Legends of the Old West - LEGENDS Ep. 5 | Jesse James: “Guerilla War”

Episode Date: May 27, 2018

May 1863. Union soldiers attempt to strangle information out of Jesse James’ stepfather. They succeed, but they also drive 16-year-old Jesse to join the guerilla raiders who rampage through Missouri... during the Civil War. Under the leadership of violent captains like William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, Jesse and his older brother Frank learn tactics they will use to become the most famous outlaws in America. Join Black Barrel+ for early access and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:17 His wife Lorena had been arrested by Union troops and taken to jail in St. Joseph, Missouri. He needed help, and he knew just the man to ask. He met with the leader of a notorious band of guerrilla fighters named William Quantrill. It was May of 1863, and Quantrill's men had established themselves as terrors to the Union. McCoy couldn't break his wife out of jail, but he wanted vengeance, and Quantrill happily complied. Quantrill put Lieutenant Fernando Scott on the case. Scott raised a force of between 12 and 18 men and lit out for Richfield, Missouri, which is called Missouri City today. They surprised a friend at his home, and he quickly understood the play.
Starting point is 00:02:05 at his home and he quickly understood the play. He said with a wink and a nod, boys, I shall have to report you, which meant he was going to have to turn the Confederates into the local Union commander, which was exactly what the Confederates wanted. The friend lived just two miles from town and the report quickly reached the ears of Union Captain Darius Sessions, the man who had arrested Lorena McCoy. Sessions recruited four men and headed to the farm to investigate the report. As the five federal officers neared the property, they crossed a small wooden bridge. At that moment, the Confederates sprang out of the brush on both sides and fired at the soldiers.
Starting point is 00:02:44 Captain Sessions and a private went down immediately. Then Sessions' lieutenant went down. The bushwhackers charged at the two remaining soldiers, and the men beat a hasty retreat back to town. The Confederates robbed the wounded private and left him for dead. The lieutenant tried to surrender, but they shot him twice in the head. Then they shot Sessions two or three times more in the head, just for good measure. Lorena McCoy was supposedly released after a prisoner exchange, but one of the crimes she had been arrested for was suspicion of helping some men escape from the jail in Liberty, Missouri in that spring of 1863. One of those men was Alexander Franklin James, whom everybody called Frank. Within a year, his younger brother Jesse
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Starting point is 00:05:42 Welcome to the Legends of the Old West podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And in this episode, we're telling the story of the rise of Jesse James. Zerelda James was a fiery woman with a sharp tongue who didn't take grief from anyone. Her first husband, Robert James, had been a successful hemp farmer and a well-known Baptist preacher in the 1840s in Clay County, Missouri, which is just north of Kansas City. After gold was discovered in California in 1849, gold fever swept across the country, and not even Baptist preachers were immune to it. Robert James headed west to save the poor souls of the sinners out in the gold fields,
Starting point is 00:06:32 although some people thought there was at least a part of him that was trying to save himself from his wife. But on August 18, 1850, Robert James died of fever. His place of death was recorded as the Gold Camp in modern-day Placerville, California. His death left Zerelda in dire straits. She had three small children by that time and no husband. Frank was seven when his father died. Jesse was three, and their sister Susan was not even a year old. Searching for stability, Zerelda married a wealthy man named Benjamin Sims, who was 20 years older
Starting point is 00:07:13 than she was. She moved her children in with him, but the union was not a happy one. Sims didn't like her kids at all. Zerelda didn't have to wait long for the situation to change, though. Three years into their marriage, Sims died. Zerelda took the opportunity to move her children back to the family farm, and by 1855, she'd married for the third and final time. Her third husband was Dr. Reuben Samuel, who had a medical practice in Greenville, Missouri. Dr. Reuben Samuel, who had a medical practice in Greenville, Missouri. His office was in a shop owned by Robert James' brother William. Reuben agreed to give up his practice and move to the James farm to restart Robert's hemp operation. Finally, five years after Robert James died, the James family was in a stable environment on their own land. But while their family was growing more stable, the country was going in the opposite direction.
