The good folks around the grand state of Missouri, and particularly Clay County and St. Joseph, would like to extend a hardy Happy 34th Birthday to their home-state hero—Jesse Woodson James.
Mr. James was born on this date, back in 1847, to the Reverend and Mrs. Robert James of Clay County, Missouri. Robert and Zerelda are also the proud parents of Jesse’s older brother, Frank.
It is unfortunate that the reverend is not present to congratulate his son on this happy occasion. It seems that back in 1849 Father James took a little trip out California way. Now he may have saw it as his God ordained duty to bring the blessed word to all those sinners in the gold fields of that far-western area. But there are those that suspect that the father of Jesse and Frank went to pass the plate around—or the gold pan if you will. Whichever the case, the Reverend James never returned to the bosom of his loving family back in Missouri.
However, Zerelda James, obviously being a devoted mother soon saw to it that the two boys had a father when she remarried again shortly after the disappearance of the Reverend James. It is, perhaps, a sad truth or an honest rumor that the boys’ new father often mistreated them. But as the old saying goes, “a third time is a charm,” and their devoted mother once more remarried, surely in hopes of providing a loving father for her offspring.
What with the often rough childhood and the unstable family life Jesse and his brother had, combined later with the upset of the late “unpleasantness” some refer to the American Civil War there is little wonder that the James Boys were forced into a life of crime. The whole unpleasant situation of their circumstances was surly brought to a head by the events of the war, some that concerned the boys personally. For instance, considering that Jesse and Frank are good Southern boys from Missouri, they became active in some of the monkeyshines of William Quantrill’s little guerrilla group.
Like so many young men who thankfully returned, all in one piece, to their family farms the two boys had lost all their enthusiasm for the drab life of cow-milking and viewing the hind-end of a mule dragging a plow for endless hours of sweaty toil.
