Shot All to Hell

by Mark Lee Gardner

  As many as five of the outlaws rode into Mankato on Saturday, September 2. Two lodged at the Clifton House and another two at Gates Hotel, but unlike at other hotels, the men declined to put their names in the guest registers. They were frequently seen about town that weekend making small purchases and playing cards in the saloons. Again, their impressive horses and dress attracted attention, as did their expert riding skills. Some of the gang were more than pleased to discuss their horses with anyone who admired them.

  The robbery was planned for Monday, September 4, but two of the outlaws spent Sunday night at O’Neil’s brothel, which means they were probably not at their best Monday morning. But the daylight robbery was one of the gang’s specialties, and they were confident they could take just about any bank, especially in a place like Minnesota, where such bold raids were unheard of.

  Then on Monday morning, outside one of the hotels, a day laborer named Charles Robinson, who was working nearby, suddenly spoke up: “Hallo, Jesse, what are you doing up here?”

  Jesse cocked his head and gave Robinson a curious look. Robinson was from Missouri, from James-Younger country. He even claimed to have once sat across a card table from Jesse.

  A slow smile broke across Jesse’s face, sending a shiver down Robinson’s spine. “Hell, man, I don’t know you,” Jesse said, finally. And with that, he put his horse into a trot.

  At about this same time, or shortly after, Cole Younger and another gang member walked into the First National Bank of Mankato, located on South Front Street. Cole went up to the counter and asked the assistant cashier, George Barr, to change a twenty-dollar bill. This was a favorite ploy of the gang that allowed them to get a better sense of the bank. Barr gave Cole his change in five-dollar bills, which the outlaw slowly counted one by one, making occasional glances toward the bank’s vault.

  While Cole was in the First National, another gang member visited the Citizens’ National Bank, which was in the same block on South Front. The gang had decided to rob one or the other, and these visits were meant to help them choose between the two. The outlaws then gathered some blocks away and decided that the First National was their best bet. In the meantime, Charles Robinson walked into the First National and told assistant cashier Barr that the James boys were in town and they had best “guard their bank well.” Barr looked at Robinson as if the man were crazy.

  “Well, they are,” Robinson exclaimed. He said he knew Frank and Jesse “as well as he did his own children.” Barr thanked Robinson, telling him he would pass along the information to the cashier. This Barr did, but the cashier was just as incredulous as his assistant, and they promptly forgot the whole thing.

  Sometime around noon, five or so of the gang rode toward the First National while the others hung back to watch their escape route, poised to rush in if things went wrong. But as the outlaws came in sight of the bank, situated on a corner of the block, they saw a number of people on the sidewalk, one of whom was pointing out the horsemen to a companion. Fearing they might have been found out, the outlaws casually turned their horses and rode back to the other gang members.

  But Jesse and the boys were not about to give up just yet. The First National, with $120,000 in capital, was one ripe plum. They wanted that money. So the robbers again approached the bank about an hour later, but again the same crowd was on the sidewalk, and like before, they seemed to be paying close attention to the riders. This unsettled the outlaws. Jesse had been identified earlier in the day so this could be some kind of trap. The robbers turned their mounts and calmly retreated from Mankato.

  In the James-Younger gang’s line of work, suspicion was a constant companion, but there had been no trap. An unusually large number of people were on the street because of a weekly meeting of the Board of Trade and ongoing construction for an expansion of the bank. And although the gang had been right that these townspeople were watching them, the people were only doing what most others did in every town the Missourians visited: they were admiring the fine horses.

  The boys headed east. Cole and Charlie Pitts had scouted Madelia, twenty-three miles southwest of Mankato. It was a pleasant town, but it had no bank. The St. Peter bank had struck them as a rather small operation, so they had no intention of returning there. The bank they now had in their sights was in Northfield, a town of about two thousand people on the Cannon River thirty-nine miles south of St. Paul. Jesse and Clell had spent a day or two poking around Northfield, pretending that they wanted to buy some land in the area. Northfield had only one bank, the First National, which meant the town’s money was all in one place and not divided up like in Mankato with its three banks. And they had come across an article in the local newspaper that said it had a new safe and time lock and that two heavy doors for the vault had been added as well. A bank would not invest in those kinds of improvements unless there was a substantial amount of money to protect.

