Standing next to the 9-foot-high tombstone, our guide told us how Zerelda used to sell tourists stones lying on top of her sons grave for 25 cents apiece, and then quickly replenish the supply from a nearby creekbed, and how she would carve his initials onto the handles of old pistols and sell them to particularly gullible visitors. After his surrender and acquittals, Frank did his best to follow his instincts and keep his head down, but celebrity and notoriety turned out to be lifelong distractions. Maybe so, though there are people who would eagerly disagree. The jail in Independence where Frank was held for six months and treated more like a celebrity guest than an outlaw still stands and the cell has been restored to the condition it was when occupied. He stated that after being hunted for more than twenty years he was tired of the vigil and handed his gun over. He had thoughts of pursuing a higher education but political events influenced his life. Here, he stands at the age of 70 before the gate of the Jesse James Farm, where curious spectators could pay 50 to see the farm and for just a little more money, could even buy pebbles from Jesse's grave. The marshals wife often cooked meals for the prisoners, in addition to her husband and children.. Frank James grew up on a Missouri farm in Kearney. Are you sure that you want to report this flower to administrators as offensive or abusive? The gravestone reads, "Frank James Alias Joe Vaughn 1844-". The various actors who played FrankBill Paxton, Stacy Keach, Sam Shepard, even Johnny Cashhad a natural air of horse sense and moral weariness, in contrast to the spell of mercurial menace cast by stars like Robert Duvall or Brad Pitt in the role of Jesse. (They are.). Stephanie Keith for The New York Times By Jonah E. Bromwich , Ashley. Frank James had led a life of crime for almost two decades yet stood trial only twice and other then time in jail, which was considerable, he did no prison time. Frank James was released in the spring of 1883 when the prosecuting attorney could not build a sufficient case. They seem never to have troubled themselves with the idea that there was a difference between righteous vengeance and outright robbery. In 1854, Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the Kansas Territory to settlement. Here he lies: the older brother, the second banana, the faded outlaw legend. After his acquittal, he shunned offers to capitalize on his outlaw fame turning down many offers. Frank and Jesse James were both legends in their own time, though Jesse is better remembered today . When Zerelda died, Frank took over the family business of showing curiosity-seekers the place where he and Jesse were born. Remove advertising from a memorial by sponsoring it for just $5. Although the gang began in 1866 it wasnt called the James-Younger Gang until 1868, when it was determined that Cole Younger, Jesse and Frank James were involved. Allegedly, there is a report that after his parole, that in Brandenburg, Kentucky Frank was involved in a gunfight with four soldiers which resulted in two soldiers killed, one soldier wounded, and Frank wounded in the hip. In 1875, detectives hoping to track down Frank and Jesse surrounded the farm and threw a bomb through the window. He was married to the pair's mother, Zerelda James, from 1855 until his death in 1908. Frank James surrendered in Jefferson City, Missouri. A man perpetually outshone by his younger brother in the annals of history, Frank left behind his wife, Annie, and their son, Robert, dying from a stroke, at the age of 72, on February 18 . Use the links under See more to quickly search for other people with the same last name in the same cemetery, city, county, etc. My old life, he later wrote, grew more detestable the further I got away from it.. The United American Indians of New England continues to raise awareness of racism towards Native Americans and the consequences of colonialism. When the troops on the Confederate side were withdrawn during the fall of 1864, a guerrilla conflict broke out between groups of pro-Confederates (bushwhackers) and the home guards for the Union. Ollie Mae Truitt. Weve updated the security on the site. Is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a remake? One of the theaters spins to attract patrons was their use of the phrase Come get your ticket punched by the legendary Frank James. He also served as an AT&T telegraph operator in St. Joseph, Missouri. Stonewall, named for Andrew Stonewall Jackson, was always dependable and eventually became Jesses favorite. Known for several firsts, including the first daytime bank heist and train robbery, the Missouri native lived an exciting life for the times. Last updated on January 25th, 2023 at 08:08 am. Outlaws like the James boys and Younger brothers used the remaining animosities from the outrages of the war to stay a step ahead of the law for nearly twenty years. He soon switched to the more active command led by William Clarke Quantrill. The brothers, though shot up at times, survived the Civil War, but had no inclination to put it behind them. Turn right onto N Main St. Plan about 1 hour to tour the museum and house. You ought to see how the women flock around him to buy dry goods, one observer wrote when Frank was working in a store in Dallas. See Wikipedia for more.. Find A Grave; Genealogy data can be searched for by entering the name of a person to find where that person is buried. What happened to Frank James after Jesus died? Try again later. Record for Frank