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James Gang

Franklin James ("B. J. Woodson")

Frank James, slightly less notorious than Jesse, his younger brother, was the eldest child of an industrious frontier preacher and his strong-willed wife. The year before Frank was born, his parents migrated from Kentucky and settled on a farm in western Missouri, where Frank's father, Robert James, assumed the pastorate of a nearby Baptist church. In 1850 Robert James caught gold fever and journeyed to California, where he quickly fell ill and died. His widow, Zerelda, soon remarried, but the union lasted only a few months.

In 1855 Zerelda entered her third marriage, with docile, prosperous Dr. Reuben Samuel. The growing family remained on the old James farm, began to acquire slaves, and were naturally sympathetic with the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out. In 1862 or 1863 Frank joined William Quantrill's infamous band of Missouri guerrillas and soon found himself involved in the notorious massacre at Lawrence, Kansas, among other bloody incidents.

After the war Frank enlisted with Jesse and the Younger brothers in a decade-long series of bank robberies in Missouri and adjacent states. There were a number of shootings connected with these robberies, and Frank doubtless was involved in several of them, but since the robbers masked themselves, it is difficult in many cases to assign blame or credit in specific shooting incidents.

By 1873 the James-Younger gang had begun robbing trains, and soon Pinkerton detectives were trying to pin indictments on the James and Younger brothers. On March 10, 1874, detective John W. Whicher was shot in the head and heart in the vicinity of the Samuels' farm, and Frank and Jesse were assumed to have murdered him. In 1876 Frank eloped with a Kansas girl, Annie Ralston, who bore him a son two years later. On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang was decimated following an abortive attempt to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, although Frank and Jesse escaped capture.

For a few years Frank and Jesse lived with their families in Tennesseee before moving back to Missouri in 1881. Frank continued to help his brother rob banks, trains, and stores until Jesse was murdered in 1882. A few months later, on October 4, 1882, Frank surrendered himself to Missouri Governor Thomas J. Crittendon, throwing himself upon the mercy of the authorities. Frank issued a pathetic plea for sympathy and leniency, and after a lengthy series of trials and legal moves he achieved acquittal.

Frank was released from custody in 1885 and lived a quiet, honest existence for thirty years. He resided in New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Orleans and on his mother's old farm in Missouri. He worked as a race starter at county fairs, as a theater doorman, and as an attraction in traveling stock companies, including a partnership in the James-[Cole] Younger Wild West Show in 1903. He died at the Missouri farm in 1915, and his ashes were kept in a bank vault until his wife's death in 1944, when their ashes were interred together in a Kansas City cemetery.

Jesse Woodson James ("Dingus," "Thomas Howard")

Jesse James is so legendary a figure that separating fact from fiction about him has become almost impossible. The second son of a Baptist preacher, he and his brother Frank, older by four years, grew up on a farm that still stands near Kearney, Missouri. Violent clashes between northern and southern partisans on the Kansas-Missouri border generated guerilla warfare during the early years of the Civil War.

Following harassment by the state militia, seventeen-year-old Jesse joined Bloody Bill Anderson, one of Quantrill's ex-lieutenants, and is said to have killed a Union officer at the Centralia massacre in which over 100 soldiers and civilians were killed by the guerillas. Seen below as a young man of twenty-two, Jesse became the leader of a gang which was credited (perhaps inaccurately) with the first daylight robbery of a bank in American history at Liberty, Missouri, in February 1866. True or not, he would be responsible for perhaps as many as twelve bank robberies, seven train robberies, half a dozen stagecoach holdups and several other armed raids.

On 7 September 1876, the gang tried to rob a bank at Northfield, Minnesota, only to encounter murderous opposition from its citizens. Two of the outlaws were killed and all the others wounded. A pursuing posse killed Charlie Pitts and captured the three Younger brothers, all badly hurt; they went to prison for life. On 8 October 1879 a train was robbed of $6,000 at Glendale; the James boys were credited with the robbery. It was also Jesse who robbed the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Train near Winston, Missouri, on July 15, 1881 and murdered its conductor, William Westfall; by now he was the most wanted man in the United States. Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden put a $10,000 price on his head.

