The Outlaw

Dr. Allan Thomson, who was once Jack London's doctor, lived a piece up the road from the James family, and he tells us Jesse was born in 1847, the son of a Baptist minister and a mother who found it necessary to marry three times. Her last husband being a kindly man was Dr. Reuben Samuel. He also states that Jesse was spawned of the Civil War as a Quantrell Raider, and that his fast gunhand …

…dead or alive. Bob Ford, a former member of the gang, could not resist this money; so he picked one of Jesse's Pistols off the table in Jesse's own house and killed him while he was straightening a picture on the wall. All Missouri mourned poor Jesse's death. Frank James surrendered to the governor. It was the end of the James banditry acting nightly as a doorman in a St. Louis burlesque not long afterward.