  Jesse and Clell had pumped one local fellow about the Northfield townspeople, as if they were considering whether or not to live there. Were they a peace-loving, law-abiding people? When the man answered yes, one of the outlaws commented, “Why, according to your statement of the Northfield people, a very few men so inclined could capture the town, couldn’t they?”

  “Of course they could,” said the local.

  It was exactly the kind of conversation Jesse found amusing.

  Adelbert Ames.

  (Library of Congress)

  But the next part was Jesse’s favorite. One of the bank’s large investors was Adelbert Ames, a Union Civil War general and Radical Republican who until only recently had been Mississippi’s governor. Ames had been derided by Mississippi Democrats as a “carpetbagger” and despised by Southern whites for his pro-black Reconstruction policies. It did not help that Ames’s father-in-law was General Benjamin Butler, the hated former military commander of New Orleans (Southerners knew him as “Beast Butler”). After the Democrats gained control of the Mississippi legislature in 1875, they initiated impeachment proceedings against the governor for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Unwilling to endure what would surely be a very public tar and feathering, Ames resigned and moved to Northfield in the spring to join his brother, an early town settler, and his father in the family flour-milling business.

  Jesse was the ultimate Southern partisan, and he relished the idea of striking a blow for revenge, be it personal or political. He would hit the bank of Adelbert Ames and ride off with grain sacks stuffed with a notorious carpetbagger’s money. He could envision the newspapers having a field day with the story, enhancing his notoriety and, of course, feeding his ravenous ego. Northfield had to be the bank they would rob next.

  The gang traveled in two parties. On the evening of September 6, a Wednesday, Cole, Jim, Clell, and Pitts lodged at Millersburg, eleven miles west of Northfield. Jesse, Frank, Bob, and Chadwell spent the night at Cannon City, ten miles south. Jim nearly derailed the gang’s plans when he began having second thoughts about the robbery. One farmer who saw him that day said Jim “did not act like the others, but seemed low spirited and homesick.” Jim said he wanted to sell his horse and get on a train back to California. But after a long talk with Cole and the others, he decided to stick with the plan. They needed him.

  On the morning of September 7, the outlaws carefully looked after their horses, pulling up the animals’ hooves one by one to check for loose shoes. And they placed each saddle blanket and saddle just right, pushing a knee into the horse’s belly so the animal would exhale and then drawing up the cinch good and snug. There would be hard riding in just a few hours, so nothing could be left to chance. But if everything came off well, as they fully expected, their steeds would carry them at a breakneck pace through the Minnesota woods, the boys laughing and whooping in the wind.

  FOUR

  THE HOTTEST DAY NORTHFIELD EVER SAW

  It is true, we are robbers, but we always rob in the glare of the day and in the teeth of the multitude.

  —JESSE JAMES

&nb
sp; There was no way Joseph Lee Heywood hadn’t heard about it. People were talking about it at the bank, and he must have seen the broadsides posted all over town. It was Thursday, September 7, and Northfield was going to have some excitement that night.

  The “Great” Professor Lingard, an Australian illusionist, was going to perform, and before his show the public could watch him send up his two hot-air balloons named Tilden and Hayes—free of charge. Admission to the magic show was twenty-five cents, fifteen cents for children under ten. Maybe Heywood would take his five-year-old daughter, Lizzie May, and his wife, Lizzie, at least to see the balloons. The ascension was not until 6:45 P.M., so he would have plenty of time to get home after work, have dinner, and then help get the family ready to go out.

