Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, on September 5, 1847. He was the third of four children born to Robert and Zerelda Cole James, both Kentucky natives. Jesse James had an older brother Frank, a brother, Robert, who died in infancy, and a younger sister, Susan. His father was a slave-owning farmer and popular Baptist minister in Clay County. Intending to preach to the gold miners, lured by the prospect of gold, or simply restless, Robert James left his family and traveled to California when Jesse was three years old. He never returned to Missouri, dying—probably of cholera—in a gold mining camp in 1850.

The Jameses owned a hundred-acre farm where they used slave labor to grow hemp and raise sheep. When Zerelda became a widow, she was responsible for her three children as well as five enslaved children and one adult. She remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, then in 1855 to a doctor named Reuben Samuel. Known as a strongwilled, opinionated woman, Zerelda was the head of the household for years to come.

Jesse James grew up on the farm. He was both popular in the community and outwardly religious. Some townspeople believed he might become a minister like his father. The Civil War, however, derailed this possible career path.

As slave owners with southern roots, the James family joined Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson in supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. Frank James fought at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek under the command of General Sterling Price and afterwards joined up with Confederate guerrillas and raiders. Because Missouri was a border state with sympathies for both sides, it became the site of vicious skirmishes started by both Union militia and Confederate raiders. Each side struck brutally, harming civilians and crippling the economy.

In 1863 Union soldiers visited the James farm. They were seeking information about Confederate guerrilla bands. The soldiers hurt and threatened Jesse James and his family. Shortly after this incident, James joined his brother, Frank, and a guerrilla unit led by William “Bloody Bill” Anderson. James adapted quickly to a lifestyle that would set the pattern for the rest of his life: plan and attack, flee and hide.

In the summer of 1864, James was shot in the chest during a guerrilla raid. By the morning of September 27, 1864, however, he was well enough to be part of an eighty-man raid on Centralia, Missouri. Led by “Bloody Bill,” the guerrillas terrorized the town and murdered twenty-two unarmed Union soldiers in what is called the Centralia Massacre. Hours later, at the Battle of Centralia, the guerrillas killed and horribly mutilated over a hundred soldiers in the Thirty-ninth Missouri Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. James took credit for killing their Union commander, Major Andrew “Ave” Johnston.

At the end of the Civil War, Jesse James was shot by Union cavalrymen as he attempted to surrender. His cousin, Zerelda “Zee” Mimms, whom he later married, nursed him back to health while some of his former war comrades took to robbing banks and stagecoaches. Once well, Jesse began his career as an outlaw. In 1866 the Clay County Savings Bank was robbed and an innocent bystander was shot. By 1868, Jesse and Frank James took part in robbing a bank in Kentucky. In December 1869, Jesse James’s name appeared in the newspapers for the first time. He and his gang had held up the Daviess County Savings Bank in Gallatin, Missouri. Though the robbery brought little cash, Jesse James shot the cashier, whom he thought was the man who had killed “Bloody Bill” Anderson a month after the Centralia Massacre. This act of revenge and a daring escape brought James into the public eye.

Jesse James came to crave and demand public attention. He wrote letters to John Newman Edwards, the editor of the Kansas City Times, claiming his innocence or explaining his deeds. Edwards, who wanted the Confederates to regain power in Missouri, published James’s letters. He also wrote elaborate editorials praising James as a Robin Hood figure and making him a symbol of Confederate defiance during the period of Reconstruction when Unionists were in charge of state government.

Meanwhile, the James brothers united with Cole Younger and his brothers, all former Confederate guerrillas. The James-Younger gang conducted a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and even a fair in Kansas City. In 1873 they turned to robbing trains. In most cases, they stole money from the train safe rather than from passengers.

On April 24, 1874, Jesse James married Zerelda Mimms. Together they had four children: a son Jesse, twin boys Gould and Montgomery who died in infancy, and Mary. Agents for the Pinkerton Detective Agency had been pursuing the James brothers since 1871. In 1875 they tossed a flare into the Samuel home. It exploded, killing James’s half-brother and injuring Zerelda Samuel’s hand, which later had to be amputated.

On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang tried to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. The robbery was the gang’s first serious disaster. The Younger brothers were caught and sent to prison. The James brothers fled and eventually settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where they lived under assumed names. Jesse became “Thomas Howard” and Frank became “B. J. Woodson.”

Eventually, Jesse drew new men into his gang. They were not war comrades, but thugs with no loyalty to the Confederate cause. Jesse James grew increasingly suspicious of them as he continued to rob trains and hold up banks.

In 1881 Governor Thomas Theodore Crittenden issued a proclamation for the arrest of Frank and Jesse James. By 1882 Jesse James had moved his family back to St. Joseph, Missouri. Still using his alias, James passed himself off as a cattle buyer and brought two new men, Robert and Charley Ford, into his gang to help him scout banks for future robberies. James was unaware that Robert Ford had already talked with Governor Crittenden about getting a reward for killing him. On April 3, 1882, Robert Ford shot and killed Jesse James. The Ford brothers were tried for murder and found guilty, but the governor pardoned them.