May 1, 1839
Robert Sallee James is licensed to preach by the Baptist Church in Logan County, Ky. He later will marry Zerelda Cole; father four children including Frank and Jesse James; receive a Master of Arts Degree from Georgetown College in Kentucky; and in Clay County, Mo. establish or reorganize several Baptist churches and be a founding father and trustee of William Jewell College.
May 6, 1848
Allen Parmer is born in Clay County to Isaac and Barbara Parmer, who are both from Ohio. He will join the Confederate guerillas at the age of l4 and later marry Susan James, sister of Frank and Jesse.
May 30, 1854
After three months of heated debate, the Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law. The measure, introduced by Stephen A. Douglas and backed by President Franklin Pierce, negates the 1850 Missouri Compromise by allowing residents of the two territories to decide the slavery issue. Thus will begin the border wars between Kansas and Missouri as the pro and anti slavery factions actively seek to determine elections in Kansas. Opponents of the measure form a new organization – the Republican Party.
May 3, 1861
In a message to the Missouri legislature which has been debating states rights issues, Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson gives a strong response to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops. Jackson calls Lincoln’s demand “unconstitutional and illegal, tending toward a consolidated despotism.” He establishes an encampment of State Guards near St. Louis.
May 4, 1861
Frank James, 18, joins the local unit of the Home Guards at Centerville (later to be named Kearney). These militia companies were formed to protect communities from invasion or occupation.
May 10, 1861
Union Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, in charge of the U.S. arsenal in St. Louis, surrounds an encampment of State Guards, capturing their arms and taking nearly 700 prisoners without firing a shot. A crowd of Southern supporters gathers and a shot is fired into the Union volunteers, many of whom are German. The Federal forces retaliate and 28 civilians are killed. Southerners will refer to this as the “Camp Jackson Massacre.”
May 26, 1863
A small group of Union soldiers rides to the James-Samuel farm seeking information about Quantrill’s guerilla forces. During the questioning Dr. Samuel is hanged and Jesse James severely beaten. This incident has a lasting impact on the family. Dr. Samuel is left mentally impaired and Jesse, 15, is determined to join the guerillas.
May 7, 1865
The Johnson County, Mo. community of Holden is raided by some 40 Confederate guerillas who rob the stores and kill a resident. Soon after a larger band of raiders, thought to include Jesse James and Arch Clement, invade Kingsville, burning houses and killing eight men. It is possible the raiders did not know that the war had officially ended a month earlier. Three bushwhackers are killed by Federal soldiers.
May 10, 1865
William Clarke Quantrill is fatally shot at a farm near Louisville, Ky. He and his exhausted men had taken refuge in a barn owned by Jeremiah Wakefield and were not prepared for the surprise attack of Union Capt. Edwin Terrill. Quantrill’s reliable horse Old Charley had recently been injured and his new borrowed mount was so skittish that even the expert horseman could not make a successful escape. Quantrill is shot in the back and the bullet lodges against his spine. He will be held prisoner until his death a month later. Although Frank James had traveled east with Quantrill, he is not with the group at Wakefield’s barn. It later will be reported that Frank visited the mortally wounded Quantrill and offered to take him to a safe place but the paralyzed guerilla leader declined.
May 11, 1865
Maj. B.K. Davis, Union commander at Lexington, receives a note from Arch Clement threatening to burn the town and kill all the soldiers within if Davis does not surrender by the following day. Although he had only 180 men, Davis calls the bluff of Clement and his guerillas and surrender talks begin.
May 15 and 21, 1865
Jesse James and some of his fellow guerillas, while reportedly trying to surrender, are involved in a skirmish with the Third Wisconsin Cavalry at Lexington, Mo. Jesse later claimed that he received his near-fatal bullet wound to the lung on May 15 and that he surrendered in Lexington on the 21st. Confederate records appear to verify these dates although Jesse was so seriously injured he thought the surrender was not recorded. Evidence supporting this includes a surrender roster in the National Archives and an interview Jesse gave to John Newman Edwards which was published in 1873. The Lafayette Advertiser reported that 77 guerillas had surrendered and taken loyalty oaths to both state and Federal governments.