James Truitt 23 December 1894 - 23 December 1962 in Oak Wood Cemetery, Hamilton, Hamilton, Texas, United States from BillionGraves GPS Headstones. Please reset your password. Jesse Woodson James, born in Clay County, Missouri, on September 5, 1847, was the son of Kentucky native Zerelda Cole James and her husband, Robert James, a Baptist minister and slave-owning. Please enter your email and password to sign in. In the last thirty years of his life, James worked a variety of jobs, including as a shoe salesman and then as a Burlesque theater ticket taker in St. Louis. View Frank James's memorial on Fold3. She was cremated and the couple was interred in Hill Park Cemetery which is located in the upper part of Hill Park, Independence and consists of a small stone wall enclosure of graves. Each cell was six by nine feet and designed to hold three prisoners, though, during the Civil War, as many as twenty prisoners were confined in each cell. The Tacoma Times reported in July, 1914 that he was picking berries at a local ranch there in Washington state and planned to buy a farm nearby. Whereas Franks story just went quietly on. Hill Park Cemetery Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, USA Show Map. For just over two decades my mother, Betty Dorsett Duke; had researched her family story in an effort to determine whether or not her great grandfather was truly the Old West outlaw, Jesse Woodson James; who faked his death and lived to the age of 97 in Blevins, Texas under the alias James Lafayette Courtney. Frank was a Confederate sympathizer and a bushwhacker (a Confederate guerrilla) during the American Civil War. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Mo. He was the son of John M. James (1775-1827) and Mary "Polly . The residents don't even real. QUICK FACTS Name: James Birth Year: 1847 Birth date: September 5, 1847 Birth State: Missouri Birth City: Kearney Birth Country: United States Gender: Male Best Known For: Jesse James was a bank. Robert Ford Frank inherited the books54 of themfrom his erudite preacher father and kept them in a long wooden book chest with his name burned into the lid. He surrendered to the Union troops, was paroled, and was allowed to return home. Trivia The outlaw brothers stole gold what is equivalent to 1 billion dollars today, gave some in charity while the rest of that loot is buried all over Missouri . There was an error deleting this problem. In the end, Franks gallant pose paid real dividends. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. The jail in Independence where Frank was held for six months and treated more like a celebrity guest than an outlaw still stands and the cell has been restored to the condition it was when occupied. Coordinates: 394'56"N 9427'20"W. Add your comment in . They left six days a week at sunrise and returned at sunset. (The True Story of Jesse James, the latest Hollywood version of the story, had been released the year before.) Place of Burial: Wayton, Newton County, AR, United States. Old West Vest Cole Younger of the James Younger Gang wore a heavy salt brine layered leather vest. Beyond the kitchen was the ancient heart of the house, a saddlebag log cabin (two rooms sharing a single fireplace) built in 1822. While Frank was a part of this company they were involved with the Lawrence Massacre of August 21, 1863 where about 200 people were killed. Supposedly killed in . Fox Nation has found what appears to be multiple large buried pieces of curved metal . Your Scrapbook is currently empty. 3 Is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a remake? Additional data from member contributors. Their mother, Zerelda Cole James was injured and lost part of her arm. Learn more about merges. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Frank James, at 18, promptly joined the secessionist-minded Missouri State Guard and helped defeat Union forces at the Battle of Wilsons Creek in August 1861. Born in 1893. Jesse James' Hidden Treasure in the Wichita Mountains. Our guide pointed out samples of Annies tatting displayed on the walls, the business degree from Jones Commercial College acquired by Frank and Annies son, Robert F. James, who later built a three-hole golf course on the property. He lived with his wife and children in the Marshals residence, which was the front half of the building. The bank in Liberty, Missouri which is claimed to be the first bank robbery committed by the James gang. The site is only a few miles away from Jesses grave, which now bears a modest stone flush to the ground (Born Sept. 5, 1847, assassinated April 3, 1882) that replaces the desecrated tombstone I saw as a 9-year-old boy. A free man, he retired to a quiet life on his familys farm, dying in 1915 in the room in which he was born. Frank James was tried for only two of the robberies/murders one in Gallatin, Missouri for the July 15, 1881 robbery of the Rock Island Line train at Winston, Missouri, in which the train engineer and a passenger were killed, and the other in Huntsville, Alabama for the March 11, 1881 robbery of a United States Army Corps of Engineers payroll at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. During the next 12 years, they committed many robberies involving banks, trains and stagecoaches. On June 8, 1892 Robert Ford, known as the dirty little coward that killed Jesse James was shot and killed in a barroom brawl in Creede, Colorado. Immediate Family: Son of Rev. He was acquitted in both Missouri and Alabama. From 14 to 42 years old, women in the above document