Starting point is 00:08:09 Missouri had entered the Union as a slave state in 1821. By 1854, Congress was deadlocked on how to incorporate the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. They were the westernmost regions of civilization at that point, except for California out there on the coast. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act to let the people of the new states decide for themselves whether or not they wanted slavery. As should have been predictable, fighting erupted along the Kansas-Missouri border. Missourians wanted Kansas to enter as a slave state, and many Kansans wanted to enter as a free state, without slavery. Marauders torched and killed on both sides of the border for years.
Starting point is 00:08:56 Clay County, Missouri, where the James family lived, was right in the thick of it. When the tensions in the thick of it. When the tensions in the border states finally boiled over to encompass the entire nation, civil war erupted in April of 1861. And the civil war in Missouri and Kansas looked very much like the seven years of bloody fighting that had come right before it. The massive engagements in the East, where tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of men in matching uniforms with matching weapons marched up to each other on
Starting point is 00:09:31 recognized battlefields, were not common in Missouri. In Missouri, it was a guerrilla war, where raids were the most common form of fighting. They were quick strikes by small groups of men who rode into a place and burned, killed, and looted as fast as they could, and then rode away. The Union sent regiments of formal troops from other states to Missouri, but for the most part, the fighting in Missouri was done by Missourians, neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother. Even though most Missourians were Confederate sympathizers, there were many who were pro-Union. So the North formed the Enrolled Missouri Militia and the Missouri State Militia,
Starting point is 00:10:16 and the South formed the Missouri State Guard. But the real power of the pro-slavery forces in Missouri was the guerrilla bands. They were passionate fighters and utterly ruthless. And their commission as official Confederate units was always a little suspect. Less than a month after the war began, Frank James, 18 years old, joined the pro-slavery Missouri State Guard. The first two years of the war were uneventful for Frank. Not long after he enlisted, he got the measles and then got captured.
Starting point is 00:11:02 He was paroled by Union forces and went home to Clay County. Exactly two years after his first participation, he met guerrilla leader William Quantrill. That was in May of 1863, and Frank described the meeting many years later. I will never forget the first time I ever saw Quantrill. He stood nearly six feet in height, rather thin. His hair and mustache was sandy, and he was full of life and a jolly fellow. He had none of the air of the bravado or the desperado about him. But Frank added one more detail. He was a demon in battle. A few days after the meeting, Frank went on the Richfield raid with some of Quantrill's men and helped brutally kill Union Captain Darius Sessions to avenge the capture of Lorena McCoy.
Starting point is 00:11:52 That was when the war really started for the James boys. According to Jesse's half-brother John, Jesse, at 15 years old, was plowing the field at the family farm when Union soldiers of the enrolled Missouri militia stormed in. The soldiers were looking for Frank after the Richfield raid. They beat Jesse and demanded to know where Frank was. They grabbed Reuben Samuel and dragged him over to a tree. They threw a rope around a limb and tied a noose around Reuben's neck. They demanded again, where's Frank? Reuben said he didn't know. Two men pulled the rope and hoisted Reuben in the air by his neck.
Starting point is 00:12:34 He strangled and kicked. They lowered him and yelled at him again, where's Frank and the others? Reuben still wouldn't talk, so they yanked him up again. Zerelda shouted obscenities at the others. Ruben still wouldn't talk, so they yanked him up again. Zerelda shouted obscenities at the soldiers. She screamed at them to let her husband down. They did, but only to give him one more chance to talk. He wouldn't, so they strung him up a third time. At that point, Ruben indicated he would give them what they wanted. They released him, and he said he would guide them to the spot where the Confederates were hiding. As Jesse watched the soldiers torment his stepfather, it didn't matter to him that this was a common tactic used by both sides during the vicious guerrilla war in the border states.