On 3 April 1882, two of Jesse's associates, Charlie and Bob Ford, went to the St. Joseph house where Jesse was living as "Thomas Howard" with his wife and two children. Unusually, he had taken off his guns; as he climbed on to a chair to dust a sampler on the wall, Bob Ford shot him through the back of the head. Frank James surrendered soon after, but was never convicted of any crime. He held a variety of menial jobs, appeared in "Wild West" shows with Cole Younger after the latter's release from prison, and even worked as doorman of a burlesque house. He died at the Kearney farm on 18 February 1915.

Clelland Miller

Clell Miller was born near the James homestead in Missouri. He worshiped Jesse and Frank James as heroes and eventually joined the gang. He was involved in the abortive Northfield raid and was shot dead in the streets.

Samuel Wells ("Charlie Pitts")

Sam Wells, who regularly used the alias "Charlie Pitts," was a member of the James-Younger gang. He was involved with them in a number of robberies and resultant shootouts, but it cannot be stated with any degree of certainty in which specific incidents he participated. It is known that he took part in a train robbery at Rocky Cut, Missouri, in July, 1876, because after the holdup he jilted his sweetheart, Lillian Beamer, to marry another girl, and Miss Beamer promptly informed on him to the authorities. It is also known that he was present in the abortive raid on Northfield, because he was killed during the subsequent manhunt.

James Younger

Born four years to the day after his brother Cole, Jim Younger followed Cole into the ranks of Quantrill's raiders in hopes of avenging the recent murder of his father. Jim stayed with Quantrill throughout the remainder of the war, raiding and looting and acquiring the outlook and attitude of the outlaw. He was with Quantrill at the end of the war when the dwindling band was tracked down near Smiley, Kentucky. Quantrill was mortally wounded, but Jim was confined to the military prison in Alton, Illinois, and released late in 1865.

Jim returned to Missouri, and for a time he quietly helped to work the home farm. But soon he began helping Cole and the James brothers rob banks, and over the next several years he was involved in a number of holdups. He was also a participant in the bloody 1874 shootout which resulted in the death of John Younger and two Pinkerton men. Two years later he was captured with his brothers, Cole and Bob, in the manhunt following the battle at Northfield.

Bob died in prison, but in 1901 Jim and Cole were paroled under a new Minnesota law which released lifers who had served a number of years. The paroles thus obtained under the Deming Act, however, restored no legal rights and required that the recipients stay in Minnesota.

Cole and Jim soon began selling monuments for the P. N. Peterson Granite Company, and Jim fell in love with newspaper writer Alice J. Miller. Legally, however, he was forbidden to marry, and his health was in steady decline, as evidenced by his emaciated frame. Furthermore, he turned to selling insurance only to discover that the policies he wrote as a former convict were invalid. Despondent over these problems, he repaired to the Reardon Hotel in St. Paul, procured a pistol, and committed suicide. He was laid to rest in the family plot in Lee's Summit, Missouri.

Robert Younger

Bob Younger was the baby of the Missouri brothers who followed the outlaw trail with Frank and Jesse James. Bob and his brother John were too young to fight in the Civil War, but after the older Cole and Jim began robbing banks, Bob and John joined them in the quest for easy money. There is little precise information about which robberies Bob participated in, but he proved to be a cool operator who pursued the outlaw's life quietly and with no regrets.

Bob was captured with his brothers in the manhunt following the Northfield disaster. The state of Minnesota provided a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if a guilty plea were entered in a murder trial, and rather than risk hanging, the Youngers proclaimed their rather obvious guilt. While awaiting trial in Northfield, the bedridden Bob unrepentantly declared to a newspaper reporter: "We are rough men and used to rough ways."

Behind bars Bob was a model prisoner and devoted several years to studying medicine. But he contracted tuberculosis, and after his death in 1889 he was interred in the family burial plot at Lee's Summit, Missouri.

