The Pinkertons retaliated. In 1875, two men thought to be Pinkerton agents fire-bombed the James homestead, mutilating the arm of Zeralda James (now Zeralda Samuel) and killing Archie Samuel, the nine-year-old half brother of Jesse and Frank. Meanwhile, both Frank and Jesse had married in 1874; both now had families. When not out killing and robbing, the two were attentive fathers and husbands. Jesse even wrote frequent letters to the newspapers denying he had robbed such and such a bank or train.
The gang now headed to Northfield, Minnesota, where on September 7, 1876, they robbed the First National Bank, wounded the teller, and killed the cashier and a bystander. The gunfire alerted the community, however, and the gang had to shoot its way out of town. In the process, outlaws Clell Miller and William Stiles were killed, and Bob and Cole Younger were wounded, Bob the more seriously. The outlaws fled, only to be pursued by a relentless posse in what became one of the West's most intense manhunts. Since the Youngers could not keep up, the James boys struck out on their own. Within days, the pursuing posse killed Charlie Pitts and captured Jim, Bob, and Cole Younger.
All three Youngers went to the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwell. Bob died there of tuberculosis in 1889. Cole and Jim were released in 1901. Jim committed suicide. Cole sold insurance, ran a Wild West show with Frank James, and lectured against evil.
Whether Jesse and Frank ever robbed another bank or train isn't certain. Jesse changed his name to Thomas Howard, and with his family he probably lived in Tennessee or Kentucky. By 1881, he had moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, still dreaming of the old days and occasionally accepting new gang members, such as Robert Ford. On April 3, 1882, as he stood on a chair to straighten a picture on the wall, Ford shot him in the back of the head-for the reward money and the publicity. Six months later Frank surrendered to the governor of Missouri; over time, he was acquitted of all his crimes.
The body of Jesse James was removed to town, identified, photographed, and viewed by hundreds. It was then transported to the James/Samuel farm, where his stepfather and mother, Zeralda, buried it in the yard. The tombstone inscription read: "Devoted Husband and Father, Jesse Woodson James. September 5, 1847, murdered April 3, 1882 by a traitor and coward whose name is not worthy to appear here."
Joseph Heywood was killed by Jesse James in a Northfield, Minnesota, bank holdup (Author's Collection)
Jesse James in death (Author's Collection)
After Jesse's mother and stepfather passed away, the outlaw's son, Jesse Edward James, disinterred his father's body and reburied it alongside Zee in the Mt. Olive Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri. In 1995, his remains were exhumed by a George Washington University forensic team, given DNA testing, and positively identified as Jesse James. On October 28, he was reinterred.
As for Frank James, he lived another 30 years, doing all kinds of odd jobs, including running a James-Younger Wild West Show in partnership with Cole Younger. Frank's wife cremated his body when he died in 1915 and kept the ashes in a bank vault until she died in 1944. Their ashes are now mixed together and buried as one in a Kansas City cemetery.
See o; ANDERSON, WILLIAM C.; FORD, ROBERT AND CHARLES; QUANTRILL, WILLIAM CLARKE; WELLS, SAMUEL; YOUNGER BROTHERS
JAYBIRD-WOODPECKER War
This war of 1888-89 involved a feud between political/racial factions in Fort Bend County, Texas. Perhaps 40 white residents (the Woodpeckers) had gained control of the county during the Reconstruction era. One of the odd aspects of the feud was that they claimed to be Democrats but campaigned as Republicans. The Woodpecker political strength therefore stemmed from the support of a large black population that voted Republican, because black people perceived the Republicans as the ones who had set them free.
On August 2, 1888, someone shot and killed J. M. Shamblin, leader of the Jaybirds who opposed the Woodpeckers and represented the majority of whites in the county. Henry Frost, another jaybird was wounded a month later. The Jaybirds then held a mass meeting and warned selected black people to vacate the county. Most accepted that advice.
As Texas Rangers took up quarters in Richmond, county elections took place, and the county turned out its largest vote in history. Yet because of the black turnout the Woodpeckers won again; all sides started arming themselves. On June 21, 1889, the Woodpecker tax assessor, Kyle Terry, shot and killed L. E. Gibson. Gibson's brother, Volney, killed Terry a week later.
All this was too much for everyone involved, and so the Battle of Richmond began, on August 16, 1889. Most of the fighting took place around the National Hotel and the courthouse. For nearly a half-hour the firing continued, the Woodpeckers finally holing up in the courthouse. Jaybirds now controlled the city. The casualties are unknown but were reported as "heavy."