Starting point is 00:13:21 He burned two faces into his memory, Brantley Bond and Alvis Dagley. They were the men who had pulled the rope, and Bond had actually served with Frank in the Confederate Missouri State Guard two years earlier. Jesse would not forget these men. The Union soldiers threw Reuben Samuel on a horse, and he directed them to the woods north of the house. The Confederate guerrillas lounged around their camp playing poker with some stolen loot from recent raids. Union troops quietly crept through the woods until they were within striking distance. Then they charged out of the brush and ambushed the Confederates.
Starting point is 00:14:01 The guerrillas dove for their weapons. The Federals were nearly on top of them. They exchanged gunfire, showering the woods with lead. The guerrillas scattered deeper into the woods. The Union soldiers chased them and killed several in the process. But Frank and a few others ran for the Missouri River. They hauled themselves across it to the safety of Kansas on the other side and escaped the closest call of the war thus far. Reuben Samuel was taken to jail in Liberty, Missouri and was paroled a month later. Three neighbors wrote a letter on his
Starting point is 00:14:45 behalf saying he was a peaceable man who wouldn't hurt anyone, but he was under the control of his wife. At the bottom, there was another endorsement. A man named E.H. Samuel, who was not related to Rubin, added that the three men who wrote the letter were of the highest moral character. added that the three men who wrote the letter were of the highest moral character. It might seem like a small detail, but this was not the last time we'll hear from E.H. Samuel. The summer and fall of 1863 passed, and that winter, Quantrill and his men made a crude camp at Mineral Creek in Texas, 15 miles northwest of Sherman. That region of Texas was under the command of Brigadier General Ben McCullough, who had
Starting point is 00:15:31 been a Texas Ranger for nearly 30 years before the war. There were few men alive who had seen more battles with Native American warriors than Ben McCullough. Over the course of the winter, McCullough learned about the mode of warfare practiced by these raiders from Missouri, and he didn't like it. From all I can hear, it is but a little, if at all, removed from that of the wildest savage, he wrote. So much so that I do not believe our government can sanction it in one of her officers. McCullough repeatedly gave Quantrill
Starting point is 00:16:06 orders, and Quantrill repeatedly ignored them. McCullough grew more frustrated by the day, and then the situation got worse. One of Quantrill's men, Bloody Bill Anderson, broke off from his captain's command. Bloody Bill was an absolute psychopath who earned his nickname many times over. He carried scalps of some of the men he killed tied to his saddlebags. His right-hand man was Archie Clement, known as Little Arch. The two were a match pair. Archie was just as demented as Bloody Bill.
Starting point is 00:16:42 He was an 18-year-old hot-headed killer without remorse, and he would play a big part in Jesse James' life soon enough. Bloody Bill took his faction into Sherman and turned the town upside down. Their favorite pastime was to ride their horses right into the businesses in town. To celebrate Christmas 1863, they got wildly drunk on eggnog and rode their horses into the lobby of the Christian Hotel. They broke the furniture and tore up the floor and shot everything in sight. Then three of the men, including Archie Clement, stopped over to the photograph studio to have their picture made. But when they saw the photo, they didn't like the result, so they trashed the photographer's studio. By April of 1864, Quantrill and factions of his men
Starting point is 00:17:33 had thoroughly worn out their welcome in Texas. General McCullough gave the best possible description. Many robberies, thefts, and murders have been committed in the country, principally by men with federal overcoats on, some of which have been traced to Quantrill's company proper, and others to some of the men who came with him last fall. I assure you that the Captain Quantrill command has been a terror to the country, and a curse to our land and cause in this section, and I have never been able to control them. When McCullough tried to arrest them, they escaped north over the Red River into Oklahoma and out of McCullough's jurisdiction.