  That morning Heywood set off for the First National Bank, which was approximately six blocks from his home. He was a rather shy man, and at thirty-nine years old, the New Hampshire native had been the bank’s bookkeeper since 1872. He had fought during the Civil War in the Deep South, though his service was plagued by chronic illness. He came to Northfield in 1867, and quickly gained a reputation as a steady and trustworthy man. In addition to his employment at the bank, he was also city treasurer and treasurer for the fledgling Carleton College, which had awarded its first bachelor’s degrees—a total of two—in 1874.

  Joseph Lee Heywood.

  (Northfield Historical Society)

  The First National Bank was in a stark, rectangular room in the rear of a two-story stone building called the Scriver Block. The front of the Scriver Block faced north onto the open and treeless Mill Square. But the bank’s entrance was on the side of the Scriver Building on Division Street, a busy north-south avenue where most of Northfield’s merchants were clustered: furniture, hardware, jewelry, drugs, grocery, cigar, saloon, you name it. Division Street was also the east boundary of Mill Square. The Cannon River and the millworks of Jesse Ames & Sons were across the square to the west, which explains the square’s name. An iron bridge spanned the river, and Heywood crossed it and Mill Square twice a day because his home was on the west side of town. The tracks of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad were also on the west side, and its locomotives made sharp whistles that could be clearly heard throughout Northfield.

  Northfield’s iron bridge over the Cannon River, looking east onto Mill Square.

  (Northfield Historical Society)

  The bank’s cramped workspace and vault area were protected in the front by a curved wooden counter that was topped by a glass-paneled railing, except for an opening in the curve where the teller greeted customers. Heywood’s desk was built into this counter, but the bank’s cashier, George M. Phillips, was away attending the centennial, so Heywood was working at Phillips’s small desk on the north side of the room and near the vault.

  The vault faced the bank’s large pane windows that looked out onto Division Street. The heavy vault door, manufactured by the Detroit Safe Company, screamed Gilded Age with its gaudy pediment, heavy gold trimming, and pastoral scene painted on the door.

  A unique clock, popular at the time, called a “calendar clock” was hanging on the wall just to the left of the vault. It featured two circular faces. The top face, the larger of the two, gave the time, and the bottom face gave the date, the day of the week, and the month. The clock had no chime, but it was hard to miss its distinctive ticking in that small room. This clock, and the elaborate vault door, always caught the eyes of bank customers standing at the counter.

  Interior of the First National Bank, 1876.

  (Northfield Historical Society)

  Also at the bank that morning were Frank Wilcox, assistant bookkeeper, who would turn twenty-eight years old the next day, and Alonzo E. Bunker, the teller, who was twenty-seven years old. Heywood greeted the men and told them what he needed them to do that morning. Then he opened the vault’s outer door and walked inside to the steel safe, also a product of the Detroit Safe Company. The new chronometer lock would have automatically disengaged by the beginning of business hours, so Heywood worked the safe’s combination and unlocked it, but he left the safe door closed, its bolts still in place. There was approximately $15,000 in the safe.

  Just three days earlier, Heywood had stood in the vault with the president of Carleton College, James Strong, who had read in the papers about the bank improvements and asked his friend Heywood about the new time lock. As they talked, Strong brought up the St. Albans Raid of October 19, 1864, in which twenty-one Confederate cavalrymen invaded the Vermont town and robbed its three banks of more than $200,000. Strong, a native of Vermont, had been told what happened during the raid by one of the bank cashiers.

  After pausing to see how Heywood reacted to his story, Strong asked his friend a pointed question: “Do you think, under like circumstances, you would open the safe?”

  “I do not think I should,” Heywood answered.

  Something in Heywood’s response—his simple frankness, perhaps—left Strong convinced that Heywood would never bend to the demands of an armed robber. But, of course, the question was purely hypothetical, for such an attack would never happen in Northfield.

