June 12, 1861
Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson issues a formal call for 50,000 state militia to defend Missouri’s autonomy. This came after Jackson’s efforts to reach an agreement with Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon failed. The governor insisted that no Federal troops were to travel through or be stationed in Missouri and Gen. Lyon refused.
During the early months of the Civil War, the Missouri legislature debated state rights issues and state guard organizations were being formed, especially in the western and central counties, to resist Federal authority. These local troops were commanded mostly by Gen. Sterling Price. At the same time Gen. Lyon and Col. F. P. Blair were recruiting soldiers and organizing Union regiments in the St. Louis area. There were many conflicts between the state and Federal troops, including the raid on the Liberty arsenal and the Camp Jackson massacre.
June 5, 1863
Zerelda James Samuel, who is pregnant, agrees to sign a loyalty oath to the Union in order to obtain her release from prison. She had been arrested shortly after Union forces visited the family farm in May. They hanged her husband and beat her son, Jesse, in an attempt to get information on guerilla activities. (Frank James was known to be riding with William Clarke Quantrill.) Zerelda’s baby girl is born four months later and named Fannie Quantrell (sic) Samuel.
June 9, 1863
The Union Army divides its District of Kansas into two commands. Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing will lead the new District of the Border and former commander of the old district, Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt, is “exiled” to the District of the Frontier.
June 24, 1863
Dr. Reuben Samuel, stepfather of Frank and Jesse James, signs a loyalty oath to the Union. He has been in prison in St. Joseph since Union forces hanged him during a May raid on the James-Samuel farm.
June 1864
At least one historian believes that Jesse James lost the tip of the middle finger of his left hand during a skirmish while he and Frank were riding with Fletch Taylor. Others think he shot it off or pinched it off while cleaning his pistol. The agreed upon point in all the variations of this incident quote Jesse as exclaiming “dodd-dingus pistol” thus earning himself the nickname “Dingus.”
June 3, 1865
Two months after Appomattox, Gen. Kirby Smith surrenders all Confederate troops west of the Mississippi River. Southern Gen. Jo Shelby, still rebelling, asks for volunteers from his Iron Brigade to establish a Confederate presence in Mexico.
June 6, 1865
Polling places in Clay County are guarded by armed soldiers as “qualified” voters decide on the proposed Drake Constitution for the state of Missouri. In Washington Township only one vote was cast for the document. In Clay County 890 were against it and 90 for the document which would disenfranchise 75 per cent of Clay County voters. Get more
June 6, 1865
William Clarke Quantrill, notorious Confederate guerilla leader, dies in a military prison hospital in Louisville, KY. A month earlier he had suffered a paralyzing gunshot wound to the spine and was captured by Union militia near Taylorsville, KY. It was reported that Frank James had been able to meet with his dying leader and had offered to whisk him off to safety, but that Quantrill refused.
June 13, 1865
A month after suffering a near-fatal bullet wound to his lung, a very frail Jesse James is sent by steamboat to the home of his aunt and uncle, Mary and John Mimms, in Harlem, Mo. Mimms’ wife, Mary, is the sister of the late Rev. Robert James .
June 16, 1865
Confederate Gen. Jo Shelby and volunteers from his Iron Brigade arrive in San Antonio, Tx. Many Southern figures are already there, and contemplating an exile in Mexico. These include Missouri Gov. Thomas Reynolds and Confederate generals Kirby Smith and John Magruder. Shelby’s cavalry will spend the next few days rearming and getting fresh provisions before riding to the border at El Paso.
Late June, Early July 1865
The governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila meets with Gen. Shelby and offers him control of three Mexican states for Shelby’s help in restoring Mexican President Benito Juarez. (Juarez had been duly elected but was toppled by Austro-Hungarian Archduke Maximilian and units of the French Army.) Shelby allowed his men to decide the question.
They voted unanimously to side with Maximilian’s forces as opposed to the U.S.-backed Juaristas.
June 3, 1871
After spending the night at a nearby farm, four men ride into Corydon, IA., enter the Ocobock Brothers’ Bank, tie the cashier to a chair and escape with $6,000 - $10,000. Most likely suspects are the James brothers, Cole Younger and Clell Miller. The Pinkerton Detective Agency enters the search and Miller is eventually arrested. However, he is able to produce an alibi and is released.
