I am Mrs. Jesse James

by Pat Wahler

  The auctioneer lifted his puppy, Buster.

  “This little cur dog was brought as a present for Jesse Junior by the famous outlaw only a few days before he died. Ladies and gentlemen, what am I bid for this one-of-a-kind treasure?”

  Buster whimpered. Ladies whispered to each other behind their fans.

  The auctioneer said, “Who will give me two bits?”

  A man’s hand went up, then another man countered. A third man joined in, and the three competed against each other, the bids going higher. The cat and mouse game went on until one of the men shook his head and dropped out. Then another declined to go any higher.

  The auctioneer mopped his brow and crowed breathlessly.

  “Sold! For fifteen dollars!”

  It was the highest price paid for anything in the auction, and the only one I wished I could have kept for my boy. The auctioneer handed Buster to the winning bidder, a man in a fine dark suit with a gap-toothed grin. He held up the puppy, and the crowd applauded. My son’s narrow shoulders slumped, and he buried his face in my skirt. I pulled him close to me as he cried out his heartbreak in front of total strangers.

  I had nothing left but my children.

  In all, the auction’s proceeds amounted to $117.65. It was far from what we would need.

  On a cloudy day a few weeks later, I twisted my handkerchief, waiting in my sister’s parlor for news. The trial of Bob and Charlie Ford had pushed every other matter from my mind. I couldn’t bear to attend the hearing, so Nancy’s husband, Charles, had gone on my behalf. He returned home with brows drawn and hands fisted. I twined my fingers together, dreading what I’d hear.

  “It’s over. Bob confessed to his deed, and Charlie admitted to helping him. People were standing elbow to elbow in the courtroom so they could hear the sentence. The judge declared the Fords were both to be hanged next month for murder. He had to pound his gavel to silence the spectators.”

  My knees went weak, and I dropped into a chair. “Thank God. I feared they wouldn’t have to pay for their crime.”

  Charles looked down for a moment and then cleared his throat. “I’m afraid Governor Crittenden sent an order right away, pardoning them. Charlie and Bob are free to collect their reward.”

  My hand went to my chest. “They admit to the crime of murder and are pardoned and rewarded? What kind of justice is that?”

  “I’m sorry, Zee. When the sentence was announced, the Fords were smiling as though they hadn’t a care in the world. If it’s any consolation, there were many in the crowd who shouted that they were traitors.”

  I shook my head and dabbed my eyes with a handkerchief. I found no consolation in any of it. None at all.

  The children and I lived with Nancy and Charles for several months. I tried to keep from intruding in their lives, but my brother-in-law’s forced politeness soon told me he’d grown weary of strangers knocking on the door in an effort to see me. We moved to the home of my brother Thomas, where I could at least help by cooking and sewing.

  I shook my head at so many people who believed Jesse had hidden away a secret fortune. In the last few months of his life, he’d scrambled for money. How foolish to think he would fail to retrieve a treasure if there was one to be had. Yet people contrived to see me for countless wild schemes.

  One man sneaked through a window at night. Another sent a letter asking me to invest in a gold mine. But most were hungry for the details of my husband’s life. A promoter asked me to tell my story on a lecture tour, and my circumstances were dire enough for me to agree. At the last minute, my head spun at the thought of standing in front of an audience to speak, so the promoter engaged an actor to disclose pieces of our lives while the children and I sat on stage. My face burned with shame the entire time we were on display, and I was thankful when the promoter abandoned the entire idea.

  Later, a man named Frank Triplett offered Zerelda and me royalties if we agreed to let him interview us for a book. Zerelda convinced me to accept his proposal in hopes we could tell Jesse’s story from our point of view.

  “And,” Zerelda said to clinch her argument, “God alone knows we both need to bring in some money.”

  I regretted my decision at the very first meeting. When Mr. Triplett refused to let us see what he’d written before the book came out, I feared the worst. Frank, upon hearing of the project, sent a tersely worded note to Zerelda and another to me. Since he and Annie still lived as fugitives, he accused us of putting them in new jeopardy. We promptly withdrew our support of the book, but the damage had already been done.

  Upon publication, Frank Triplett sent me a copy. I read it and squirmed with every word. It described the life of Frank and Jesse in flowery terms that reminded me of the worst dime novels I’d ever read. At a time when I wanted nothing more than to fade from the public’s eye, the book increased by ten-fold the efforts of people trying to contact me.

  But what hurt most, I read in the book’s final section. Frank Triplett implied that I had failed Jesse by not influencing him, as Annie had done for Frank, to be a better man. It brought back a question I’d wrestled with for many months. In many ways, Jesse had failed me. But had I failed him as well?

  The book project drove a wedge between Frank and me that we would never fully repair, and I mused that selling a few of my husband’s secrets for money hadn’t been much different from what Charlie and Bob Ford had done.

  A deep sense of weariness settled over me. I refused to leave the house without a widow’s veil, and allowed no photographs be taken of me. Even after society declared my mourning ended, I did not abandon wearing black. It would be part of my penance, a punishment for what I’d done and for what I’d left undone.

