Shot All to Hell

by Mark Lee Gardner

  General Jo Shelby is quoted from the Kansas City Journal, Apr. 2, 1882. Shelby claimed that the James brothers and other guerrillas saved him from capture at the Battle of Prairie Grove, AK, in 1862. However, from everything we know, Jesse and Frank were not participants in that engagement.

  The St. Louis Globe-Democrat on the breaking up of the James-Younger gang is from the issue for Sept. 25, 1876.

  Nine: One Last Escape

  The accidental shooting of Faribault policeman William Henry Kapernick is from the Faribault Republican, Oct. 4, 1876; and the Faribault Democrat, Oct. 6, 1876.

  J. Newton Nind related the purpose of his daily visits to the Youngers in the Rice County jail in a letter to a Mr. Curtis dated Chicago, June 30, 1905. This letter is in the collection of Robert G. McCubbin, Santa Fe, NM.

  Henrietta Younger’s visit to her brothers was widely reported. See the Minneapolis Tribune, Oct. 4, 1876; the Faribault Republican, Oct. 4, 1876; and the Saint Peter Tribune, Oct. 4, 1876. Richard Hall mentioned Ira Sumner’s offer of $500 for Henrietta’s portrait in an interview given upon their return to Missouri. See the Kansas City Times, Oct. 10, 1876.

  For the visit of Sam Hardwicke and Edward T. Miller to the Rice County jail, see the Liberty Tribune, Oct. 27, 1876. The interview with Zerelda Samuel, originally published in the Chicago Times, was carried in several newspapers, including the Saint Paul Dispatch of Oct. 19, 1876. The Saint Paul Dispatch reporter’s interview with Sam Hardwicke is in the Saint Peter Tribune, Oct. 25, 1876. See also “Why It Was the James Boys Went to Minnesota,” the State Journal, Oct. 27, 1876.

  Hardwicke’s letter urging that the Missouri governor pay the Rocky Cut rewards was written to Judge E. H. Norton, Platte City, MO, on Dec. 23, 1876. A transcription of the letter appears in Nancy B. Samuelson, “How the James Boys Fled the Disaster at Northfield and the Capture of ‘Frank James.’” Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association Journal 3 (Spring-Summer 1993): 9.

  The First National Bank of Northfield withdrew its reward offer for the capture of Jesse and Frank on Jan. 3, 1877. Bank circular from J. C. Nutting, Correspondence records file, Northfield Historical Society, Northfield, MN.

  For the court proceedings connected to the Younger case and their appearances in the courtroom of Judge Samuel Lord, I have relied entirely on contemporary newspaper accounts. They are the Faribault Democrat, Nov. 17 and 24, 1876; the Saint Paul Dispatch, Nov. 1, 15, 17, 18, 20, and 21, 1876; and the Minneapolis Tribune, Nov. 14–21, 1876. For criticism of the Minnesota law allowing the Youngers to escape capital punishment by pleading guilty, see the Pioneer Press and Tribune, Sept. 24 and 26, 1876. Jim Younger’s refusal to reveal the names of the two robbers who escaped is quoted from the Mankato Review, Nov. 28, 1876.

  Sheriff Groom’s raid was reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Nov. 24 and 26, 1876; the Liberty Tribune, Dec. 1, 1876; and the State Journal, Dec. 8, 1876. The role of Jesse’s cousin, Ed Samuel, in tipping off Sheriff Groom was revealed in an article published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Feb. 25, 1880, copied from the Kansas City Times.

  The best reference for Jesse and Frank’s time in Tennessee is Ted P. Yeatman, Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2000). Frank recounted some of his Tennessee activities in an interview published in the St. Louis Republican, Oct. 6, 1882. See also the account of a close Tennessee acquaintance of the James brothers in Robertus Love, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), 257–268.

  For the Glendale train robbery, see the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 10, 1879, and Sept. 24, 1881. For the Mammoth Cave stage robbery, see Yeatman, 220–221; and the New York Tribune, Sept. 5, 1880. For the Winston train robbery, see George Miller Jr., The Trial of Frank James for Murder (1898; reprint, New York: Jingle Bob/Crown Publishers, 1977), 43–44 and 311–312; the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 17, 1881, and Sept. 1, 1882; and the Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, July 26, 1881.

  Charley Ford said that his share from the Blue Cut robbery was $135 and a gold watch and chain. Clarence Hite said that each man got about $140. See the Richmond Democrat, Aug. 16, 1883; Miller, The Trial of Frank James, 318; and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 8 and 9, 1881.

  Jesse’s designs on the Platte City bank are from interviews with the Ford brothers that appeared in the Western News, St. Joseph, MO, Apr. 7, 1882; and the Kansas City Daily Journal, Apr. 4, 1882.