Starting point is 00:18:15 The guerrillas returned to their home turf of Missouri that spring, and they added a new man to the group, Jesse James. Shortly after the guerrillas returned to Missouri, there was a leadership change. Quantrill was out, and Bloody Bill was in. Quantrill had gotten into a fight with one of his lieutenants, and ended up leaving the group for the rest of the summer. had gotten into a fight with one of his lieutenants and ended up leaving the group for the rest of the summer. He'll come back, but for now, it was Bloody Bill's turn to lead. Priority number one was to settle two old scores. First up was Brantley Bond, one of the two men who had pulled the rope when Union troops tried to strangle information out of Jesse's stepfather one year earlier. troops tried to strangle information out of Jesse's stepfather one year earlier.
Starting point is 00:19:13 The guerrillas tracked down Brantley Bond and killed him. In one story, Jesse told Bond, pray if you've ever prayed in your life, because you've only got about a minute to live. No one is sure who actually pulled the trigger, but Bond was crossed off the list. Next up, Alvis Dagley, the other man who had pulled the rope. The gang found him and killed him, with Frank James supposedly doing the deed this time. Late in July, 1864, Bloody Bill decided he wanted to take over Lexington, Missouri. He sent a letter to two newspapers in town, warning what would happen if people rose up against him. Here's some direct insight into the maniac who was Bloody Bill Anderson.
Starting point is 00:19:54 He wrote, Do not take up arms if you value your lives or property. It is not in my power to save your lives if you do. If you proclaim to be in arms against the guerrillas, I will kill you. But the raid never materialized, and Jesse's role in this phase of the war was about to come to an abrupt end. While some of the guerrillas were passing through a settlement in Ray County, Jesse saw a saddle sitting on a fence in front of a house. He was trying to steal it when the owner came to the door and fired.
Starting point is 00:20:33 The shot hit Jesse in the chest, and the bushwhackers quickly galloped away. Frank held Jesse in the saddle for four miles until they found a wagon they could lay him in. They got Jesse to a small inn in Kansas City that was run by John Sims, the brother of Zerelda's second husband, Benjamin Sims. They stashed Jesse in a room, and his cousin by marriage, Z, cared for him. It took Jesse two months to recover, but when he did, he was right back in the saddle to meet up with Frank and the guerrillas. At the end of September 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson wanted to raid the town of Fayette in Howard County, Missouri. Quantrill, who was back on the periphery of the group at this point, said it was a bad idea. The Union soldiers had a fortified blockhouse in Fayette.
Starting point is 00:21:26 It would be a disaster to attack it. Bloody Bill didn't care. He told Quantrill that he could either come along or stay behind with the rest of the cowards. Obviously, Quantrill went along, but he regretted it quickly. The guerrillas galloped into town and charged at the blockhouse. Frank James explained
Starting point is 00:21:47 what happened next. The blockhouse was filled with Federals, and it was like charging a stone wall. Only this stone wall belched forth lead. We were in plain view of the Federals, and they simply peppered us with bullets. We got as close to the ground as we could. I was mightily scared. It was the worst fight I ever had. The guerrillas were finally able to drag themselves away. The experience had been pretty much the disaster that Quantrill had predicted, but Bloody Bill wouldn't let it get him down.
Starting point is 00:22:22 Just three days later was perhaps the darkest moment of the guerrilla campaigns in Missouri. Bloody Bill Anderson and about 80 men rode down on the railroad village of Centralia, Missouri, about 20 miles northeast of Columbia. On Tuesday morning, September 27, 1864, they took over the town and looted all the stores. In one of them, they found a barrel of whiskey. They rolled it out into the street, cracked it open,
Starting point is 00:23:01 and in no time, they were rip-roaring drunk. cracked it open, and in no time, they were rip-roaring drunk. At 11 a.m., a stagecoach arrived and the guerrillas robbed the passengers, both Union and Confederate supporters alike. They didn't care. A half an hour later, an express train on the North Missouri Railroad coming out of St. Charles stopped at Centralia. There were 125 civilian passengers on board and 25 Union soldiers, most of whom were on furlough from General William Tecumseh Sherman's army. These men had just captured Atlanta.
