Jesse James

Jesse Woodson James was born September 5, 1847, in Missouri's "Little Dixie," where Southern sympathies ran deep. During the Civil War, he and his brother Frank rode with pro-Confederate bushwhackers under William Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, accused of atrocities including the Centralia Massacre in 1864. After the war they turned outlaw, robbing banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest from roughly 1866 to 1876 as leaders of the James-Younger Gang. An 1876 bank job in Northfield, Minnesota, went sideways - several gang members were captured or killed - but Jesse and Frank kept recruiting and running until law enforcement closed in. On April 3, 1882, Robert Ford, a new recruit chasing a reward and amnesty, shot Jesse in the back of the head. He became a legend of the Wild West immediately, though scholars note he was less frontier Robin Hood than post-war Confederate insurgent with a gift for PR.