Shot All to Hell

by Mark Lee Gardner

  Pitts’s relationship with the widow Beemer is from a lengthy interview she gave to a Kansas City Times reporter. In addition to the Times, the interview was published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Aug. 7, 1876. Beemer subsequently penned a letter to the Times, dated Aug. 16, in which she desired to “correct a few statements” made in the original Times interview. Contradicting what she told the Times reporter, Beemer denied having any knowledge of Pitts’s activities as a bank and train robber. “Pitts and Chadwell may both be very bad men,” she wrote, “but I have no evidence of this fact, outside of rumor; and I must have more evidence than I have at present before I believe all I have heard against them.” I do not believe that the widow Beemer was truly this naive. Her letter is printed in the Aug. 18, 1876, edition of the Kansas City Times.

  Charlie’s brothers, Robert and Charles E. Wells, are both found in Wyandotte County, KS (about 125 miles north of Cherokee), in the 1875 Kansas State census. Robert was living with his mother and sisters in Wyandotte Township, and Charles, a merchant, was residing in the Quindaro Township. Samuel Wells (Charlie Pitts), his wife, Virginia, and daughter, Mary, are enumerated in the 1870 U.S. census in the very same Quindaro Township, Wyandotte County.

  For the mules, harnesses, and wagons purchased by Charlie Pitts with his Rocky Cut money, see the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Aug. 17, 1876; and the Sedalia Daily Democrat, Sept. 9 and Oct. 10, 1876. The Sedalia Daily Democrat of Sept. 9 reported that this property was captured near Fort Scott, KS, under the care of Robert Wells.

  For the portrait of Charlie Pitts in the possession of Lillie Beemer, see the Sedalia Daily Democrat, Oct. 4, 1876.

  William Chadwell, age seven, is enumerated in the 1860 U.S. census for the Eastern Precinct, Greene County, IL, in the household of Margaret Chadwell, his mother. Significantly, Cole Younger remembered that Chadwell was “a young fellow from Illinois.” See his The Story of Cole Younger by Himself, 77. Bill Chadwell does not appear in subsequent Kansas censuses, but brothers Matterson (Madison), Samuel, and James do. His mother died in Joplin, MO, in 1878.

  My description of the teenage Chadwell comes from the account of an unknown Crawford County, KS, woman in whose home Chadwell lived for several months in 1871. See the Faribault Republican, Oct. 25, 1876.

  The story of Chadwell grabbing the blasting powder out of the fire is from the Burlington Hawk-Eye (Iowa), Nov. 23, 1876, which was copying an article that originally appeared in the California Democrat (Missouri).

  For the robbery of the Baxter Springs, Kansas, bank, see the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Apr. 20, 1876.

  The Kansas manhunts for Pitts and Chadwell are detailed in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Aug. 7 and 17, 1876. The Aug. 7 article carried the sensational report that Pitts had been captured while eating dinner in a house on Spring Creek and that a wad of $1,800 in cash was found on him. This same article contains the story of the posse surrounding Chadwell in a cornfield. However, the Aug. 17 news item fails to mention either of these episodes and states that Pitts and Chadwell rode away from the home of Chadwell’s father-in-law a few days before the arrival of the posse.

  Cole’s comparison of Frank and Jesse is from the Winona Daily Republican, Oct. 13, 1883.

  For one version of Cole’s near shoot-out with Jesse, see his The Story of Cole Younger by Himself (Chicago: The Henneberry Co., 1903), 92–93.

  My description of Frank James comes from the following contemporary sources: St. Louis Dispatch, Nov. 23, 1873; Dolores News, Rico, Colorado, Oct. 14, 1882; St. Louis Missouri Republican, Oct. 6, 1882; Kansas City Weekly Journal, Jan. 1, 1883; Kansas City Journal, Oct. 9, 1882, and June 18, 1897; and St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 11, 1882.

  There is considerable confusion over the heights of Frank and Jesse James, as well as the difference in height between the two. John Newman Edwards, who had met the brothers, wrote that “Frank was a little older and taller than Jesse.” Morris Langhorn, editor of the Independence Herald, met Frank in 1874 and later said, “It was a mistake to think Jesse James is the taller of the two; he is not; Frank bears that distinguished mark.” Upon Frank’s surrender to the Missouri governor in 1882, his height was given by reporter Frank O’Neil as “exactly five feet nine inches.” Bob Ford said Frank was five feet, eleven and a half inches, and Langhorn said the outlaw was “about six feet tall.” Oddly, no effort appears to have been made to get an official measurement of Jesse’s body after his assassination on Apr. 3, 1882. A reporter for the Western News, a St. Joseph newspaper, described Jesse’s body, apparently from personal inspection, and gave the outlaw’s height as “about five feet eight inches.” Jesse’s brother-in-law told a Kansas City Journal reporter that Jesse was “about” five feet, eleven inches tall. Other contemporary newspapers provide heights ranging from five feet, eight to six feet, one-half inches. See Noted Guerillas, 168; Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, Sept. 20, 1881, and Apr. 11, 1882; St. Louis Missouri Republican, Oct. 6, 1882; Kansas City Journal, Apr. 5 and Oct. 9, 1882; Western News, Apr. 7, 1882; St. Joseph Weekly Gazette, Apr. 5, 1882; and the County Paper, Oregon, Missouri, Apr. 14, 1882.