  Ed Miller’s death was reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 31, 1881. For various theories on Jesse’s reason for killing Miller, see the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, issue cited above, and those for Apr. 1 and 8, 1882.

  There is some confusion over the reward offered the Ford boys by Governor Crittenden. The figures I use are from an interview with Charley Ford that appeared in the Richmond Democrat, Aug. 16, 1883. However, the governor’s July 28, 1881, proclamation offered $5,000 each for the “arrest and delivery” of Frank and Jesse and another $5,000 each upon conviction. The official proclamation did not offer a reward for the outlaws “dead or alive,” and Crittenden would strongly deny that he offered the Ford boys such a provision. Yet in a newspaper interview from October 1882, Crittenden is quoted as saying, “I offered a reward of $50,000 for the arrest and conviction of those bandits who belonged to the James gang, and $10,000 each for Jesse and Frank James, dead or alive.” This statement is in line with the claim of Charley Ford. The Crittenden interview was published in the Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 4, 1882. See also H. C. Crittenden, ed., The Crittenden Memoirs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936), 224–225.

  For contemporary accounts of Jesse’s death, including interviews and testimony of the Ford brothers, see the Western News, Apr. 7, 1882; the Daily Gazette, St. Joseph, MO, Apr. 5, 1882 (extra edition); the Kansas City Daily Journal, Apr. 4, 1882; and the Weekly Graphic, Kirksville, MO, Apr. 7, 1882. The St. Joseph telegraph operator’s recollections of Bob and Charley Ford are in the Hickman Courier, Hickman, KY, Dec. 1, 1901.

  Frank’s reaction to his brother’s death is from his own account as published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 1, 1883; and a statement by Frank’s son, Robert, to Elmer Pigg. See Elmer Pigg to Homer Croy, Jefferson City, MO, Oct. 30, 1948, folder 742, Homer Croy Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, MO. The New York Herald reported Jesse’s death in its issue of Apr. 4, 1882.

  Annie James is as quoted in William H. Wallace, Speeches and Writings of Wm. H. Wallace, with Autobiography (Kansas City: The Western Baptist Publishing Co., 1914), 284.

  For the visit of Annie James and Zerelda Samuel to Governor Crittenden, see the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 4, 1882. The surrender of Frank James is from Governor Crittenden’s own account of the event in the Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 10, 1882. See also the St. Louis Republican, Oct. 6, 1882.

  Several newspapers described Frank James’s stay in the county jail in Independence and the steady stream of visitors he drew. See the Kansas City Daily Journal, Oct. 8 and 9, 1882; and the Jefferson City Daily Tribune, Feb. 11, 1883. The “darling of Missouri society” quote is from the Winona Daily Republican, Nov. 13, 1882.

  John Newman Edwards letter of Oct. 26, 1882, to Frank James, written at Sedalia, MO, is in the collection of Robert G. McCubbin, Santa Fe, NM.

  Students of the Northfield Raid and the James-Younger gang have been unaware that Governor Hubbard’s requisition for Frank James still existed. After reading in the contemporary newspaper reports that Governor Crittenden returned the requisition to Hubbard, I asked my friend, Donna Tatting, of Forest Lake, MN, to check in the requisitions file of Hubbard’s papers at the Minnesota Historical Society to see if it contained the James requisition. It did. She found it in box 29, folder 488 of the Records of Governor Lucius F. Hubbard, 1882–1891. The requisition is very significant because it contains the sworn complaint and affidavit of Frank Wilcox naming Frank James as the killer of Joseph Lee Heywood. The complaint and affidavit are previously unknown to scholars. />
  The receipt and return of the Minnesota requisition was reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Feb. 8, 1883; and the St. Paul Daily Globe, Feb. 10, 1883. Frank James is quoted from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Feb. 9, 1883.

  The Edwards letter to Frank James of Mar. 18, 1885, is as quoted in William A. Settle Jr., Jesse James Was His Name, or Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966), 158.

  Epilogue

  I have not attempted to chronicle the Youngers’ years at Stillwater, although because they were the prison’s most famous inmates, there is considerable primary source material available. The best published account of their time as inmates is John Koblas, When the Heavens Fell: The Youngers in Stillwater Prison (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press of St. Cloud, 2002).

  Cole’s account of the raid appeared in the Saint Paul Globe, July 4, 1897, as well as in several other newspapers.