Thomas Coleman Younger

The seventh of fourteen children, Cole Younger was reared on his father's land near Lee's Summit, Missouri. Although a slaveholder, the senior Younger was a Union sympathizer, and during the Kansas-Missouri border troubles Kansas Jayhawkers raided the Younger property. Cole promptly joined William Clarke Quantrill's Missouri "Bushwhackers," and when his father was killed in 1862, he joined regular Confederate troops. At the age of eighteen he was appointed first lieutenant in a company in Upton B. Hays's Missouri regiment. He continued to participate in guerilla actions, however, and he was with Quantrill during the vicious massacre at Lawrence, Kansas. Late in 1863 Cole was stationed in Texas and Louisiana, and near Dallas he met sixteen-year-old Myra Belle Shirley. She would later become the notorious Belle Starr and would claim that her daughter Pearl had been sired by Cole. Various military assignments took Cole to Colorado, Mexico, and California, and he was on the Pacific Coast raising recruits when the war ended. He visited an uncle in Los Angeles, then headed for home, arriving the same week as his brother Jim. A short time later, in January, 1866, Cole ran into a neighbor who was an old Quantrill man, Frank James. Frank introduced Cole to his brother Jesse, also a Quantrill veteran. A few weeks later Frank and Cole teamed up to lead a bank holdup in Liberty, Missouri. With members of his family Cole then returned to Texas and Louisiana for several months to enjoy his illegally but easily gotten gains. When he went back to Missouri, he and his brothers united with the James brothers to form a bandit gang that would run rampant for years.

The aggressive, ruthless Jesse would become acknowledged as leader of "the Boys," but Cole never got along well with Jesse and led several robberies himself. In time, almost every bank, train, or stagecoach robbery was attributed to the James-Younger gang, and it is difficult to list the specific holdups in which Cole was involved. But until Cole, Jim, and Bob were captured at Northfield in 1876, they were active, bold, and successful highwaymen. They committed robberies throughout Missouri and surrounding states and continued to make their home base in Missouri. Whenever pressure from the law became too great, the Youngers left the state, usually for Texas but on at least one occasion for California. Following the fiasco at Northfield, Cole, Bob, and Jim were wounded, and after desperately eluding posses for two weeks, they were taken into custody. They were thrown into a wagon and transported to the nearest town, where Cole, despite eleven wounds, stood up and made a sweeping bow to the astonished ladies who were present. Cole and his brothers pled guilty to escape hanging and were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bob died in prison, but Cole and Jim were paroled in 1901. The next year Jim committed suicide, then in 1903 Cole received a pardon. He worked briefly and ineffectually as a tombstone salesman and as an insurance salesman, even though, as a convict, he was prohibited from drawing up legal contracts. He then teamed up with Frank James in a Wild West Show venture, and later he traveled widely, lecturing on his adventures and the evils of crime. He retired in Lee's Summit and died there in 1916 at the age of seventy-two.

John Younger

John Younger was one of fourteen children born to a Missouri landholder and poiitician. He helped his father with farm work, but the senior Younger was killed by Jayhawkers, and John became increasingly bitter and moody. He killed his first man at the age of fifteen, but he was exonerated. Two years later, however, he was alternately hanged and beaten in his own barn by a posse in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of Cole and Jim Younger.

John's mother died in 1870, and he grew even more temperamental and surly. He joined Cole, Jim, and a sister in Texas, and for a while he clerked at a store in Dallas. He soon got into trouble, and after gunning down the sheriff of Dallas County he left Texas. He returned to Missouri while a wound healed, then went to California in June, 1871. He soon headed back, and while aboard a train in Colorado he got into another gunfight. He jumped off the train, made his way to Denver, then joined a wagon train en route to Kansas. Finally, he arrived at the home of an uncle, Dr. L. W. Twyman, in Blue Mills, Missouri, and tried to drop out of sight.

It is possible that John rode from time to time with the James-Younger gang during this period, and in particular he was suspected of assisting with the robbery of a train at Gads Hill, Missouri, on January 31, 1874. A few weeks later John and Jim Younger shot it out with lawmen near Monegaw Springs, Missouri. John shot down two of the officers, but was mortally wounded. He was buried nearby, but later his remains were transferred to the family plot at Lee's Summit, Missouri.

Bill O'Neal. Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

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