  My description of Jesse James comes from several sources, but see particularly Noted Guerillas, 167–168; the St. Louis Dispatch, Nov. 23, 1873; and the St. Joseph Weekly Gazette, Apr. 5, 1882.

  The quote about Jesse sitting straight in the saddle is from Elmer Pigg to Homer Croy, Jefferson City, MO, Oct. 30, 1948, folder 742, Homer Croy Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, MO.

  Charley Ford’s recollections of Jesse’s sense of humor are found in “Jesse on a Lark,” Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, Apr. 18, 1882.

  Thomas Mimms, the brother of Jesse’s wife, Zee, is quoted from the Kansas City Journal, Apr. 5, 1882.

  George Hite Jr. was the cousin Jesse cautioned not to believe any stories of his capture. Hite is quoted from the Weekly Missouri Republican, Apr. 13, 1882.

  Charley Ford’s story of the “ball of fire” is from the Liberty Weekly Tribune, Apr. 21, 1882.

  Charles S. Murray’s characterization of Jesse as a “queer combination” is as quoted in Robertus Love, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), 108.

  My description of the Younger brothers comes mostly from the reporting of journalists following the capture of the Youngers in Minnesota. See especially the St. Paul Dispatch, Sept. 22, 1876; the St. Louis Republican, Sept. 25, 1876; and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 28, 1876.

  Cole’s quote on Jim Younger’s mood swings is from the Saint Paul Globe, Oct. 20, 1902.

  The Bob Younger quote—“I might have been something”—is from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 26, 1876.

  The Jesse James letters of August 14 and 18 were published in the Kansas City Times of Aug. 18 and 23, 1876, respectively. The originals of these letters have not survived, so one cannot say absolutely that the letters were penned by Jesse, but they were accepted as such at the time, and James scholars have since concurred.

  Three: Tigers on the Loose

  The locust damage in Minnesota in 1876 is well documented in F. V. Hayden, Ninth Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories . . . (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877), 617–621.

  Literature on the Centennial International Exposition of 1876 is abundant. For information on the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company’s exhibit, see The Great Centennial Exhibition, Critically Described and Illustrated, by Phillip T. Sandhurst et al. (Philadelphia: P. W. Ziegler & Co., 1876), 316.

  For descriptions of the Yale chronometer lock, see The Masterpieces of the Centennial International Exposition, Vol. 3: History, Mechanics, Science, by Joseph M. Wilson (Philadelphia: Gebbe & Barrie: 1876), 229–230; The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 14 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1882), 751; and the Daily Tribune, Salt Lake City, Dec. 20, 1876.

  The term “bulldozing” is related in C. B. Berry, The Other Side, How It Struck Us (London: Griffith and Farran, 1880), 155.

  News of
the planned installation of a chronometer lock in the First National Bank of Northfield first appeared in the Rice County Journal, Aug. 9, 1876. A follow-up article appeared in a later issue of the Journal, which I have been unable to locate. However, the follow-up article was reprinted in the Minneapolis Tribune of Sept. 11, 1876.

  Cashier Phillip’s departure for Philadelphia was reported in the Rice County Journal, Sept. 7, 1876.

  Evidence of Samuel Hardwicke’s significant role in the planning and implementation of the raid on the James farm is found in the letters of Allan Pinkerton. See particularly Pinkerton’s letter to Hardwicke of Dec. 28, 1874, reproduced in Ted P. Yeatman, Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2000), 129–131. Former Clay County sheriff George E. Patton commented on Hardwicke’s role in the raid in a letter to his family: “He [Hardwicke] was the prime mover of the whole affair and the getter-up of the plan of operations and helped to execute [it] to my certain knowledge.” Patton to M. D. Scruggs, Liberty, MO, Feb. 21, 1875, Culbertson Collection, Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site, Lawson, MO. Gallatin, MO, attorney Henry Clay McDougal claimed to have been the “middle-man” between Hardwicke and Pinkerton: “[A]ll their correspondence was through me.” See Henry Clay McDougal, Recollections, 1844–1909 (Kansas City, MO: Franklin Hudson Publishing Co., 1910), 29.