  The blue spells that had plagued me in the past came more often and lasted longer. I lived in fear of strangers befriending me with intent to harm my children, and limited visitors to my kin and my pastor.

  But I wasn’t the only one who struggled in the years following Jesse’s death. Zerelda sold pebbles from her famous son’s grave to the many curiosity seekers who visited the farm. She gloried in standing tall and raising her stump for emphasis as she told stories of her children, her life, and most of all, of Jesse and Frank.

  Frank continued in hiding until Jesse’s old friend, John Newman Edwards, negotiated terms of his surrender to Governor Crittenden. The event made headlines across the country when Frank and the governor shook hands. He would stand trial on three separate charges and each time be pronounced “not guilty”. Frank and Annie would need to wander no longer.

  He and Annie moved away to live a life of peace, if not prosperity. My happiness for them had a bittersweet hue. When I sent a note of congratulations to Frank, he did not reply.

  As I’d always hoped, young Jesse—for he’d insisted that I call him his real name—and Mary went to school each day. Every Sunday, they attended the Methodist Church.

  At the age of eleven, my dear son found a job, and over my objection, he left school and went to work. He’d become the man of the family, as his father had bid him, and he smiled with pride when he handed me his earnings. With the money we were able to save and the help of some unlikely friends, we bought a small cottage in Kansas City. It soothed me to sit on the porch and take satisfaction in knowing that after so much time, we finally had a place to call our own.

  Over the years, thoughts of loved ones who were gone came to me often. I prayed for Papa, Mama, Lucy, my babies far away in Tennessee, and of course Jesse. When the stains on my soul over what had passed became too dark to bear, I spoke with my pastor, while tears spilled from my eyes. He read to me 2 Corinthians 5:17:

  Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. “You must seek forgiveness from God,” he told me, “for things which are over and done, but you must also forgive yourself. Focus only on what lies ahead.”

  I listened to his words with an unsettled mind. From years of habit, I couldn’t help thi
nking about Jesse—the rebel, the crusader, the bandit, the husband, the father. Strong-willed and stubborn. A terrifying specter to those he despised, but loving and loyal to his wife, his children, and his family. Was Frank Triplett right? Could it have been within my power to change him?

  Jesse loved me as he loved no one else. Of that, I had no doubt. If I’d forced him to choose, he would have tried. He might even have succeeded, but I would never know for sure. I realized my only salvation—and Jesse’s—would come from raising our children to be true and diligent and wise. Love would not fail.

  On pleasant evenings when stars twinkle overhead, I often sit outside and listen to the chirp of crickets and the call of night birds. When the moon is bright, I fancy that I can see a charming rogue among the flickering shadows, someone who wooed me in days before hate and revenge twisted his heart. A smile lifts the corners of lips I remember so well.

  My husband, Jesse James. The young man who once gave me a penny for a promise.

  Afterword

  There were no fortunes hidden away to support Jesse’s family. After his death, Zee and her children lived in poverty, and stayed with various relatives willing to take them in. Young Jesse quit school at the age of eleven to help support his mother and sister. In a strange twist of fate, he obtained employment as a copy boy at the law office of Thomas Theodore Crittenden, Junior; the son of Governor Crittenden, the man who made a deal with Bob Ford that led to the murder of Jesse James. Between the boy’s earnings, and financial assistance contributed by Crittenden, John Newman Edwards, and other friends, the family bought a cottage located at 3402 Tracy Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. For the first time, they had a permanent home.

  Zee shunned the public eye and devoted her life to raising her children. She attended the Methodist Church each week until her health declined, and lived long enough to see her son marry Stella Frances McGown.

  With Zee’s health failing, Stella—by now expecting a baby—along with Zee’s daughter, Mary, nursed Zee through her final illness. On November 13, 1900, she died at the age of fifty-five. Only a month later, Zee and Jesse’s first grandchild would be born. The young couple named their infant for Zee’s favorite sister Lucy, a favor Zee had requested before her death.

  A few months later, the family arranged to have Jesse’s body moved from his mother’s farm to lie next to his devoted wife at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri. Yet there remained one more promise—unfulfilled until October 31, 2004.

  One hundred and one years after her death, one of Zee’s final wishes was granted. Young Jesse’s great-grandson, Judge James R. Ross, obtained a court order to have Gould and Montgomery, the twin boys born to Zee and Jesse in Nashville, exhumed from their gravesite in Humphries County, Tennessee. The babies were buried next to their parents on November 22, 2004, finally together again at the Mount Olivet Cemetery.

  Jesse’s mother, Zerelda Cole James Simms Samuel, has been described as one of the most formidable women of the Civil War era, giving anyone who opposed her reason to keep a sharp watch over their shoulder. After Jesse’s death, Zerelda remained at the farm in Kearney where her infamous sons were born and stayed there for the rest of her life. To support herself, she gave tours of the farm and sold pebbles from Jesse’s grave to visitors. Many claimed she gathered new stones from a nearby creek bed to replenish the grave on a regular basis. Strong-willed and fiercely devoted to her boys until the end, Zerelda died in 1911 at the age of eighty-six while on her way home from a visit to Frank.

