If it wasnt for Jesse James, history wouldnt care about Robert Ford. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, 2 The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. However, in 1879, Jesse recruited a new set of criminal associates and embarked on a fresh crime spree. Robert Newton Ford (January 31, 1862 June 8, 1892) was an American outlaw who killed fellow outlaw Jesse James on April 3, 1882. [35], The gang's later train robberies had a lighter touch. Jesse's Own Words Jesse James took a hand in building his own . But their luck was short lived. By age 16, Jesse followed Frank as a marauding bushwhacker, with both joining a ruthlessly violent gang led by William Bloody Bill Anderson. In the end, the gang killed the bank cashier and a passerby, while two bandits were shot to death by townsfolk before the rest of the outlaws fled. But the pressure was too much and Charles committed suicide in 1884. Jesse James remains a controversial symbol, one who can always be reinterpreted in various ways according to cultural tensions and needs. THE JAMES-YOUNGERS. They surrendered themselves to legal authorities but were dismayed to be charged with first degree murder. And while he soon had the second elusive James in custody, Frank managed to avoid conviction at three separate trials and lived out his life as a free man and a celebrity. All Rights Reserved. I never liked long last acts." Lillie Langtry "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money." "Canada Bill" Jones, prolific cardsharp of the 1800s Missouri was a border state, sharing characteristics of both North and South, but 75% of the population was from the South or other border states. [17] Ford had his back to Kelly. [56][57][58] [73] Some historians credit James's myth as contributing to the rise of former Confederates to dominance in Missouri politics. Teenaged Robert Ford (Casey. Meanwhile, the citizens of Northfield grew suspicious of the men guarding the door and raised the alarm. Initially buried outside his mother's home near Kearney, Missouri, beneath the epitaph "In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to Appear Here," he now lies next to his wife in Kearney's Mount Olivet Cemetery. "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Quotes." Two other agents, Captain Louis J. Lull and John Boyle, were sent after the Youngers; Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17, 1874. Unable to return to a normal life, the young man turned to a life of crime instead. Library of Congress Return to Crime In the aftermath of the failed Northfield bank robbery of 1876, Frank and Jesse James were forced to hide under. In late July 1881, Governor Crittenden convened a meeting with railroad executives and convinced them to fund a $10,000 reward for the capture of each of the James boys. The guerrillas also ambushed and defeated a pursuing regiment of Major A. V. E. Johnson's Union troops, killing all who tried to surrender, who numbered more than 100. [16] Within a few years, Ford settled in Colorado, where he opened a saloon and gambling house in Walsenburg. Wikimedia Commons Robert Ford posing with the gun he used to kill Jesse James. Over time, the letters gradually became more political in tone and James denounced the Republicans and expressed his pride in his Confederate loyalties. Things escalated when they both drew their guns and shot each other. Frank followed Quantrill into Kentucky, while Jesse went to Texas under the command of Archie Clement, one of Anderson's lieutenants. After being nursed back to health by his cousin Zerelda Zee Mimms (whom he would wed in 1874 and later have two children), Jesse eventually banded with his brother and other former Confederate guerrillas to rob banks, stagecoaches and trains. The annual Victorian Festival in Jersey County, Illinois, is held on Labor Day weekend[91] at the 1866 Col. William H. Fulkerson estate Hazel Dell. But unlike Ford, Kelly preferred to confront his enemies. Robert Ford was born in 1862 in Ray County, Missouri, to James Thomas and Mary Bruin Ford as the youngest of seven siblings. . Jesse Woodson James, born in Clay County, Missouri, on September 5, 1847,was the son of Kentucky native Zerelda Cole James and her husband, Robert James, a Baptist minister and slave-owning hemp farmer who assisted in founding William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. The Union presence enforced martial law with raids on homes, arrests of civilians, summary executions, and banishment of Confederate sympathizers from the state. They continued in crime for several years afterward, recruiting new members, but came under increasing pressure from law enforcement seeking to bring them to justice. 1. Jesse James. He was of English and Scottish descent. A substantial manhunt ensued. Ford lost the contest and left town. Jesse James was dead. To carry out the robbery, the gang divided into two groups. But soon he was released on one condition that he murder Jesse James. The dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard (James alias) and laid poor Jesse in his grave.. [7], Living with the James family, the Fords became part of the daily routine, and Jamess wife cooked for them. Nonetheless, the crime was discovered, and Ford was arrested. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford, a new recruit to the gang who hoped to collect a reward on James's head and a promised amnesty for his previous crimes. Robert Newton Ford (January 31, 1862 - June 8, 1892) was an American outlaw who killed fellow outlaw Jesse James on April 3, 1882. Former rebels attacked the railroads as symbols of threatening centralization. Jesse James : [last words] Don't that picture look dusty? The report, prepared by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D., James E. Starrs, L.L.M., and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D., confirmed that the mtDNA recovered from the remains was consistent with the mtDNA of one of James's relatives in the female line. During the gang's escape from the town, an innocent bystander, 17-year-old George C. "Jolly" Wymore, a student at William Jewell College, was shot dead on the street.[21]. [36] Twins Gould and Montgomery James (b. Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man He robbed the Danville train He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor He'd a hand, a heart, and a brain Jesse was a man, a friend to the poor He couldn't see a brother suffer pain And with his brother Frank he robbed the Springfield bank And he stopped the Glendale train Poor Jesse had a wife, a After 50 years of living incognito, impersonating his secretly murdered cousin, he had perfected a cleaner and more refined style of writing. Charles heard that Frank James was seeking revenge on them for his brothers murder. Later in 1876, Jesse and Frank James surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, several members of the gang were captured or killed. 1878) died in infancy. Another less glamorous claim is that Robert Ford was a pariah, and the few customers that did turn up, only did so to pick fights. It is the latest brush with the law for Dean, who was just ten years old when he got his big break on Home and Away, acting alongside Ada Nicodemou as her on-screen son VJ Patterson from 2007 to 2014. Over the years, several different men claimed to be Jesse James. Ford was buried in Creede. Audiences would chant lyrics from a popular song of the day at Fords events. The governor had offered rewards higher than the new limit only on Frank and Jesse James. The brothers were Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War and, for approximately a decade after the war's conclusion, led the James-Younger gang that infamously robbed banks and murdered throughout the Midwest, their actions glorified by Kansas City Times editor James Newman Edwards. (In fact, the slain cashier turned out not to be Cox.). Both were sentenced to hang. The documentary was dismissed as pseudo history and pseudoscience by historian Nancy Samuelson in a review she wrote for the Winter 20092010 edition of The James-Younger Gang Journal. He became "the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James". [citation needed] In the 1880s, both U.S. Russellville, Kentucky, the site of the robbery of the Southern Bank in 1868, holds a reenactment of the robbery every year as of the Logan County Tobacco and Heritage Festival. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the JamesYounger Gang was destroyed.[47][48]. [19][20][21] O'Kelley was subsequently killed on January 13, 1904, while trying to shoot a policeman. All Rights Reserved. While they later tried to justify robbing the banks, most of their targets were small, local banks based on local capital, and the robberies only penalized the locals they claimed to support. [15], On December 26, 1889, Ford survived an attempt on his life in Kansas City, Kansas when an assailant tried to slit his throat. One such occasion marked a significant turning point in Bob Fords life. In March 1874, after the agency took on the case of the James gang, a Pinkerton detective searching for Jesse and Frank in Missouri wound up dead, while a Pinkerton agent who pursued the brothers fellow gang members Cole and Robert Younger in another part of the state also was killed. [68], J. Frank Dalton claimed to be Jesse James. Steele, Philip W. "Jesse and Frank James: The Family History". Robert Ford later said he believed that James had realized they were there to betray him. For protection, James asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. The James brothers also launched an intimidation campaign against their perceived enemies near Zereldas farm and in April of that year one of their mothers neighbors, a former Union militiaman who had assisted the Pinkerton agents in preparing for the raid, was shot to death. The Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities and were dismayed to be charged with first-degree murder. 18 Apr. James, along with his older brother, Frank, were out to get rich by breaking all the rules. Quotes.net. Jesse James : Now you think otherwise? Sheets."[31]. As promised, Governor Crittenden quickly pardoned the Fords, though the swiftness of his act produced bad optics for everyone involved. After he married, he migrated to Bradford, Missouri and helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. At the time, James was already mythologized as an American Robin Hood, while Ford was viewed as a traitor who turned on James for a bounty. With Brad Pitt, Mary-Louise Parker, Brooklynn Proulx, Dustin Bollinger. The year 1876 was busy in the American West. Pitts died in a gunfight and the Youngers were taken prisoner. The Ford Brothers Indicted, Plead Guilty, Sentenced To Be Hanged, And Pardoned All In One Day", "Jesse James's Assassination and the Ford Boys", "Bob Ford's Narrow Escape. The bank was owned by Republican former militia officers who had recently conducted the first Republican Party rally in Clay County's history. Meanwhile, former Union officer Thomas Crittenden began his tenure as Missouri governor in 1881 with a promise to bring James to justice. Wikimedia CommonsFord was promised the $5,000 bounty once he killed James, but received only a fraction of the amount when he did. Shortly afterward, the state militia shot Clement dead. They killed Heywood and Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant from the Millersburg community west of Northfield. [67], The theme of survival was featured in a 2009 documentary, Jesse James' Hidden Treasure, which aired on the History Channel. The two men shot it out at Bolton's home in December, with Robert believed to have stepped in and fired the fatal bullet at Hite. In May of that year, a Union militia company raided the JamesSamuel farm looking for Frank's group. Six months after the Gallatin robbery, Edwards published the first of many letters from Jesse James to the public asserting his innocence. Although Charles allegedly took part in the James Gangs final train robbery on Sept. 7, 1881, the Ford brothers did mostly odd jobs including holding the horses on raids. [2] James continues to be one of the most (in)famous figures from the era, and his life has been dramatized and memorialized numerous times. After breakfast, they moved into the sitting room to discuss Jesses plan to rob the Platte City, Missouri Bank. [5] After Robert's death, his widow Zerelda remarried twice, first to Benjamin Simms in 1852 and then in 1855 to Dr. Reuben Samuel, who moved into the James family home. 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