  For my description of Hardwicke, I have relied upon History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri (St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1885), 336–339; Liberty Tribune, Feb. 17, 1860; and Liberty Advance, July 19, 1895.

  For Hardwicke’s move from his farmstead south of Liberty to the town square, see George E. Patton to M. D. Scruggs, Feb. 21, 1875; the Kansas City Times, Apr. 3, 1875; and Semi-Weekly Wisconsin, Milwaukee, May 1, 1875.

  As far as is known, the letters Hardwicke wrote to Jesse have not survived, but Jesse discusses them in his letter to Dr. Reuben Samuel of Mar. 23, 1875. In this letter, Jesse wrote that Hardwicke had asked that his letters to the outlaw be burned, a request Jesse did not honor. Hardwicke, Jesse wrote, “knows they are too valuable to me.” Jesse’s letter to Dr. Samuel remained in private hands, unknown to scholars, for nearly 130 years. It was auctioned by Christie’s on Dec. 16, 2004, for $175,500 (Sale 1450, Lot 397).

  For the Clay County grand jury inquiry into the Pinkerton raid, see the Liberty Tribune, Apr. 9, 1875; and Robert J. Wybrow, “My Arm Was Hanging Loose”: The Pinkerton Attack on the James’ Family Home (London: The English Westerners’ Society, 2005), 25.

  For the murder of Daniel Askew and the subsequent inquest, see the Liberty Tribune, Apr. 16, 1875; Leavenworth Weekly Times, Apr. 22, 1875; and the Troy Herald, Troy, MO, Apr. 28, 1875. Gang member Dick Liddil claimed that Clell Miller was with Jesse when Askew was killed, but a story passed down in one branch of the James family has Frank and Jesse as the killers. See Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, Sept. 18, 1883; and Yeatman, 145.

  The Kansas City Times quote referring to a “tiger” on the loose in Clay County is as quoted in the Troy Herald, Apr. 28, 1875.

  For the report of the five men, enemies of the James boys, marked for death, see the Semi-Weekly Wisconsin, May 1, 1875. The Daily Inter-Ocean, Chicago, of May 15, 1875, in an article titled “A Reign of Terror,” claimed that fifteen men had been ordered to leave Clay County. In what was surely an exaggeration, one report claimed that Hardwicke went from his house to his office “armed with two revolvers, a dirk-knife and a shotgun.” See the Iola Register, Iola, KS, June 19, 1875.

  Hardwicke’s imminent move to St. Paul, Minnesota, was reported in the Liberty Tribune, Apr. 28 and May 12, 1876. In 1879, George E. Patton wrote that in the aftermath of the Pinkerton raid, “Samuel Hardwicke had to leave the country, forsake a good home, a lucrative practice and move his family to a distant State.” Sedalia Daily Democrat, Dec. 18, 1879. See also the Samuel Hardwicke file, Milton Perry Library, James Farm, Kearney, MO.

  There are numerous newspaper reports chronicling the widespread hunt for the Rocky Cut robbers. Chief James McDonough eventually sent men to Denison, Texas, to stake out a house that he understood was a gang refuge. See his letter to Governor Charles Hardin of Sept. 12, 1876, Records of Charles Henry Hardin, 1875–1877 (RG 3.22), Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City, MO.

  The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo of Apr. 18, 1882, mentions the death threats Hobbs Kerry received while in the Cooper County jail.

  Many locations have been put forward as the meeting place of the James-Younger gang in mid-August 1876, where they made the decision to travel to Minnesota, including the ranch house of outlaw Calvin “Cal” Carter east of Denison, Texas; the home of Moses and Emeline Miller in Clay County, MO; an undisclosed Kansas City, MO, location; and a remote spot in eastern Kansas. See James McDonough to Governor Hardin of Sept. 22, 1876, Records of Charles Henry Hardin; Henry S. Miller interview in Kansas City Daily Journal, Sept. 5, 1896; Marley Brant, The Outlaw Youngers: A Confederate Brotherhood (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1992), 164; and J. W. Buel, The Border Outlaws . . . (St. Louis, MO: Historical Publishing Co., 1882), 217.

  Samuel Hardwicke’s letter to the editor of the Liberty Tribune, mailed from St. Paul, appeared in the issue of July 21, 1876. Jesse, an avid newspaper reader, may have discovered this himself, or, and this seems more likely, he was alerted to the piece by family or friends in Clay County.