were jailed for streetwalking, disrupting the peace to crimes such as grand larceny and running a brothel. In the episode of Little House on the Prairie titled "The Aftermath" (aired November 7, 1977), Jesse (Dennis Rucker) and Frank James (John Bennett Perry) took refuge in Walnut Grove after a failed . English Shortly after he began robbing trains, Frank married Annie Ralston, the daughter of a prosperous local farmer, a graduate of Independence Female College and, according to one childhood friend, an excellent pistol shot. A rock formation near Cement called Buzzard's Roost is what many people. From time to time, Ive even wondered if he made it up to impress two young boys at a time when Jesse James fervor was at one of its periodic heights. His new life, after some wandering years and sputtering career steps, ultimately brought Alexander Franklin James back home to the farm in northwestern Missouri where he was born in 1843. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried. Your information will *never* be shared or sold to a 3rd party. This memorial has been copied to your clipboard. After Jesse James was murdered in 1882, his older brother, Frank, began negotiations with the Missouri governor to surrender because he feared assassination. Jimmy Hoffa disappeared 46 years ago today, and his body could be encased in a metal barrel tomb in New Jersey. Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. Learn more about managing a memorial . In his final years, James returned to the James Farm, giving tours for the sum of 25 cents. In 1978, Clay County purchased the home and restoration work was completed. Frank James life can be easily seen as a chronicle of violence and hatred. He is buried in. James fell ill and was left behind when the Confederate forces later retreated. Astonishingly, this lethal characterwho had been among the most remorseless partisans in the Missouri border wars, and who afterward preyed on banks and railroads and express companies and robbed and murdered innocent civilianswalked freely into a new life, the beneficiary of various dropped charges and two sensational murder trials that ended in acquittal. He was the father of the outlaws Frank and Jesse James.. Instead, he took menial jobs: shoe salesman, farmer and with the Standard Theatre saloon in St. Louis as an usher, doorman and bouncer. I learned about Franks beloved horse Dan, who was buried on the farm and whose grave was included in the tours that he used to give curiosity seekers. The James family did not escape the sorts of abuses that Frank and Jesse inflicted on their victims. Continuing with this request will add an alert to the cemetery page and any new volunteers will have the opportunity to fulfill your request. A nineteen-year college student was shot dead in the street following the robbery, as the bandits celebrated. As the twelve, new, limestone jail cells were opened, hostilities between free state and pro-slavery forces were reaching a boiling point in this area of Midwestern United States. Because he came down with measles and was left behind, Frank was captured by Union troops. Failed to report flower. Are you sure that you want to remove this flower? In his latter days . After his death she married a third time to Dr. Reuben Samuel in 1855 when Frank was 13 years old. The secessionists in Missouri, including Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, attempted to push the Union army out of the state but were eventually defeated. In contrast to his brother's bloody demise, Frank James passed away peacefully on his family's Missouri farm at the ripe old age of 72. Zerelda James Samuels, stern-faced mother, adviser and confidante of the notorious brothers, Jesse and Frank James, stands beside the grave and tombstone of her son Jesse, in the back yard of the old James farm home near Kearney, Missouri. You need a Find a Grave account to continue. Jesse James is an iconic name across the world, but did you know he actually has ties to right here in southwest Oklahoma. How many people know that the Outlaw Frank James is buried in Independence Missouri in his in-laws's private cemetery under the name of Frank Hill? In 1875 Jesse posed astride Stonewall for a photograph. In 1881 Governor Crittenden offered a reward for the capture of Jesse and Frank James dead or alive. He also sold shoes and worked as a doorman at a burlesque theater, as a race starter at the fairgrounds and even as an actor (a very poor one, apparently) in several plays, though he stipulated that I will not have anything to do with a performance that idealizes law-breaking. In the end, he tried to have it both ways, forming a Wild West show with old friend Cole Youngernow paroled from prisonand cheekily playing the role of a passenger held up in a stagecoach. Considered America's first celebrity criminal, Jesse James impacted Midwestern towns from Missouri to Minnesota. ?1915 He died in 1951 and was buried in Granbury, Texas. After Jesse's death in 1882, it fell on Frank . The story of Jesse James, J. Frank Dalton, and Rudy Turilli was then assembled into the Jesse James Wax Museum, which opened in 1964. . American Frontier Outlaw. Frank was always the ego to Jesses id, the Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. In 1980, country singer Johnny Cash portrayed Frank James in the album, The Legend of Jesse James, and played Frank in the film The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, six years later. The result was an insurgent war against the pro-Union