Jesse James: Continued

He also robbed twelve banks, five stagecoaches and the Kansas City Exposition. There is no authentication of Jesse James ever having been a Robin Hood figure. He robbed and murdered for personal gain and as the war retreated into memory citizens grew weary of his lawlessness.

In 1873, in Iowa, he committed the first robbery of a moving train, holding up the passengers when the vault held only $2000 ($45,500 in 2022). The railroads hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to hunt down the gang and stop the train robberies. On January 26, 1875 a posse of Pinkertons rode onto the family farm. The men hurled a flaming item into the cabin through a window and someone inside pushed it into the fireplace where it exploded. The blast killed 8-year-old Archie James, a half-brother, and damaged Zerelda’s right hand causing an amputation.

Northfield, Minnesota was 400-miles from Jesse’s home but he felt that robbing a bank there would prove lucrative. It did not. On September 7, 1876 the Northfield Raid resulted in the capture of the Younger Brothers and their subsequent life sentences in prison. Frank and Jesse escaped. The First National Bank of Northfield is now a museum.

Jesse, without Frank, started a new gang in 1879 but it fell apart after he killed one of its members. Tom Howard and his family rented a small house in St. Joseph, Missouri on December 24, monument was placed on his grave. It expresses his mother’s sentiments on the murder.

His wife died in 1900 and was buried Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney. In 1902 his mother no longer lived on the farm and could no longer watch over him and the decision was made to move his body to Mt. Olivet beside his wife. Frank, because he was wanted, could not attend the first burial. He did attend the second. The cemetery is open for respectful visitors.

ROAD READS:

1881. Using this alias he lived there until he was shot and killed by Robert Ford on April 3, 1882. Ford wanted to collect the governor’s $10,000 reward. The home still stands and displays the bullet hole left in the wall. #stjomo

Jesse James funeral service was held at First Baptist Church in Kearney, Missouri on April 6, 1882. He was buried in the front yard of the family farm and a large

Eileen Saint Lauren’s novel, Goodlife, Mississippi, is set in the 1950s and ’60s South, a world strictly divided by race, finances, culture and class. Myra Boone’s childhood undergoes a drastic change when her parents die in a house fire, that she caused and she is forced to navigate in a new world bearing her inner guilt and out wounds. Myra’s sojourn pulls the reader into the daily lives and ever present spiritualty of the members of the community. Throughout her entire journey she clings to her absolute trust in faith, love and Ray Charles. A Study Guide is included.