America's Most Famous Outlaw:Jesse James.

Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5th, 1847 in Kearney, Missouri. He was the 3rd of 4 children born to Zerelda Cole and Reverend Robert James. Jesse was both popular in the community and outwardly religious. Many people thought that he was going to end up a Reverend like his father.

Robert traveled to California during the Gold Rush to minister to those searching for gold. That is where he died when Jesse was three years old.

Zerelda remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, then in 1855 to a doctor named Reuben Samuel.

The Jameses owned a hundred-acre farm where they used slave labor to grow hemp and raise sheep. In the summer of 1863, the James farm was brutally attacked by Union soldiers.

Jesse was 16 when he and his brother Frank became Confederate guerrilla soldiers, riding alongside William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson.

In the summer of 1864, James was shot in the chest during a guerrilla raid.  However, sometime later, he was well enough to be part of an eighty-man raid on Centralia, Missouri. Led by “Bloody Bill,” the guerrillas terrorized the town and murdered twenty-two unarmed Union soldiers in what is called the Centralia Massacre.  That same day, at the Battle of Centralia, the guerrillas killed and horribly mutilated over a hundred soldiers in the Thirty-ninth Missouri Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. James took credit for killing their Union commander, Major Andrew “Ave” Johnston.

At the end of the Civil War, Jesse James was shot by Union cavalrymen as he attempted to surrender. His cousin, Zerelda “Zee” Mimms, nursed him back to health. Once well, Jesse began his career as an outlaw.

Supposedly, Jesse and Frank started committing crimes supposedly out of revenge for the poor treatment that they are their family, and other Southern sympathizers received from Union soldiers during the Civil War. They began robbing trains, stagecoaches and banks that were owned or operated by a Northern institution.

Jesse sought personal recognition and publicity by writing letters to the press.

From 1860 to 1882, the James Gang was the most feared band of outlaws in American history. They responsible for more than 20 bank and train robberies and the murders of countless individuals who stood in their way. They stole an estimated $200,000. They were popular in Missouri for actively trying to further the Confederate cause.

On December 7, 1869, the gang robbed the Gallatin, Missouri, bank. Jesse asked to change a $100 bill, and thinking that the banker was responsible for the death of Bloody Bill, shot the man in the heart. Local newspapers labeled the actions vicious and bloodthirsty and called for the gang’s capture. From that robbery to the end of their careers, members of the James Gang had a price on their heads, dead or alive.

On April 24th, 1874, Jesse married his longtime sweetheart and first cousin, Zerelda, and had four children, but only two survived. Both James brothers were known as good family men who loved their wives and spent time with their children, but they still continued their life of crime.

Though protected by their community, they were always on the move. Even after other members of the gang had been killed, and their friends the Youngers had been sent to prison for 25 years, in 1879, the James brothers planned one more robbery with Charlie and Bob Ford. Unbeknownst to them, Governor Crittenden of Missouri had put together a reward fund so large that the Fords had turned traitor to earn it.

After breakfast on April 3, 1882, Jesse turned to straighten a picture on a wall of his home, and Bob shot Jesse in the back of the head. Jesse died instantly at age 34. People in Missouri considered it a cowardly assassination. Within three months, Frank surrendered to Crittenden. The juries would not convict on the meager evidence, so Frank resumed a quiet life.