  The letters and petitions submitted in conjunction with the Younger application to the pardon board are in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. Many are available online at http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/gr00277.xml. Several letters in support of the pardon are also published in W. C. Bronaugh, The Youngers’ Fight for Freedom (Columbia, MO: E. W. Stephens Publishing Company, 1906). Warren C. Bronaugh, a Missouri Confederate veteran, was a driving force behind the efforts to secure the release of the Youngers.

  There were some, including the Stillwater warden, who suspected that Horace Greeley Perry had more than platonic feelings for Cole. See Bronaugh, 285–290. Perry had a very interesting career as a journalist, eventually becoming a reporter for a newspaper in Mexico City. See “Is a Smart Woman: Miss Horace Greeley Perry and Her Work,” the Broad Ax, Salt Lake City, Sept. 25, 1898; and “She Braved Indians and Bears and Got a Husband,” the Des Moines Daily News, Aug. 19, 1906.

  Northfield’s reactions to Cole Younger’s written account of the raid and the townspeople’s objections to a pardon are chronicled in the Saint Paul Globe, July 7, 1897. Mayor A. D. Keyes is quoted from the Northfield News, July 17, 1897. See also “Youngers Are Denied a Pardon,” the Saint Paul Globe, July 14, 1897.

  For the parole of Cole and Jim Younger, see the Minneapolis Journal, Apr. 12 and July 10, 1901; the Saint Paul Globe, Mar. 8, 1901; and the St. Louis Republic, July 11, 1901.

  For Jim Younger’s life after his parole and his suicide, see the Saint Paul Globe, Oct. 20 and 21, 1902; the Minneapolis Journal, Oct. 20, 1902; and the St. Louis Republic, Oct. 26, 1902. For Younger’s relationship with Alix J. Muller, see the Boston Globe, Aug. 30, 1901; the St. Louis Republic, Oct. 21, 1902; the St. Paul Globe, Oct. 26, 1902; and “Tragic Romance in the Life of Jim Younger,” the Jennings Daily Record, Jennings, LA, Dec. 8, 1902. Alix Muller died of tuberculosis two years after Jim’s suicide. Her friends claimed her grief over the loss of Jim was “largely the cause” of her death. Her body was cremated, and the ashes reportedly spread over Jim’s grave in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. See the Minneapolis Journal, Apr. 9 and 11, 1904.

  For Cole’s conditional pardon and his return to Missouri, see the Saint Paul Globe, Feb. 5 and 10, 1903; and the Minneapolis Journal, Feb. 16, 18, and 23, 1903.

  The distribution of the reward monies is detailed in the Mankato Review, Dec. 18 and 25, 1876. See also the Madelia Times-Messenger, Apr. 29, 1938. The legislation outlining how the state’s reward offer was to be distributed is found in General Laws of the State of Minnesota, Passed During the Nineteenth Session of the State Legislature (St. Paul: Ramaley & Cunningham, 1877), 262–263.

  Governor Pillsbury’s wish that Oscar Sorbel be given an education at the University of Minnesota is from Annual Message of Governor J. S. Pillsbury to the Legislature of Minnesota, Delivered January 4, 1877 (St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1877), 34–35.

  Oscar Sorbel’s obituary is in the Webster Journal, Webster, SD, July 17, 1930; and the Evening Tribune, Albert Lea, MN, Aug. 5, 1930, reprinted from the Northfield News. The “rough old codger” quote is from Edith Olson’s recollections of Oscar Sorbel, whom she first met in 1927, from the Oscar Sorbel collection of Oscar Lindholm and Myrna Wey, Green Mountain Falls, CO.

  The Manning and Wheeler bill, No. 116, is in House of Representatives of the Nineteenth Session of the Legislature of the State of Minnesota (St. Paul: Ramaley & Cunningham, 1877), 149. The joint resolution thanking the heroes of Northfield is in General Laws of the State of Minnesota, Passed During the Nineteenth Session of the State Legislature, 271–272.

  For John B. Bresette’s later career and death, see the Saint Paul Globe, Mar. 18, 1892.

  A long letter with several charges against Mike Hoy is in the Saint Paul Globe, Aug. 24, 1887. Hoy’s obit is in the Saint Paul Globe of Mar. 21, 1895.

  James McDonough’s ouster as chief of police is covered in “The Chief Choked Off,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 9, 1881. The board of commissioners is quoted from Allen E. Wagner, Good Order and Safety: A History of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, 1861–1906 (St. Louis: Missouri History Museum, 2008), 193. McDonough’s Kansas ranch operations are described in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 27, 1883. His death was reported in the Daily Inter-Ocean, Chicago, Mar. 22, 1892.

