History Focus
September 5

Jesse James was born September 5, 1847 in Missouri.

Jesse James was an American outlaw, whose exploits, both real and legendary, in bank and train robberies won him worldwide notoriety. He has been celebrated in song, story, and movies. The legend of outlaw Jesse James has become a permanent part of the lore of the 19th-century American Wild West. For 16 years, from 1866 to 1882, the James gangs were the bane of banks and stagecoaches and trains carrying gold.

Jesse Woodson James was born near present-day Kearney, Missouri (Clay County, on September 5, 1847. His brother, Frank, was born four years earlier. Their father abandoned the family when Jesse was only 2 in order to seek gold in California. In 1861, the James family, fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. At 15 Jesse joined Frank as a member of a gang of raiders led by William C. Quantrill. These guerrilla fighters raided communities in Kansas and Missouri, killed pro-Northern citizens, and robbed mail coaches. During this time, James earned a reputation for reckless daring. After the war the raiders disbanded.

In 1867 Jesse turned to crime as a way of life. He became the leader of a gang that specialized first in bank robberies, then in holding up trains. The membership of the gang varied over the years. Initally the gang members were his older brother Frank, and Cole, James, and Robert Younger. All of these men were former raiders under Quantrill.

Their first bank robbery was at Liberty, Missouri, on February 14, 1866. Several more banks were robbed during the next seven years, usually many months apart in order to let the public outcry die down. On July 21, 1873, the gang robbed its first train at Adair, Iowa. Robbing trains and stagecoaches of their gold greatly enhanced the reputation of the James gang among Westerners. Bank robberies affected the savings of ordinary people. Stealing gold from the train and stagecoaches promoted a Robin Hood image. It was said that they were stealing from the rich to give to the poor, though how much giving the gang did is uncertain.

One of their most famous bank robbery attempts occurred in 1876 at the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. When the bank clerk refused to open the safe, the gang brutally murdered him and then tried to escape. In the shoot-out that followed, all the gang members except Jesse and Frank were killed or captured. Frank and Jesse were not heard of again until 1879 when, with the gang reconstituted, they robbed a train in Glendale, Missouri.

The frequently senseless killings and violence that went along with the robberies finally prompted Governor Thomas T. Crittenden of Missouri to offer a reward of $10,000 for the capture of the James brothers, dead or alive. Robert Ford, a member of the gang, paid a secret visit to the governor and ascertained that the reward would be his if he killed Jesse. On April 3, 1882, while living at home with his family in Saint Joseph, Missouri, under the name of Thomas Howard, James was shot from behind by Robert Ford. Soon after his brother's death, Frank James turned himself in to the authorities. The American public treated him as a hero and he was tried for his crimes but was acquitted twice. He lived out his life on a Missouri farm, where he died in 1915.

Sources: Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) | Compton’s Encyclopedia