On the following day, August 17, Governor Lawrence Ross dispatched the Houston and Brenham Light Guards to restore order. He himself arrived and negotiated a political change. As a result, all the Woodpecker country officials either resigned or were forced from office, and the Jaybirds took political control for the first time in 20 years.
On October 3 and again on October 22, 1899, the Jaybirds met and drafted a constitution giving county control to white people, the "real" Democrats. That political situation continued for decades. But at least the shooting stopped.
S66 (JI90. TEXAS RANGERS
JAYHAWKERS
The name "Jayhawker" once denoted terror, and this terror had its birth in Kansas during the Civil War. It commenced with men named James Montgomery and Charles R. "Doc" Jennison, Montgomery being the cruel idealist and Jennison the implementing
hammer. Jennison organized raiders he called "Jayhawkers," and Montgomery used them to raid Missouri slave owners. From the outset of the Civil War, this group teamed up with James Henry Lane, who called himself "the Great Jayhawker." Thus the Independent Mounted jayhawkers, as they termed themselves, murdered and burned their way through Kansas and Missouri, their reasons lost in the looting and killing.
Another group of Jayhawkers, this one referring to itself as the "Red Legs," slashed its way along the Missouri border. Like the others, these raiders took advantage of Civil War chaos; military units, both Confederate and Federal, were distant, fighting a traditional war. As a result, Missouri thugs retaliated when William Clarke Quantrill organized what he called "the bushwhackers," raiders who cast fire and lead upon the Kansas jayhawkers, making no distinction between legitimate targets and families. The Youngers and the James brothers both got their start here.
The Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers went out of business with the demise of the Civil War and the return of stable, effective government.
.366- ako: JAMES BROTHERS; LANE, JAMES HENRY; QUANTRILL, WILLIAM CLARKE
JOHNSON, Edwin W. (1853-1931)
Johnson was born in Clark County, Arkansas, became a deputy sheriff at Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and by 1880 had moved to Clay County, Texas, where as a lawman he tried to suppress fence cutting. By 1889, he had became a U.S. Deputy Marshal working in Texas and Oklahoma, losing his right arm due to a Wichita Falls, Texas, gunfight with a Bob James. Undeterred, Johnson learned to shoot with his left hand. In mid-1888, he helped arrest Charles, George, Llwellyn, and Alf Marlow. It took but a brief time for the Marlow brothers to escape from the Graham, Texas, jail but they were recaptured during a gunbattle that cost the life of one officer. At this time, January 19, 1889, the lawmen started herding the Marlows on a 60-mile trip to Weatherford, Texas, believing it to be a more secure jail. However, a gang of desperadoes, perhaps trying to lynch the Marlows, perhaps trying to free them, waylaid the caravan. Five men died, a chief deputy, two of the attacking bunch, and two of the Marlows, Llwellyn and Alf.
During the resultant uproar, Johnson, who had his good left hand mangled by gunfire during the shootout, was charged with being one of the outlaws. He was finally exonerated, and in 1916 moved to Los Angeles, California, where he became a deputy sheriff. Fourteen years later he died in Los Angeles.
JOHNSON, John (a.k.a. Turkey Creek Johnson) (1812-?)
Johnson was one of those obscure outlaws who popped up out of nowhere, achieved a measure of notoriety, and then faded into the background, never again to be positively identified. There is some suspicion that while acting as a city marshal in Newton, Nebraska, he killed Mike Fitzgerald. With perhaps a couple more dead men on his backtrail, he showed up next in Tombstone, Arizona, where he became one of the Wyatt Earp stalwarts. There seems little doubt that he helped Earp kill Frank Stillwell in the railroad yards at Tucson on March 20, 1882, and Florentino Cruz 48 hours later. What happened to him then? Who knows?
SF'r' r.Cc; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP
JOHNSON County War
In 1892, Johnson County, Wyoming, became the last of the great cattle conflicts. The problem stemmed from numerous small ranchers in that area appearing to help themselves to the nearby "big" ranchers' cattle. Large cattlemen, especially those along the Powder River in Wyoming, had grown fat, rich, and comfortable after years of ranching, now profits were down and cattle were disappearing, especially in Johnson County, where many small ranchers lived. Ordinarily, these big cattlemen might have felt themselves relatively powerless, but since big ranchers controlled the Wyoming government, they decided to act. The result became the Johnson County War.