  By 10:00 A.M., the first of the James-Younger gang began to ride into town. Four men came up Division Street from the south, two hitching their horses in front of the First National Bank while the others continued on past Mill Square and stopped in front of the Exchange Saloon. The two at the bank glanced up and down the street, opened the bank’s door, and walked in. They were inside for only a moment before they came back out to the street.

  The outlaws may have asked to have a twenty-dollar bill changed—or they may have asked the time and been shown the calendar clock on the wall. In any event, they got a good look inside the bank and noted how many employees were on duty. The outlaws next mounted their horses and rode around to the front of the Scriver Building and through Mill Square to the bridge. At the bridge they met three others, talked briefly, shook hands, and left.

  The outlaws were spotted on the east and west side of town, usually in pairs and trios, over the next four hours. They occasionally exchanged pleasantries with folks on the street. Some visited the hardware stores and asked if they had any rifles for sale—which was their way of figuring out what might be available to the townspeople and what they might encounter in a fight.

  They had never really raised much suspicion in the other Minnesota small towns they had visited, but for some reason, on this day, more than a few locals looked at these strangers with worry and concern. It started with Walter Lewis, a black man who was on his way to Northfield and saw four of the outlaws coming out of some woods. Lewis told Salma Trussell, the owner of an agricultural implements store, that something didn’t seem right about these men. Trussell shadowed some of them along Division Street and became suspicious as well. He had half a mind to go to the bank and alert Heywood about the men in the dusters, but first he consulted Elias Hobbs. Hobbs, the former chief of police, knew all about these well-dressed fellows. They were cattle buyers, he told Trussell. Hobbs and others chastised him for being “too suspicious.” Trussell decided to let it go; perhaps he was being a little silly.

  Druggist George Bates also saw four of the strangers coming over the bridge that morning and marveled at the fine horses these impressive men were riding. Bates recalled later that he had never seen four “nobler looking fellows.” The men had a “reckless, bold swagger about them that seemed to indicate that they would be rough and dangerous fellows to handle.” He had a bad feeling about them.

  Shortly after 11:00 A.M., two of the outlaws entered Gerden Jefts’s restaurant, on the west side of the river and near the railroad depot. Jefts had nothing prepared, but he told the strangers he could whip up some ham and eggs. That sounded good to the boys, who requested four eggs each. They were in a jocular mood and turned to one of their favorite topics: politics. They wanted to know what Jefts thought of Tilden’s chances in the presidential election. Jefts said he had no interest in politics, which the boys
just ignored. As in Red Wing, one of the outlaws grandly proffered a $1,000 wager that Tilden would carry the state.

  Two more of the gang joined their pals at Jefts’s and ordered the same eggs. The other half of the gang was split between John Tosney’s saloon on Water Street (also on the west side of the river) and the Exchange Saloon on Division. They ordered wine and whiskey, lightly sipping their drinks and periodically digging into vest pockets to remove their gold pocket watches and check the time.

  The day was warm and calm with typical weekday activity on Northfield’s streets, people with bundles under their arms going in and out of shops and stopping to talk with friends and neighbors. On the second floor of a frame building on the north side of Mill Square, the editor of the Rice County Journal was at work getting off the latest edition of the newspaper, which came out weekly on Thursday afternoons.

  Adelbert Ames had just finished writing a letter to his wife and had strolled down to the mill to mail it. Across Division Street, nearly opposite the bank, Henry Wheeler, a twenty-two-year-old medical student on break from the University of Michigan, killed time sitting in a chair under the awning of his father’s drugstore, Wheeler & Blackman Drug.

  A few minutes before 2:00 P.M., Frank James, Bob Younger, and Charlie Pitts slowly crossed the iron bridge, the roar of the water that rushed over the nearby mill dam momentarily drowning out the sound of their horses’ hooves. The plan was for these three to be the inside men, to conduct the robbery. Cole and Clell Miller would post themselves on Division Street outside the bank, and Jesse, Jim Younger, and Bill Chadwell would wait in Mill Square to guard their escape route—if there was trouble, they would rush forward with a Rebel yell.