Jesse James

About Jesse James

Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw in the border state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. After his death, he became a legendary figure of the Wild West, although his robberies benefited only him and his band. Recent scholarship places him in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation of the frontier.

Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, at the site of present day Kearney on September 5, 1847. His father Robert James was a commercial hemp farmer and Baptist minister in Kentucky who migrated to Missouri after marriage and helped found Liberty College in Liberty, Missouri. Robert James travelled to California during the Gold Rush and died there when Jesse was three years old.

After Robert's death, Jesse's mother Zerelda remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, and then to a doctor named Reuben Samuel. After their marriage in 1855, Samuel moved into the James home. Jesse had two full siblings: his older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James, and a younger sister, Susan Lavenia James. In addition, Reuben Samuel and Zerelda eventually had four children: Sarah Louisa Samuel (aka Sarah Ellen), John Thomas Samuel, Fannie Quantrell Samuel, and Archie Peyton Samuel.