Starting point is 00:23:42 The guerrillas robbed the passengers. Then they ordered the soldiers off the train and told them to strip off their uniforms. The guerrillas shot and killed 24 of the 25 men as they stood there in their long johns. Anderson's men set fire to the train and sent the flaming cars down the line toward the next stop. Then they torched the depot and another train that was parked nearby. Anderson's men fled the town before the 39th Missouri Infantry arrived. We don't know if Frank or Jesse were in Centralia that day, but we do know they were present for what happened next. 110 men of the infantry found Anderson's men on the other side of a depression about three miles from town. The Federals were badly outnumbered and outgunned, though they probably didn't know it.
Starting point is 00:24:33 The guerrillas had about 225 men, each of whom had two pistols and a rifle. The Union soldiers dismounted to fight, according to Frank James. The guerrillas slowly rode toward the Union line. As they got closer, they picked up speed. They saw the Federal troops raise their weapons. They laid low against their horses, using them for cover the way the Comanche warriors did, a trick Texas Rangers would have easily recognized. The Union troops fired a volley, and nearly all the shots went over the guerrillas' heads.
Starting point is 00:25:10 The guerrillas charged at full speed, yelling like wild Indians, Frank said. They mowed down the Federals as they rode through them. Only three men were able to escape, but they were followed and killed. Frank later claimed that his younger brother, Jesse, who was 19 years old, killed the Union commander in the battle. In reality, it's impossible to say, but it all added to the legend.
Starting point is 00:25:37 In the aftermath, one of the guerrillas, Dave Poole, performed a grisly stunt to count the bodies and to certify they were all dead. He walked across the corpses to make sure there was no breath left in them. After the massacre, Major Samuel Cox took it upon himself to end Bloody Bill Anderson. He gathered 300 troops from the Missouri State Militia and the enrolled Missouri Militia and decided to fight fire with fire. He set up an ambush outside the town of Oreck in Ray County. He'd heard the guerrillas were camped nearby, so he sent a small patrol to lure them into a trap. Anderson and
Starting point is 00:26:19 about 20 men took the bait. They chased the patrol down a road that had woods on either side. Cox's men raced out of the woods and opened fire on the guerrillas. Anderson quickly turned around and tried to gallop away, but he was shot and killed. When the Union troops collected his body and horse, there were fresh scalps tied to his saddle. Bloody Bill Anderson's corpse was sent to Richmond, Missouri, where it was photographed. Then his head was cut off and mounted on a telegraph pole. His headless body was dragged through the streets. The remains were later gathered up and buried in a shallow grave. buried in a shallow grave.
Starting point is 00:27:11 In late November and early December 1864, William Quantrill tried to put the pieces back together. He rallied what remained of his old command and convinced most of them to take their war east to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. As newspaper editor John Newman Edwards wrote in 1877, this little band, scarcely a fragment of that terrible organization known so well to the border, was the last of the guerrilla race. It was the offspring of the fury and the agony of invasion. John Newman Edwards is a man we'll hear much more from in later episodes on the saga of Jesse James. Perhaps no man is more responsible for
Starting point is 00:27:53 creating the Robin Hood legend of Jesse James than Edwards. Late in 1864, the tide had clearly turned against the South. Confederate General Robert E. Lee would surrender just four months from now, but in the meantime, Quantrill led his men on one final ride. But like before, there would be a split in the group, and this time it would affect both Jesse and Frank. Six men, including Jesse, decided they did not want to make the trek to the east. They peeled away from the group and headed to their old haunts in northern Texas to wait out the winter like they had the previous year.
