the evidence of truth to substantiate it. But the Pinkerton detectives cannot deny that they murdered my father's half-brother, and shot off the right arm of my grandmother. They cannot deny it because the proofs of the murder are plain.

"It was long after the war, while my boys were hunted everywhere and detectives were coming to my home every little while. One dark midnight while only me and the doctor, and my colored woman and my eight-year-old son, Archie, were alone, a bomb came crashing through the kitchen window. It was thrown with such force that it smashed the whole sash out and fell on the floor. We ran into the kitchen and there it lay blazing. It was wrapped around with cloth and soaked in oil. We rolled it into the fireplace to keep it from setting the house on fire. Then it exploded. A piece of the shell struck little Archie in the breast, going nearly through him and killing him almost instantly. Another piece tore my right arm off between the wrist and elbow. We rushed out doors but could see no one in the darkness. We found the house had been set afire and was blazing fiercely, but we put it out. Those fiends had intended to kill us all with the bomb and then burn us up. There was a light snow on the ground and the next morning we tracked the cowardly hounds, and it appeared there were eight of them. We found a revolver one of them had dropped, and it was stamped with the Pinkerton name."

My grandmother has yet at her home the half of this iron bombshell, and visitors to her home may see it there. It is wrought iron, with a shell about one-fourth of an inch thick, and it is eight inches in diameter. The edges are torn and jagged by the force of the explosion that burst it asunder. A photograph of Archie Samuels, who was murdered by the Pinkertons, hangs in a corner of the parlor of my grandmother's home and it shows a bright, sweetfaced boy. Beside it on the wall, hanging in a faded frame, is a piece of exceedingly delicate needlework made by grandmother when she was a school girl in a Catholic convent in Kentucky. On the other side of it hangs the picture of a gravestone, and beneath the monument is this inscription:

Before my father was killed my grandmother did not know he was living in St. Joseph. She never knew where he lived at any time after the war, nor anything of his comings and goings. He came often to see her but would never talk to her about himself. Once shortly after his marriage he visited his mother and she asked him where he was living, and he told her:

"Because if you knew where we were living, every wind that blew from that direction would make you uneasy."

A year or two ago my grandmother told in my presence and hearing the following to a reporter for the Kansas City Star, and it was printed in that paper:

"A few days ago," said Mrs. Samuels, "a man came here to look around and said to me that he believed my boys were after him once.

"No, sir;" I told him, "my boys were never after you. If they had been they'd have got you. If my boys ever started after a man they always got him.

"My boys were brave. I saw enough of it." Mrs. Samuels laughed heartily and went on: "I remember one day during the war Jesse and three more of Quantrell's men rode up here to wash up and change shirts. They told me they were hard chased and while they were washing my colored boy held their horses back of the house and I watched from the front. By and bye I saw about forty Federal soldiers going up through the field over there toward old Dan Askew's house. Dan was a Northern spy. I shouted to Jesse:

" 'Well, keep your eye on them, mother,' said Jesse, and they went right on washing.

"Jesse was spluttering with his face down in the water basin and he stopped long enough to say:

" 'Let 'em come, mother; there are four of us, and I guess we can whip forty Federals all right enough.'

"I got scared and I ran back to where the boys were washing and begged them to run.

" 'Do go, Jesse,' I said. 'They're crossing the branch and will be right here in half a minute.'

"Jesse just laughed at me and said: 'Don't get rattled, mother. I'm not going away from here with a dirty neck if I have to fight two hundred and forty Federals instead of forty.'

"Well, sir, those four boys did not mount their horses till the soldiers were at the front gate and they heard the latch rattling. Then they sprang into their saddles, and leaped the back fence and rode across the pasture like mad. The Federals galloped around the house, part one way and part the other, and pulled their cavalry pistols, and such shooting and cursing you never heard. Our boys shot back as they ran, and the last I saw of them was a waving line of horses going over the top of the hill. I waited half an hour and then I could stand it no longer. I got on my horse Betsy, and went up over the hill expecting to find the bodies of four boys shot full of holes. About a mile from the house some one hailed me from the brush.

"It was Jesse, and he and the boys were coming down from the old schoolhouse loading their horses and looking for their caps they had lost during the fight. They wouldn't listen to anything I'd say, but rode back to the house with me after they'd found their caps. They washed up again and then rode away.

"Jesse seemed to take delight in getting me scared and playing jokes on me. You know I was always watching out for detectives, and we had plenty of them spying around here. That was long after the war, when Jesse was accused of every bank and train robbery that was done. One day a, big man rode up to the gate, hitched his horse and stalked right up to the house and demanded to know where Jesse James was. He said he was a detective and he pulled out a big revolver and threatened to kill him on sight. He took Jesse's gold watch out of his pocket and showed it to me, and said he had killed Jesse and took his watch. I told him I knew he was lying. He searched the house and barn, bulldozed my colored man and woman, and I followed him around, daring him to harm a hair of anyone around the place. At last he sat down in a chair and laughed until I thought he'd split. He told me he was Dave Poole, a friend of Jesse's, and he handed me a letter from Jesse, who had told him to pretend he was a detective and give me a scare. Jesse had said to him:

" 'The old lady may take a shot at you, but if she doesn't hit you, go right in.'

"Some of the detectives that came prowling around here had narrow escapes," continued Mrs. Samuels. "You see, they were all cowards; I never saw a detective in all my life who wasn't a coward, and Jesse know that well enough, too. The detectives used always to come when they thought my boys were away, but two of them missed it once and came very near getting killed. Jesse was here one day when I saw two men coming down the road. We could tell a detective on sight, and we knew they were detectives. They stopped at the gate and hallowed. Jesse stepped just inside the door to the stairway leading to the attic and stood there with his revolvers in his hands. Jesse said:

"I opened the door and one of the men said they were cattle buyers, and asked me if we had any fat cattle.