June 6, 1874
Frank James and Annie Ralston elope just a month after Jesse James and Zee Mimms are married. Annie is a graduate of the Independence (Mo.) Female College with a degree in science and literature and a former school teacher in Little Santa Fe, Mo. Annie is afraid her father will not approve of her choice. She is right.
June 17, 1879
Mary Susan James, youngest child and only daughter of Jesse and Zee James, is born in Nashville, TN. As an adult she will marry Henry Barr and live in Claybrook, the plantation across the road from her late father’s boyhood home.
June 1, 1881
After returning to Missouri from Tennessee, Jesse James, using the alias J. T. Jackson, rents rooms for his family in the Doggett House on Sixth and Walnut in Kansas City. They soon move to a home on Woodland Avenue between llth and 12th streets and learn that their neighbor, John Murphy, is the son of Jackson County Marshal Cornelius Murphy, who sometimes leads posses to search for the James brothers. Jesse and Frank quickly left Tennessee in April when a talkative Bill Ryan was arrested in connection with the Muscle Shoals, Alabama robbery.
June 21, 1884
Charles “Doc” Jennison, infamous Kansas Jayhawker, dies at 50 and is buried in Leavenworth. He was feared by Southern sympathizers along the border before and during the Civil War. He was court-martialed twice and received a dishonorable discharge from the Union Army for his excessive plundering and brutality, but later served in both the Kansas House and Senate where he opposed Negro voting rights.
June 13, 1888
Frank James travels by train from Russelville to Adairville, Ky. He will be visiting old friends and his relatives, the Hite family. The account of his visit was published in the Louisville Courier-Journal andincluded this description: “All of the ex-outlaw’s old cautiousness and reticense (sic) still cling to him but his step has the same elastic, wiry spring as of yore.”
June 3 and 4, 1892
Fire destroys most of the Creede, Colorado business district, including Bob Ford’s saloon. Ford, who 10 years earlier murdered Jesse James, immediately sets up business in a tent.
June 8, 1892
Bob Ford is gunned down at his tent saloon by Ed (Red) O’Kelley. There had been bad blood between the two men and it is said that Red wanted to kill the man who killed Jesse James. O’Kelley’s family was from the southeast Missouri town of Patton. Ford’s body eventually will be buried in Sunny Slope Cemetery in Richmond, Mo., near the top of the hill on the east side.
June 29, 1902
The body of Jesse James is removed from its grave at the family farm and transferred to Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney. He is reburied in a new coffin next to his wife, Zee, who died in 1900. Her remains have been stored in a vault at the Elmwood Cemetery in Kansas City. The couple’s only son, Jesse Edwards James, observes the disinterrment and even checks the bullet wound at the back of his father’s skull.
June 5, 1907
Jesse Edwards James, 32, is graduated with honors from the Kansas City School of Law. Ceremonies are held at the Shubert Theater. He is first in a class of 37 and will go on to practice corporate law.
June 7, 1908
Cole Younger’s new entertainment enterprise begins a six-day run in Richmond, Mo.
Cole discovers that his late guerilla crony, Bloody Bill Anderson, was buried in 1864 without a minister. So he arranges a procession and religious service for his fallen comrade but also denies knowing of Anderson’s Civil War era “work” north of the river.
June 8, 1939
A severe rain and windstorm fatally damage the famous 152-year-old coffee bean tree at the James farm. Within a few days the landmark will be removed to prevent it from falling on the family home. In a touching eulogy, the Liberty Chronicle described the tree and the many events that took place in its vicinity. At the time it fell, it was 90 feet high and its trunk measured over 16 feet around.
June 9, 1960
The president of the Piedmont, Mo. Lions Club places a marker on the site of the 1874 Gads Hill train robbery. Nearby is a quarry and a Jesse James saloon.
June 1960
Jesse James’ headstone, which had been chipped away over the years by souvenir hunters, is replaced with a simple more modern marker at the grave site in Kearney’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
June 24, 1991
Two descendants of Jesse James travel to Lexington, Mo. to present a plaque marking the Main Street site of the October 1866 robbery of the Alexander Mitchell and Co. bank. Four or five bandits escaped with about $2,000 and were never arrested. The presenters were Ethelrose James Owens, 82, granddaughter of Jesse James, and her nephew, Superior Court Judge James R. Ross, 64. Both are from California.
June 28, 1995
Plans are announced to exhume the body of Jesse James from the Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Scientists hope to conduct DNA tests to prove that Jesse and not a “ringer” is buried there.