The cattlemen hired gunmen from Texas, and on April 5, 1892, a special train left Cheyenne for Casper. On board was Frank Canton, a detective for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, retained to provide muscle to remove the small cattlemen. With him were 23 gunmen, 22 of them from Texas, five additional stock detectives, two newspaper reporters, and 19 cattlemen. Canton no doubt carried a death
list of rustler names, and the governor had already been advised to ignore any calls for assistance from Buffalo, the seat of Johnson County. In fact, Canton ordered the telephone wires cut.
At Kaycee, Wyoming, the invaders disembarked and trapped accused rustlers Nate Champion and Nick Ray inside their shack. The Texans shot Ray when he ran and killed Champion after setting his house afire and flushing him out. Meanwhile, word of the fighting reached Buffalo, so Sheriff Red Angus rounded up 200 Buffalo residents, met the invaders along the line of march, and forced them to seek shelter in a TA Ranch barn, 10 miles short of Buffalo.
There, the Canton raiders called frantically for assistance, and the cavalry from Fort McKinney responded. Canton and the others were taken as prisoners to Cheyenne, where the case was dismissed several months later because Buffalo County could not raise sufficient funds to continue with the prosecution.
Since then, numerous books, fiction and nonfiction, plus a couple of movies-HHaoera" Gate and been loosely based on the Johnson County War. It is a war still argued around prairie campfires as well as in the halls of academia.
S66 UIS0: CANTON, FRANK
JONES, Frank (1856-1893)
One of the great Texas Rangers, Frank Jones was born in Austin, Texas, and joined the rangers in September 1875, serving in various locations until 1882, when he joined Company D, at that time serving in southern and southwestern Texas. He became a ranger captain in May 1886. Jones married in 1885; his wife died in 1889. In 1892, he married Helen Baylor Gillett, daughter of Texas Ranger captain George W. Baylor, as well as the exwife of former ranger and later El Paso city marshal, James Gillett.
In 1893, Jones and five other rangers pursued Mexican bandits and rustlers into the Rio Grande thickets, an area frequently known as "the island" or "Pirate Island," a strip of isolated land in contention between the United States and Mexico. As they approached a brush village known as Tres Jacales (three shacks), a gunfight erupted on June 30. It ended with Jones's death. His body was not returned to El Paso for several days. He was buried with Masonic honors on the George Baylor property at Ysleta, Texas.
Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones died in a Bosque gun battle in 1893 near San Elizario and Ysleta, Texas (Author's Collection)
S66 C+LSo: BAYLOR, GEORGE WYTHE; GILLETT, JAMES BUCHANAN
JONES, John B. (1834-1881)
John Jones, the man most responsible for the creation of the Texas Rangers-in fact, a man deserving of the title "Mr. Texas Ranger"-moved from South Carolina, where he had been born, to Texas when he was four years old, his family settling in Travis County. After attending college in South Carolina, he enlisted for the Civil War in the Eighth Texas Cavalry, then became a captain in the 15th Texas Infantry. By war's end he had become a major.
When the Texas legislature in 1874 authorized the Frontier Battalion, with its five companies of Texas Rangers, Governor Richard Coke needed a man to lead the organization who could stop the Indian raids as well as the increasing outlawry. During his first six months on the job, Jones led his rangers in 14 Indian engagements. During the second six months, the battles were down to four. His largest battle occurred on July 12, 1874, when Jones led approximately 40 rangers into battle against 125 Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche.
During 1877, Jones found himself in El Paso, Texas, trying to quell the El Paso Salt War. He failed in that respect but served on an international commission to mediate the difficulties.
Jones brought about a truce in the Horrell-Higgins feud. His men destroyed the Sam Bass Gang at Round Rock, Texas. One year later, in 1879, Jones became adjutant general of Texas in addition to remaining commander of the Frontier Battalion. He died in Austin on July 19, 1881, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
BASS, SAM; EL PASO SALT WAR; HORRELLHIGGINS FEUD; TEXAS RANGERS
John B. Jones, Commander, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers (Library, University oF Texas at Austin)
JOY, Christopher (a.k.a. Kit) (1861-1884?)