  Most writers and historians have missed Hardwicke as a major motivation for the James-Younger gang’s Minnesota expedition. However, the contemporary press did not miss the story. An Oct. 15, 1876, letter by a visitor to the James farm (originally published in the Chicago Times) gave the Liberty attorney as “the real cause of the robbers going to Minnesota,” as did an article originally published in the Boonville Advertiser titled “Why It Was the James Boys went to Minnesota.” These articles were also published in the Saint Paul Dispatch, Oct. 19, 1876, and The State Journal, Jefferson City, MO, Oct. 27, 1876. Clay County locals also knew about the Hardwicke connection. Dr. Robert Sheetz, son of Dr. Samuel Sheetz, who treated the wounded Zerelda Samuel in the aftermath of the Pinkerton raid, said that “one of the reasons that the James’ went to Minnesota was to kill a certain lawyer from Liberty who had gone to St. Paul to get away from the boys.” See Elmer Pigg to Homer Croy, Jefferson City, MO, no date, folder 740, Homer Croy Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, MO.

  Bob Younger’s enthusiasm for Jesse’s plan is detailed in a letter Jim Younger purportedly wrote to former sweetheart Cora McNeill in August of 1898. The private letters of Jim and Cole Younger, written from Stillwater in the late 1890s, present a problem in that they are not publicly accessible. I have not seen the letters, only excerpts by those who claimed to have access to them. The letters were last in the possession of James-Younger collector Wilbur Zink, who died in 2010, and they are said to remain with Zink’s family at present. Marley Brant quotes the Jim Younger letter of August 1898, in her letter to John J. Koblas, Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 22, 1982, box 1, John J. Koblas Collection, Northfield Historical Society, Northfield, MN. Wilbur Zink quotes from the letters of both Jim and Cole in his letter to Koblas, Appleton City, MO, Nov. 11, 1982, ibid.

  For Cole’s opposition to the Minnesota expedition, see “Cole Younger’s Career as Reviewed by Himself,” the Minneapolis Journal, Mar. 4, 1903; and Todd M. George to Homer Croy, Lee’s Summit, MO, Oct. 31, 1956, folder 33, B. James George Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection.

  The James-Younger gang’s mode of transportation to Minnesota has generated much speculation, all due to the confusing and conflicting accounts left by Cole and Jim Younger. The private letters from the pair referenced above indicate the gang traveled to Minnesota horseback, a long and tiresome journey to be sure—and one that makes little sense. The gang had plenty of money after the Rocky Cut robbery, and the boys never hesitated in spending their ill-gotten gains on luxuries. Although Cole’s statements and writings should be used with caution, I believe he spoke the truth when he told a newspaper repor
ter in 1903, “The eight of us took the same train at St. Joseph, or points south, and went by rail to Mankato and then to St. Paul and Minneapolis.” Cole also wrote of the gang traveling by rail in his autobiography. See “Cole Younger’s Career as Reviewed by Himself”; and The Story of Cole Younger by Himself, 77.

  My description of Minnesota’s Big Woods is taken from Warren Upham, The Geology of Central and Western Minnesota (St. Paul: The Pioneer Press Co., 1880), 26–28; and Boston W. Smith, Spicy Breezes from Minnesota Prairies (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1885), 102–104.

  The stay of some of the James-Younger gang at the Nicollet House was later reported in the Minneapolis Tribune, Sept. 9, 1876. The newspaper stated that one gang member was sick during the stay and did not leave his room. Cole Younger identified the sick man as Bill Chadwell in a statement in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Apr. 6, 1882.

  My description of the linen dusters worn by the James-Younger gang is based on an original duster that was left behind in the Northfield bank during the Sept. 7 raid. This duster, forty-four inches in length, is now part of the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. Unlike modern dusters, the Northfield duster has no sleeves. Instead, an attached loose cape protected the arms.

  The prostitute Mollie Ellsworth was reported to have been a native of Buffalo, New York, although the 1875 Minnesota state census (Minneapolis 5th Ward) gives her birthplace as Ireland. That same census records her name as “Kittie Traverse alias Mollie Ellsworth.” Her obituary, which gives her “real name” as Kate Traverse, states that she pursued “her life of shame” first in St. Louis and later Omaha. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat of Oct. 30, 1875, lists a Mollie Ellsworth as one of several “frail ones” fined $25 each for “being inmates of houses of ill fame.” Mollie failed to appear before the court in answer to the charge. Mollie’s obit appears in the Minneapolis Tribune, Oct. 28, 1876. My thanks to Donna Tatting for providing me with a copy of the obit.