  The distribution of monies to Heywood’s wife and child are from George Huntington, Robber and Hero: The Story of the Northfield Raid on the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, by the James-Younger Band of Robbers, in 1876 (1895; reprint, Minneapolis: Ross & Haines, 1962), 105. Details on Lizzie May’s later life are from Huntington, 82; and John J. Koblas, Faithful Unto Death: The James-Younger Raid on the First National Bank, Northfield, Minnesota, September 7, 1876 (Northfield, MN: Northfield Historical Society Press, 2001), 184.

  For the legal squabbles of the Ames family and General Butler over the Northfield mill, see Blanche Butler Ames, ed., Chronicles from the Nineteenth Century: Family Letters of Blanche Butler and Adelbert Ames (Clinton, MA: Privately printed, 1957), 2: 550–594 passim; and the Saint Paul Globe, June 22, 1888. Adelbert Ames’s obituary appears in the New York Times, Apr. 14, 1933.

  The Minnesota Historical Society reported on its Northfield Raid acquisitions in Sixth Biennial Report of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, to the Legislature of Minnesota, Session of 1891 (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, 1890), 19. See also the accession records of the Minnesota Historical Society.

  The discovery of Pitts’s skeleton in Como Lake and its subsequent identification by Dr. Murphy was reported in the Saint Paul Globe, Dec. 13, 1878. The medical student who sank the bones in the lake was Murphy’s nephew, Henry F. Hoyt. Hoyt gives his version of the incident in his A Frontier Doctor, ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1979), 34 and 181–183.

  The letter reporting the burial of Clell Miller’s body in the Muddy Fork Cemetery appeared in the Liberty Tribune, Nov. 17, 1876.

  The story of Elisha Stiles’s visit to Dr. Wheeler’s Grand Forks office is in “He Shot the Youngers,” the Macon Telegraph, July 25, 1897. A much later newspaper article claimed that Clell Miller’s father visited Wheeler to see the skeleton sometime after 1881. However, Moses Miller died in Missouri in 1879. See the Waseca Journal, Waseca, MN, Mar. 4, 1915.

  That Wheeler claimed to have Miller’s bones is revealed in “Survivor Recalls Part in Bank Raid of 1876,” Northfield News, Sept. 9, 1926. The announcement of the preliminary results of the craniofacial superimposition study, headed by Dr. James Bailey, was reported in the Northfield News, Mar. 15, 2012. See also the Kansas City Star, June 11, Aug. 10, Sept. 13, and Sept. 24, 2012; and Motion to Exhume the Body of Clelland “Clell” D. Miller, Case No. 12CY-CV09153, Clay County Circuit Court, Liberty, MO.

  Frank Wilcox’s move to Yakima, WA, was reported in the Yakima Herald, Aug. 25, 1909. He is also found in the U.S. censuses of 1910 and 1920 living in Yakima County. The gift of the calendar clock to Wilcox is told in “Old Clock Saw James Robbery,” undated clipping, Northfield Publi
c Library.

  Sam Hardwicke’s return to Clay County is mentioned in the Liberty Tribune, July 13, 1877. His reconciliation with Zerelda Samuel is in the Daily Review, Decatur, IL, Aug. 2, 1894. Hardwicke’s obituary is in the Liberty Advance, July 19, 1895.

  The Younger & James Wild West show is the subject of John J. Koblas’s The Great Cole Younger & Frank James Historical Wild West Show (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press of St. Cloud, 2002). See also the Minneapolis Journal, Feb. 18, 1903; and the St. Louis Republic, Feb. 19, 1903.

  Governor Johnson is quoted from the Minneapolis Journal, June 25, 1906.

  Harry Hoffman wrote many times of the deathbed conversation with Cole. Hoffman’s account of the Northfield Raid, “The Younger Boys Last Stand,” which he supposedly based on what Cole told him, is not very reliable. See Harry C. Hoffman, “The Fog Around the Rumors Cleared Away,” typescript, Harry Hoffman Donations Accession File, Missouri State Museum, Jefferson City, MO; the Harry Hoffman letters in the Homer Croy and B. James George collections at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, MO; and the Norborne Democrat and the Leader, Missouri, Jan. 3, 1936.

  Frank James is as quoted in the Pittsburgh Press, Mar. 21, 1915.

  RESOURCES

  ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

  Carleton College Archives, Northfield, Minnesota

  “Reminiscences of Carleton’s first Dean of Women, Margaret Evans Huntington, made on June 19, 1916”

  Milton F. Perry Library, James Farm, Kearney, Missouri

  Samuel Hardwicke File

  Clell Miller File

  Charlie Pitts File

  Jesse and Frank James Files

  Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul

  Accession Files (Northfield artifacts)

  Northfield Bank Robbery of 1876: Selected Manuscript Collections and Government Records (Microfilm M468)