A Texas cowboy, well known around Silver City, New Mexico, and a former employee of ex-Grant County sheriff Harvey Howard Whitehill, Kit joy (along with Frank Taggart, Mitch Lee, and George Washington Cleveland, a black cowboy) robbed a Southern Pacific train near Gage Station, west of Deming. During the robbery, one of them killed the train engineer. After an intensive search and competent investigation, joy was identified as one of the outlaws, and he was subsequently arrested with Lee near Horse Springs, New Mexico Territory. The authorities locked him up at Silver City. On March 10, 1884, joy and others, including his train-robbing companions, overpowered the guards, stole firearms from the sheriff's office, and fled. However, a posse caught up with the outlaws outside of town, and during an ensuing gun battle all were captured or killed except joy. He managed to escape in the heavy underbrush, in the process fatally ambushing posseman Joseph N. Lafferr, a Silver City resident. As for the other outlaws, Cleveland was shot, some say by joy, for "snitching." Lee and Taggart were caught and lynched.
Joy hid out along the Gila River until posse member "Rackety" Smith's buffalo gun shattered his leg below the knee. Doctors amputated it at Silver City.
On a change of venue, a jury at Sierra County, Hillsboro, New Mexico, found joy guilty of seconddegree murder, the prosecuting attorney acknowledging that it could not be proved that joy himself had killed the engineer, nor could any premeditation to commit homicide be proved. Although sentenced to life, joy eventually walked free from prison, and dropped out of sight somewhere around Bisbee, Arizona.
c CLEVELAND, GEORGE WASHINGTON; LEE, A. MITCHELL; TAGGART, FRANK
KELLY, Ed (?-1904)
Ed Kelly was likely born in Harrisonville, Missouri, and he married a relative of the Younger brothers. Although considered a tough, even desperate character, he is historically remembered today only as the slayer of Bob Ford, who, of course, is known only as the slayer of Jesse James. Bob Ford and Ed Kelly evidently roomed together briefly in a Pueblo, Colorado, hotel (men usually bunked together in order to save money), and during the night Ford's diamond ring disappeared. Ford loudly and repeatedly accused Kelly of stealing.
An angry Kelly stormed into Ford's tent saloon in Creede, Colorado, and killed Ford with a shotgun on June 8, 1892. Kelly received a life sentence but was released. On January 13, 1904, he became involved in a street fight with an Oklahoma City policeman, and the poli
ceman shot him to death.
.366 O. FORD, ROBERT AND CHARLES; JAMES BROTHERS
KEMP, David Leon (1863-1935)
David Kemp was born on March 1, 1863, in Coleman County, Texas, but went with his parents to Hamilton County shortly after the Civil War. When he turned 17, he defended a friend during an altercation and by some accounts wound up killing a man. Although sentenced to 25 years, he obtained an early release when he helped prevent a prison break.
Kemp moved to Eddy County, New Mexico, where he was elected sheriff in 1890 and served until 1894. Later he had disputes with a brand inspector, Les Dow, who became sheriff in 1896. On February 16, 1897, the two men fought a duel, Dow's gun hanging up in his holster and Kemp's working perfectly. He shot Dow in the mouth, and Dow died the next day. An 1898 jury found him not guilty of murder. David L. Kemp remarried (twice more), served on the school board, and moved his Kemp & Lyell's Silver King Saloon in Phenix, New Mexico, to Eddy and renamed it The Central. But hard times were coming. His son, Leon, was shot to death by a mail carrier while Leon stood on his own front porch. Kemp spent much of his later life as a recluse, dying of a heart attack on January 4, 1935. He is buried in the Heart Cemetery at Booker, New Mexico.
KENEDY, James W. (?-?)
Kenedy, son of a respected Texas patriot, Mifflin Kenedy, drove cattle to Ellsworth, Kansas, where on July 27, 1872, during a gambling argument, he shot the Texas cattleman Print Olive. Olive's trail boss, Nigger Jim Kelly, then shot Kenedy. Nevertheless, Kenedy was soon up and about, at least in shape to make an attempt on the life of Dodge City mayor James H. (Dog) Kelley. The shooting likely had something to do with Kelley's relationship with actress and saloon and dance hall queen Dora Hand, whom Kenedy allegedly shot and killed on the following day. Pursuers then chased Kenedy through a snowstorm, killed his horse, and wounded him in the shoulder before returning him to Dodge City. However, Kenedy was acquitted after a "private" trial. He afterward returned to Texas. What happened to him after that is anybody's guess.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 29