  Following Zerelda’s death, Frank and Annie moved to the farm in Kearney. As Zerelda had once done, Frank greeted people when they arrived to tour the farm, and he told a few stories of his own. Frank died February 18, 1915. The reclusive Annie passed in 1944.

  The James Farm itself, where many significant events in the outlaw’s life occurred, eventually fell into ruins. Clay County purchased the farm in 1978 and began work to restore the property, creating the James Farm and Museum. It is open to the public and remains one of the oldest continually operated historic sites in Missouri, with an extensive collection of artifacts from the James family. The museum provides a fascinating look at life in Missouri before, during, and after the Civil War.

  Author’s Note

  Why a quiet and deeply religious young woman like Zerelda Mimms would marry a man such as Jesse James—not only her first cousin but a bandit known throughout the country—is a question that long puzzled me. During my research, I found no easy answers. Some facts of Zee’s life were a matter of public record and indisputable. Other sources gave conflicting accounts. Much remains a mystery, and under the circumstances, this isn’t a surprise. Jesse and Zee worked hard not to leave behind a trail.

  Within these constraints, Zee and the tumultuous times in which she lived came to life for me. In cases where no information existed or inconsistencies of fact were found, I imagined the lives and conversations of Jesse and Zee based on what I had learned about them. To help separate fact from fiction, the following explains some of the literary choices I made, and the reasoning behind those decisions.

  In the novel, Jesse gives Zee a penny to seal their engagement. This is something he would likely have had in his possession at the time, and a gift he could easily give a young girl craving a tangible token of his affection. I crafted the story of him getting the penny from his father based on accounts claiming young Jesse had grown highly distraught at his father’s departure. It made sense that a loving parent would devise some way to give comfort to his child, from which sprang the idea of the lucky penny.

  Zee’s visit to Jesse’s mother, Zerelda, in January 1875, came early in her first pregnancy. Several sources speculated the visit occurred because of illness related to her condition. I found no reports of how long Zee stayed at the farm, but it seemed logical she would not have recovered overnight. This gave rise to the idea of her being present during the attack by Pinkerton agents on January 26, 1875. No existing evidence puts Zee at the scene, but it was the family’s practice not to disclose any more information than necessary to authorities. Historians have noted a horse was stolen during the arrival of neighbors to help the Samuel family. If Zee had been at the farm, the possibility exists she could have been the one to take the animal and warn her husband of the tragedy. During her desperate ride, Zee shoots a man who means harm to her and Jesse. This scene was crafted based on an account by one of her Tennessee neighbors who claimed Zee showed him a gun and said she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot anyone who threatened her family. I believe she would have done exactly what she said she’d do.

  The family moved many times while in Tennessee, and according to sources may have even spent a year in Baltimore. However, since the details of each specific move had no bearing on the overall story, I chose to condense them.

  Most of the characters in this book were truly a part of Zee’s life. Some of them, notably William Locke, and a few of the Tennessee neighbors are fictional.

  Finally, this novel is Zee’s story, not Jesse’s. According to some of Jesse’s comrades, he did his best to keep his activities secret from his wife. Thus, most information on what he did likely came to her only through family, friends, and newspaper accounts. She would not have been aware of every move Jesse made or each crime he committed.

  Although every effort has been made to be as accurate as possible, there were times when the author’s imagination served the story.

  Sources

  The sources consulted by the author came largely from materials focused on Jesse, as there are few written records related specifically to Zee. I am grateful for the body of work others have created which helped guide and inform me on this journey.

  The following publications provided the meat of my research for timelines, facts, and a feel for the era, although many other articles and anecdotal stories were reviewed. The following would provide a sound starting point for anyone who would like to read more about the life and times of the James family.

 
Jesse James was My Neighbor by Homer Croy

  Shot All to Hell by Mark Lee Gardner

  Jesse James, My Father, by Jesse James, Jr.

  In the Shadow of Jesse James by Stella Frances James

  The James Farm, It’s People, Their Lives and Their Times by

  Martin Edward McGrane

  Jesse James was His Name by William A. Settle, Jr.

  Jesse James, Last Rebel of the Civil War by T. J. Stiles

  Jesse James, The Life, Times and Treacherous Death of the Most

  Infamous Outlaw of All Time by Frank Triplett

  Frank and Jesse James by Ted P. Yeatman

  Reader’s Guide

  I love book clubs and would be happy to participate in discussions either in person (locally), or via Skype. Please email me at patricia.wahler@outlook.com for more information.

  1.

  This story is told from Zee’s point of view. Do her observations change or confirm your opinion about her husband? Why?

  2.

  How does Zee’s relationship with her parents evolve over time? Do you think this is typical of young people today?

  3.

  Family and friends in the novel keep secrets from the outside world to present a unified front. Why do you suppose they remained silent and loyal even when they didn’t approve of Frank’s and Jesse’s activities?

  4.

  After the war, Jesse is determined to get revenge for the North’s treatment of the South. Do you think most Southerners during Reconstruction agreed with this philosophy?

  5.

  What events helped Zee to justify Jesse’s behavior? What events caused her to begin questioning the decisions he made?