May 20, 1867
Henry Lafayette Barr is born. In 1901 he will marry Mary James, the only daughter of Jesse and Zee. They will raise their children in the Claybrook home, across the road from the James-Samuel farm.
May 23, 1867
About a dozen men ride into Richmond, Mo. Four of them enter the Hughes & Wasson Bank in mid-afternoon and the group escapes with about $4,000. Three innocent people are killed. The James and Youngers were not immediately mentioned as suspects. Warrants are issued for the arrest of eight former guerillas: Payne Jones, Dick Burns, Andy McGuire, Tom Little, Ike Flannery, Allen Parmer and John and Jim White. Parmer, the James brothers future brother-in-law, is able to produce an alibi. Three other suspects are lynched before they can be tried. (It later will be shown that Flannery was killed well before the Richmond crime.)
May 24, 1867
An inmate in the Richmond jail, Felix Bradley, who had a long criminal record, is taken by a small mob to the outskirts of town and hanged. He had made the deadly error of telling fellow inmates that the bank was going to be robbed, just hours before the crime occurred. Within a short time, suspect Tom Little will be arrested in St. Louis, sent to Warrensburg on a previous charge, and lynched by a mob, despite an alibi from prominent resident of Lafayette County.
May 26, 1867
Three days after the deadly Richmond bank robbery, a squad of Kansas City officers are hot on the trail of Payne Jones, number one on their list of suspects. They decide to attempt the capture at night and the young daughter of Dr. Williams Noland (as in Noland Road) will lead them to the hideout west of Independence. Jones bursts through a screen door, firing a double-barrel shotgun. The Noland girl and an officer are killed. Jones escapes into the night, along with suspect Dick Burns.
May 26, 1869
Thomas C. Reynolds, who succeeded Claiborn Fox Jackson as Missouri’s governor in exile during the Civil War, returns the official state seal to Jefferson City. After taking office he had moved Missouri’s exiled government from Arkansas to Marshall, Texas.
May 27, 1873
Four men ride into the Mississippi River town of St. Genevieve, Mo. and rob the bank of $4,000. As they make their escape the bandits yell the name of a local bushwhacker, Sam Hildebrand. Frank and Jesse James and Cole and John Younger are the chief suspects.
May 11, 1874
Newlywed Zee Mimms James leaves the Clay County home of her inlaws, Zerelda and Reuben Samuel. She travels alone by train to Sherman, Tex., where she will be met by her brother and sister-in-law, Allen and Susan James Parmer. She will be joined there by her husband, Jesse James. The couple will visit Dallas and Galveston before returning to Kansas City. It is during this time period that Bob Younger visits Jesse and their close friendship develops. Coincidentally, at least one Texas stagecoach is robbed while Jesse and Zee are honeymooning in the state.
May 6, 1884
Charley Ford, older brother of Bob, commits suicide. He had been in poor health and reportedly was addicted to morphine and opium that he used to relieve the pain of a bladder disease. He had recently returned to the home of his parents, J. T. and Mary Ford. (The house was about two miles east of Richmond off the current Highway 10.) The coroner found that Charley shot himself in the chest with a large caliber revolver. He survived about an hour before dying. His parents said that Charley had gotten up early, eaten a hearty breakfast, and showed no signs of depression before he went to his upstairs bedroom. After hearing the shot, they found Charley lying in bed with his coat off. He was buried the next day in the Richmond cemetery.
May 8, 1888
Mrs. Caroline Cornelia Clarke Quantrill, mother of the late Confederate guerilla leader, begins a tour of Missouri. Most of her son’s former allies accept her but Frank James believes her to be a charlatan. During her lengthy stay, she briefly meets Zerelda Samuel and is guest of honor at a reception in Blue Springs. Fourteen former bushwhackers attend the event. It is whispered that wives of the former guerillas chipped in to provide the rather shabby Mrs. Quantrill with more presentable clothing.
