Jesse James, who was born Sept. 5, 1847, in Missouri’s Clay County, followed the lead of his older brother Frank and served as a Confederate guerrilla, or bushwhacker. In the spring of 1864, lanky, blue-eyed 16-year-old Jesse joined the guerilla group headed by “Bloody Bill” Anderson that terrorized pro-Union enemies in Missouri.
That summer, Jesse suffered a chest wound, but on Sept. 27, 1864, he and Frank reportedly took part in the Centralia Massacre, in which Anderson’s bushwhackers stopped a train and executed 22 Union soldiers aboard. The 39th Missouri Mounted Infantry under Maj. Andrew Vern Emen Johnson pursued but were defeated with the loss of 123 men in the Battle of Centralia. Frank later said that Jesse fired the shot that killed Johnson.
This photograph of the young guerrilla posing with three pistols is from a reversed-image ambrotype taken by an unknown photographer in Platte City, Missouri, on July 10, 1864. The next year, at age 17, Jesse suffered a second life-threatening chest wound when a Union cavalry patrol near Lexington, Missouri, shot him when he tried to surrender. Jesse, of course, recovered, opening the door for his involvement in numerous bank and train robberies with brother Frank and others. His recovery at an uncle’s boardinghouse in Harlem, Missouri, was aided by the tender care of his first cousin Zerelda “Zee” Mims, whom he would eventually marry.
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