Starting point is 00:28:38 Frank continued east with Quantrill, and their band tore a trail through central Kentucky for the first five months of 1865. General Lee surrendered on April 9th, but it took time for the news to travel west. And when it did, some Confederates refused to believe it. On May 10th, a month after Lee's surrender, the war finally came to an end for William Quantrill. surrender, the war finally came to an end for William Quantrill. He and several of his men were holed up in a barn on the farm of James Wakefield between Taylorville and Bloomfield in central Kentucky. It was pouring rain, and the guerrillas were lounging in the barn when a lookout shouted
Starting point is 00:29:22 that Union troops were coming over a nearby hill. The guerrillas scrambled to grab their gear and escape, but the Federals attacked and killed two Confederates in the process. Quantrill was shot in the spine as he attempted to run, and was paralyzed from the waist down. He was later taken to a military hospital and held prisoner. On June 6, 1865, William Quantrill died. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Portland Catholic Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, which is now St. John's Cemetery. In the years after Quantrill's burial, Father Frank Powers ordered dishwater and chamber pots to be emptied on the grave. He said it was to keep grave robbers away, but it probably had just a little bit of poetic
Starting point is 00:30:12 justice to it as well. Frank James was 15 miles away at the time Quantrill was shot, and it took two more months before he finally surrendered. On July 26, 1865, he turned himself in. He had no way of knowing that his younger brother had continued the war in Missouri and had surrendered two months earlier, right around the time Quantrill had been paralyzed. He also didn't know that Jesse had been shot and was now lying on death's door. When Jesse and the remnants of Bloody Bill's old command emerged from their hibernation in Texas in mid-April, they formed three companies. Archie Little Arch Clement commanded one,
Starting point is 00:31:06 with Jim Anderson as his lieutenant, who was Bloody Bill's brother. Dave Poole, who had walked across the bodies of the dead Union soldiers at Centralia, commanded the second, and Martin Ritter commanded the third. Jesse rode with Archie, and they wasted little time getting back to their old ways. Archie wanted revenge on a Missouri militiaman who reportedly killed his brother and burned his mother's home in Johnson County. They found the militiaman, and according to newspaperman John Newman Edwards, Jesse and two other men held him while Archie slit his throat and scalped him. Then, at 2 a.m. on Sunday, May 7th, they raided the town of Holden in Johnson County and robbed two stores and killed a man.
Starting point is 00:31:56 They rode through the night, and just before dawn, they raided Kingsville. Six days later, Archie tried the same trick Bloody Bill Anderson had tried one year earlier. He wanted to take over the town of Lexington, Missouri, and he wrote a little note to the commander of the Union forces in town. Even though Archie was a deranged killer like his old boss Bloody Bill, he was much more polite and formal when writing a demand to give up the town. He said, Major Davis, sir, this is to notify you that I will give you until Friday morning, 10 a.m., May 12, 1865, to surrender the town of Lexington. If you surrender, we will treat you and all taken as prisoners of war. If we have to take it by storm, we will burn the town and kill the soldiers.
Starting point is 00:32:53 We have the force and are determined to have it. I am, sir, your most obedient servant, A. Clement. So how cordial was that? Archie Clement had scalped a man not six days earlier, but now he was politely demanding the surrender of a town, or he would burn it to the ground and kill all the soldiers. Major Davis didn't surrender, and Archie didn't attack. In fact, Union forces got word that 100 guerrillas wanted to surrender to them.
Starting point is 00:33:25 It's impossible to know the complete story of what happened next, but at some point it appears the guerrillas had a meeting to decide whether or not to surrender. Supposedly Archie and Jesse were in the group that did not want to. Either way, Jesse and a group of guerrillas were riding up the road toward Lexington, possibly to surrender. They encountered Union soldiers and a firefight broke out. Jesse was shot in the chest, just inches away from where he'd been shot previously. According to him, he ran through the woods to evade capture and found a creek where he laid all night because his body felt like it was on fire.