provisional government, a conflict that deteriorated to personal score settling between gangs of bushwhackers and rampaging militias. After the brothers murdered two innocent men during an 1881 train robbery, though, the state of Missouri came to its senses and offered a reward of $5,000 each for the capture of Jesse and Frank. Reporters who interviewed Frank in his jail cell in Independence and were determined to keep the James legend rolling filled column after column about the appearance of this renowned criminal who had eluded their scrutiny for 20 years. This account has been disabled. He died there on February 18, 1915, aged 72 years. You are able to walk inside the jail cells. Frank James surrendered in Jefferson City, Missouri. He shares a modest tombstone with his wife, but you would never know it was his grave unless you were somebody like me who had gone looking for it for his own wistful reasons. There were casualties in this new field as wellan engineer killed in a derailment, an express messenger brutally beatenbut passengers often reported that the robbers engaged them in jaunty banter, could sometimes be shamed into returning stolen goods and that one of them even quoted Shakespeare. Frank joined a unit of Governor Claiborne Fox Jacksons Home Guard on May 4, 1861, and fought at the Battle of Wilsons Creek under General Sterling Price. His father heeding a calling left for California with the intent of preaching to gold miners but contracted cholera and died. For a long time I stood in front of a portrait of the outlaw at age 55. Before he died in 1951, Jesse Jr. bestowed the task upon his grandson, Judge James R. Ross. There is truth enough in that conventional paradigm. Census records show that James attended school regularly, and he reportedly wanted to become a teacher. While others had little to nothing in their cell, because of his celebrity, Frank James cell was furnished with a Brussels carpet, fine furniture and paintings. Resend Activation Email. Theres also a small exhibit in the back of time period wedding gowns with write-ups on who wore them. Frank James/Place of burial. How old was Frank James when he died? On February 18, 1915 at the age of 72, Frank James died a free man and of natural causes. Find A Grave is a free website providing access to and an opportunity to input cemetery information to an online database of cemetery records. The building consists of three small apartments. He is buriedat least his ashes arein nearby Independence, in a tiny cemetery surrounded by a stone wall at the edge of a rambling city park. My grandfather, born in 1895, would have been 16 when Frank and Jesses mother died in 1911, and 20 when Frank died in 1915. Reuben Samuel(January 12, 1828 - March 1, 1908) was the stepfather of the American outlawsFrankand Jesse James. Treasure tales involving Jesse James also include his brother Frank, and fellow raider, and long-time member of their gang, Cole Younger. Some of the crimes for which a person could be imprisoned in the jail prior to the Civil War included: horse racing on public streets, firing guns in town, operating a gaming house, assault and battery, disturbing the peace, disturbing a religious meeting, or building a privy (toilet) not over a pit. Please try again later. On the first floor are a kitchen and parlor. Add to your scrapbook. This flower has been reported and will not be visible while under review. He must have told us more, because I remember being hungry for details, startled by the idea that our soft-spoken, law-abiding grandfather, general manager of a Chevrolet dealership in Oklahoma City, had known one of the great outlaws of American history. To use this feature, use a newer browser. On April 5, Zee James, Zerelda Samuel, Zee's children and other family members accompanied James' body to Kearney, Missouri by train and he was buried on the James family farm where he was born. You can see the Marshals home from Main Street, but the two-story limestone jail and the 1901 chain gang jail join the rear of the home. Failed to remove flower. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. His body has been exhumed twice, once in 1902 when Zerelda had it transferred to Mt. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a 2007 American epic revisionist Western film written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Liberty, Missouri, bank, 1866 . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. There were no beds in most cells and prisoners slept on a shared pallet. Sorting through a box of old family letters recently, I came across a striking postcard that my grandparents sent back to Oklahoma during a visit to Missouri in the early 1940s. Husband of Nancy (Richardson) Vaughn. Established in 1959, the Jackson County Historical Society works to preserve the 1859 limestone Jail Museum. He was the brother of Bob Ford, an outlaw, and member of the James Gang. Their string of bank hold-ups, which began in 1866possibly with a daylight assault on the bank in Liberty, only a few miles from the James farmwere often marked by lethal shootouts with citizens and sometimes by cold-blooded executions of bank employees. In the 1850s the Marshal was paid about $50 per month in addition to the use of the house, for his services. In 1907, a brick jail was added to the back of the limestone jail to house chain gangs. In 1902, former Missourian Sam Hildreth, a leading thoroughbred horse trainer and owner, hired James as the betting commissioner at the Fair Grounds Race Track in New Orleans.