May 4, 1903
Two old cronies, Frank James and Cole Younger, begin touring in the James-Younger Wild West Show. Thirty freshly-painted railroad cars left Chicago for the performance in Galesburg, Ill. “The Great Cole Younger and Frank James Historical Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” was painted on one of the cars along with portraits of the two men. There were circus cars, stock and baggage cars, three sleepers, two advance cars and an elaborate car for the managerial staff. Because of the restrictions on his pardon from the Minnesota penitentiary, Cole can not actually perform but he does sit in the audience and chat with those around him. Frank participates in skits and rides in the grand finale.
May 29, 1909
Former Missouri Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden dies in Kansas City. He came here from Kentucky, settling in Lexington and then Warrensburg. He was a prominent attorney, a lieutenant colonel in the Union army, state attorney general and served two terms in Congress. As governor he worked with railroad officials to offer sizeable rewards for the arrest and conviction of Frank and Jesse James.
May 20, 1911
The personal belongings of the late Zerelda Cole James Simms Samuel are sold at an auction on the grounds of the James-Samuel farm. The sale list includes a trunk, oak wardrobe, 4 rocking chairs, initial set “Z” chip diamond and several pieces of homemade furniture. Administrators are Mrs. Samuel’s son, John T. Samuel, and her grandson, Jesse Edwards James. Col. John D. Matthews is the auctioneer.
May 5, 1949
An interview with the late Mrs. Amanda Ford Seigel, sister of Bob and Charley Ford, is published in an area newspaper. Five years before her 1945 death, Mrs. Seigel, then 85, had given the interview to her cousin, Mrs. Leona Ford Ross. Mrs. Seigel recalled that her father, James T. Ford, had rented acreage and downstairs rooms at Mt. Vernon, Va. when she was a child. She and her sisters played in Martha Washington’s summer house and occasionally were allowed upstairs where some of George Washington’s furniture was stored.
The Ford family later moved to Missouri and settled on a farm south of Excelsior Springs near the Jasper log church where her father served as pastor. Her brother, Bob, was about seven at the time. And, according to his sister, he would pretend he was a detective hunting the infamous Jesse James. The Ford children attended the Moore School in what is now southwest Excelsior Springs. The interesting interview took place in Mrs. Seigel’s 117-year-old home, five miles southeast of Excelsior Springs, where she and her husband, George, had lived since their marriage 62-years earlier.
May 22, 1969
The Kearney Courier reports that the two rooms of the original James home have been reopened for tours. The dilapidated cabin was closed for about 10 years with tourists only being allowed to view the outside. Restoration began in 1968 when Mr. And Mrs. Virgil Bade moved to the farm from St. Louis. The farm is owned by Mae James , widow of Robert and aunt of Mrs. Bade. The story says that Frank and Anna James conducted tours at the farm until 1913 when their son, Robert, and his wife, continued the practice, even after they moved to Excelsior Springs in 1956.
May 16, 1989
The Nashville Tennessean announces that a Federal style, two-story brick home, once occupied by Jesse and Zee James, has been nomin ated for an architectural award. The building, located at 711 Fatherland in the Edgefield area ofEast Nashville, was headed for demolition until it was rescued by Bill Beard who paid $16,000 for it in 1984. Check dates jj lived there. It is believed Jesse lived at this home in 1881 when the Muscle Schoals robbery took place.
May 26, 1999
Two firearms, which had been displayed in the Jesse James museum in Kearney and touted as having belonged to the famous outlaw, are fakes, according to Elizabeth Beckett, Clay County Historic Sites Supervisor. Beck discovered the mistake by checking the serial numbers on the weapons and determining they had been manufactured after the 1882 death of Jesse. The Colt .45 pistol and a Winchester rifle had been donated to Clay County in 1988 by Ethel Rose Owens, daughter of Jesse Edwards James.