" 'Tell them yes, mother,' said Jesse. 'Tell them the cattle are here and for them to come in and get them.'

" 'The cattle you are looking for are in the house; come in and get them!' I shouted. They talked together awhile in whispers and then went on. I guess that was as near as I ever came to seeing shooting right here in the house.

"But the funniest thing that ever happened was one day when a sheriff--I won't mention his name, because he is living yet--came here alone after Jesse. I had ten harvest hands at work in the field, and Jesse was hiding in the attic. When dinner was ready I brought Jesse down to eat first before the hands came in at noon. Just as he came down stairs there was a knock at the door. Jesse peeped out the window and said it was the sheriff. He drew his revolver and said:

" 'Your gun, please,' Jesse said, as cool as could be, and the sheriff took out his revolver.

" 'Now, sit down and have dinner with us,' commanded Jesse, and the two sat down at the table and chatted like old friends while they ate a hearty meal. After it was over Jesse handed the sheriff his revolver and bid him good-bye. The sheriff never came back. He was always a great friend of my boys after that."

Clell Miller--dead after Northfield

Clell Miller

dead after Northfield

As an instance of the courage displayed by the survivors of Quantrell's guerrilla band, who were persecuted. and driven from pillar to post after the war, I will tell here of an adventure of Clel. Miller, who was hounded by officers because he had been seen in company with my father. Miller had broken his log in a full from his horse and was lying at the home of his cousin near Carrollton, Mo. While he was there the sheriff of the county with a posse rode up and surrounded the house. The sheriff dismounted and came to the door and inquired:

"No, he is not here;" answered Miller's cousin, who had answered the knock at the door.

"Yes, he is here. I have the information from a most reliable source. Unless you surrender him at once we will set fire to the house and smoke you all out."

Clel. Miller was lying on a sofa in the parlor and overheard every word of this conversation. Suddenly he sang out:

"Yes, I am here in the front room with a broken leg and unable to move. Come in, sheriff, and I will talk over terms of surrender."

The sheriff knew that Miller's leg had been broken only a few days before. He had no fear of Miller, and so he walked boldly in.

"Give me a chance to fight the whole posse, and you can take me, dead or alive."

"No; I will listen to no propositions. You must go along and take your chances at a trial in the court."

"All right; I will go with you it you will give me your promise to protect me from violence at the hands of the posse."

"I will do that. I will be personally responsible for your safety," the sheriff said. "That is satisfactory. Help me put my overshoe on my good leg and I will go with yon."

The sheriff had no reason to suspect that Miller was not sincere. Miller reached under the sofa as if to get his overshoe, but instead of bringing out a shoe he jerked out a revolver and put it to the sheriff's ear. His manner changed instantly from one of politeness to fierceness. He threatened the sheriff with instant death it he did not obey. He took away the sheriff's revolvers and put them in his own pockets. Then he put his left arm around the sheriff's shoulders and leaned upon him for support and with the muzzle of his huge revolver stuck in the sheriff's ear he hobbled on one foot outside the front door. Standing there, in full view of the posse, he called out that if one man advanced a step toward him he would kill the sheriff and then shoot into the posse and kill all he could before he himself was killed. He made the sheriff order the posse to stand back and obey orders. Then the sheriff assisted Miller to the sheriff's horse and helped him mount, and then the sheriff got up in front of him. Miller ordered the posse to stay where they were, threatening to kill the sheriff if one of the posse stirred. He rode with the sheriff for three miles and then made him dismount, thanked him, bade him good bye, and rode sway alone in the gathering darkness and escaped.

My father was anxious at all times to surrender to the proper authorities, upon proper guarantees of protection from violence at the hands of his enemies and fair treatment at the hands of the officers of the law. These overtures on his part were spurned. My grandmother and friends of the family went to three different governors of Missouri and begged and pleaded for fair terms upon which he could surrender. My father said to his mother shortly before his death:

"I would be willing to wear duck clothing all my life if I could only be a free man."

But all his pleadings for a fair chance to surrender were spurned. His old enemies were working constantly to prejudice the public and the officers against him. For twelve years every train robbery and every bank robbery in the country was attributed to him. I have looked through the old files of the daily papers published in Kansas City during these years, and it is really ridiculous to see what crimes were charged up to the account of my hunted and outlawed father. This week there would be a bold robbery somewhere in Missouri, and the newspapers in great head lines charge it to "The James Gang Again." The next week there would be a robbery in Texas, and again it would be the "James Gang." To have committed one-fourth of the crimes charged to him my father would have to have been equipped with an air ship or some other means of aerial flight, for no known method of terrestrial transportation could have made it possible for him to rob a bank in West Virginia Monday night and hold up a train in Texas three nights later.

Yet the credulous public believed the most of these stories. And the gangs who were doing these robberies wished the public to so believe, and in most of these robberies the leader always took pains to inform the robbed people that he was Jesse James, or to write a notification to that effect and leave it where it could be found.

The very day upon which my father was killed there was a peculiarly bold and successful hold up and robbery of a train in Texas, and the newspapers over all the country attributed it to Jesse James. If there is anyone who doubts this to be true, he may prove it true by turning back to the files of the daily papers of that date and find the account of this train robbery upon the first page. In most of the newspapers the name "Jesse James" is the first and most prominent headline, and the succeeding headlines tell of how he and his "gang" held up and robbed the train. And at the very moment this train was robbed my father was lying dead in St. Joseph.

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