Jesse Woodson James was the son of a preacher (Robert Sallee James) and a tall, strong-willed woman (Zerelda Elizabeth Cole). The couple met at a revival meeting in
Stamping Ground, Kentucky (named for herds of bison which once grazed there) and married three days after Christmas, 1841.
After Robert graduated from
Georgetown College, the young couple decided to move from Kentucky to northwestern Missouri. Robert and Zee (as his wife was known)
settled in Centerville (later known as Kearney). Their
Clay-County neighbors helped them build a log-cabin home and the couple became farmers. Robert also pastored a small church - New Hope Baptist - outside town.
Their first child was a boy - Alexander Franklin James. Frank, as he was known, was born at the family farm on January 10, 1843. Eighteen months later, a second son - named after Reverend James - was born, then died thirty-three days later.
Jesse entered the world on the 5th of September, 1847. He was two years old when his sister, Susan Lavenia James, was born on November 25, 1849.
History records that Rev. James (who had a Master’s Degree) was a better preacher than a farmer. His efforts helped the congregation to expand while
slaves helped the family’s hemp crops to grow. Part of the Southern economy, plant fibers from the James farm ultimately became twine and hemp bags used in the slave-intensive cotton industry.
In early 1850, when Jesse was still a toddler, Rev. James agreed to serve as a
wagon-train chaplain for local men seeking to
find gold in
California. Although he planned to return home before long, the young father found it hard to
say good-bye:
It was said that young Jesse, crying and clinging to his father’s leg, begged him not to leave, but Robert had made a promise, and with much regret, he departed. (Ted P. Yeatman, Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend, page 26.)
Before the end of his first summer away, thirty-two-year-old Rev. James was dead of a fever. Some accounts say he contracted
cholera from contaminated water
at the
Hangtown (now Placerville, California)
gold and
mining
camp in the
Sierra Nevadas. A local newspaper, the Liberty Tribune, published a glowing obituary:
He was a man much liked by all who enjoyed his acquaintance; and as a revivalist he had but few equals in this country. We think within the bounds of reason when we affirm that more additions have been made to the Baptist Church, in Clay County, under his preaching (length of time considered) than under that of any other person. . . Peace to his ashes. (Quoted by Yeatman in Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend, page 26.)
Later, when the toddler was a grown man, he tried to find his father’s unmarked grave. He could not.
We are left to ponder unanswerable questions. Would Jesse have turned out differently had his father lived? Would Rev. James, a Southerner, have supported the Confederacy when
war came to Missouri? Could he have envisioned that his adopted state would eventually see more Civil War fighting than any other, save Virginia and Tennessee?
Why did so much bloodshed occur in Missouri?