Starting point is 00:34:04 and found a creek where he laid all night because his body felt like it was on fire. In the morning, he crawled up the bank and was found by a farmer who was plowing his field. Jesse was apparently taken to the Virginia Hotel in Lexington, and he formally surrendered on May 21, 1865. Jesse followed a familiar pattern after he was shot. He was taken to his uncle John Sims' house to recover, and he was cared for by his cousin Z, which was short for Zerelda, just like his mother. In the second half of July, 1865, after about two months of recovery, during which he was still in really bad condition, he was transported to Nebraska to reunite with his mother and stepfather. They'd been forced to move to Rulo,
Starting point is 00:34:51 Nebraska by Union forces during the war, and Jesse made the difficult journey to stay with them. But his time in Nebraska was brief. By late August, he was back in his uncle's home under the care of his cousin. It was two more months, in October, before he was able to walk again. However, during that time, something unexpected happened. Jesse and Z fell in love, and they were secretly engaged to be married. As the autumn months slowly faded toward winter, Central Missouri, along with the entire nation, tried to figure out what was next. Nothing was the same as it had been. The Civil War created a great chasm between what came before and what came after.
Starting point is 00:35:46 One of the things that came after was the era of the outlaw. The next 40 years saw the rise of the old west as we know it today, complete with the mythical bandits and heroic lawmen and all the other romantic stories that were written in dime novels and Hollywood screenplays. It all had to start somewhere, and dime novels and Hollywood screenplays. It all had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was the Clay County Savings Association Bank in Liberty, Missouri. When the bank was chartered in 1859, it was originally called the Farmers Bank of Missouri.
Starting point is 00:36:22 In the summer of 1864, a man named E.H. Samuel was the president of the bank. Now, if you remember back to the beginning of the story, E.H. Samuel wrote an endorsement at the bottom of a letter that testified that Reuben Samuel, Jesse's stepfather, was a good guy. It turned out that Mr. E.H. Samuel, president of Farmers Bank, was a Union informant. So maybe it was a coincidence that the target of the first daylight bank robbery in peacetime America was the Farmers Bank in Clay County, Missouri, the home of the James Boys. And maybe it wasn't.
Starting point is 00:36:59 In February 1866, a gang of about a dozen men rode into town wearing the sky-blue overcoats of Union soldiers, a tactic commonly employed by the guerrilla raiders of William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. They stopped in front of the Clay County Bank. Two men got down and went inside. A man named Greenup Bird and his son William were working as cashiers. One of the men in an army overcoat walked up to William and leveled a gun at his face. In short order, the other two robbers cleaned out the drawers and shoved William and his father into the vault. The thieves hurried out to their horses, but they didn't lock the vault doors.
Starting point is 00:37:49 The birds ran out of the vault and shouted an alarm out the bank windows. The robbers leapt into their saddles and began to gallop out of town. Nineteen-year-old George Wymore was standing across the street as the bandits began to fire at the bank. He quickly repeated the alarm and then was gunned down by the outlaws as they raced out of town. The identities of the bandits were never discovered, but with the connection of the bank president to the James boys, and the disguises of Union overcoats, and the location in Clay County, Missouri, most people assumed this was the first robbery
Starting point is 00:38:34 of the most famous gang of outlaws in American history, the James Younger Gang. Next time on the Legends of the Old West podcast, we're going to Deadwood, South Dakota for stories of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullitt, Al Swearengen, Saul Starr, W.E. Adams, and many others. The closing song for season one was composed and performed by The Mighty Orc, a great musician from Houston, Texas.
Starting point is 00:39:31 Additional original music by Rob Valliere. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer, host, and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, and find us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada Pour obtenir le meilleur deal, les membres de Rakuten, eux, oui. Ils magasinent les marques qu'ils aiment et font d'importantes économies, en plus des remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent.
Starting point is 00:40:57 C'est facile à utiliser et vous obtenez vos remises par PayPal ou par chèque. L'idée est simple. Les magasins paient Rakuten pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Rakuten partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise. Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada

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