More Jesse James For Western Wednesday...!

It seems that some characters from our early history never really go out of style, ya know? Jess James was one of those figures.

No one can truly say what it is about the James boys that makes them stand out so much, but nearly everybody knows the name if not the deeds. Guess that's what it means to be a legend.

Jesse James was larger than life—so much that his body required two graves.

Few outlaws were as notorious during their own lifetimes as Jesse James. Though he lived a quiet existence in Kearney, Missouri, after his bank robbing days were over, old friends—and enemies—never forgot him. After Jesse was murdered, he was buried in the front yard of his farm to thwart grave robbers. As the years passed and his enemies died off, he was reinterred in a Kearney cemetery by his family. So who’s that lying in the Jesse James grave in Granbury, Texas? A man named J. Frank Dalton who came forward around 1948, at age 101, claiming he was the “real” Jesse James. A court even allowed him to legally adopt the bandit’s name. No one knows why Dalton made this claim or if he ever had any link to Jesse James, although there is a very small chance he was the youngest member of the Dalton gang James rode with in the bank raid of Northfield, Minnesota. Regardless, mitochondrial DNA showed decades later that James is indeed buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney—but his legend also lives on in Granbury.

I wonder if it really matters just where these folks are buried or how they died. The main thing to most people is that the memory of Jesse James is alive and well in their minds, right? Everyone needs a hero or legend, I reckon.

Coffee in the kitchen this morning. Hot oven fresh cinnamon rolls are available, OK?

Jesse James On Western Wednesday...!

Depending on who you talk to, ol' Jesse was a good guy or really bad! Regardless of either one, he was a thief!

It does seem that from time to time, he did what he could to help out a few folks, but there was usually a catch. This story shows just one way the catch might have worked!

The Debt Re-Collector

On April 3, 1882, notorious American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back of the head by Robert Ford, one of his few trusted (oops!) accomplices. Ford and his brother were seeking the $5,000 bounty on James' capture, dead or alive, an amount (well over $100,000 in today's dollars) which underscores how badly law enforcement wanted the 34 year-old James. (The amount was so high that Thomas G. Crittenden, the governor of Missouri at the time and the man who set the bounty, had to appeal to railway owners and express shippers to fund most of the amount, as it was beyond the limits allowed by state law.) And the extraordinary bounty was well-deserved. Since the age of 18, James had been involved in numerous bank heists, train robberies, and ultimately, murders. While his later legacy became one of a modern-day, real-life Robin Hood, that's mostly undeserved. By almost all accounts, James was a sociopath.

There may be one exception, though.

There are many myths surrounding James' life, but the generally reputable "Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes" (from the same group that bring us "Bartlett's Book of Quotations") tells the story of a time that James, on the run after a successful heist, came to a farmhouse. The lady of the house, a widow, graciously took him in, but wasn't much of a host. It turns out that she was deeply in debt and unable to provide for herself, let alone an unexpected guest. To make matters worse, the debt collector was on his way, expecting to collect $1,400 (approximately $30,000 nowadays). She didn't have that kind of money, but James, contrary to his deserved reputation for not caring about the plight of others, solved her problem. He gave her the cash she needed to pay off the debt collector, who accepted the payment and went on his way.

But that was the extent of his kind-heartedness. As Bartlett's further notes, soon after James left the farmhouse, he circled back with his gang -- and they held up the debt collector, retaking the $1,400.

Stories like this one show how many folks thought of James as some kind of folk hero, but he was still a thief and outlaw. History always seems to embellish the tales of the olden times to make the characters larger than life.

Coffee in the kitchen again. Warm but the chance of rain is still here!