The James–Younger Gang was a notable 19th-century gang of American outlaws that revolved around Jesse James and his brother Frank James. The gang was based in the state of Missouri, the home of most of the members.
Membership fluctuated from robbery to robbery, as the outlaws' raids were usually separated by many months. As well as the notorious James brothers, at various times it included the Younger brothers (Cole, Jim, John, and Bob), John Jarrett (married to the Youngers' sister Josie), Arthur McCoy, George Shepherd, Oliver Shepherd, William McDaniel, Tom McDaniel, Clell Miller, Samuel Wells (alias Charlie Pitts), William Chadwell (alias Bill Stiles), and Matthew "Ace" Nelson.
The James–Younger Gang had its origins in a group of Confederate bushwhackers that participated in the bitter partisan fighting that wracked Missouri during the American Civil War. After the war, the men continued to plunder and murder, though the motive shifted to personal profit rather than in the name of the Confederacy. The loose association of outlaws did not truly become the "James–Younger Gang" until 1868 at the earliest, when the authorities first named Cole Younger, John Jarrett, Arthur McCoy, George Shepherd and Oliver Shepherd as suspects in the robbery of the Nimrod Long bank in Russellville, Kentucky.
The James–Younger Gang dissolved in 1876, following the capture of the Younger brothers in Minnesota during the unsuccessful attempt to rob the Northfield First National Bank. Three years later, Jesse James organized a new gang, including Clell Miller's brother Ed and the Ford brothers (Robert and Charles), and renewed his criminal career. This career came to an end in 1882 when Robert Ford shot Jesse James from behind, killing him.
For nearly a decade following the Civil War, the James–Younger Gang was among the most feared, most publicized, and most wanted confederations of outlaws on the American frontier. Though their crimes were reckless and brutal, many members of the gang commanded a notoriety in the public eye that earned the gang significant popular support and sympathy. The gang's activities spanned much of the central part of the country; they are suspected of having robbed banks, trains, and stagecoaches in at least eleven states: Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and West Virginia.
History Origins From the beginning of the American Civil War, the state of Missouri had chosen not to secede from the Union but neither to fight for it nor against it: its position, as determined by an 1861 constitutional convention, was officially neutral. Missouri, however, had been the scene of much of the agitation leading up to the outbreak of the war, and was home to dedicated partisans from both sides. In the mid-1850s, local Unionists and Secessionists had begun to battle each other throughout the state, and by the end of 1861, guerrilla warfare erupted between Confederate partisans known as "bushwhackers" and the more organized Union forces. The Missouri State Guard and the newly elected Governor of Missouri, Claiborne Fox Jackson, who maintained implicit Southern sympathies, were forced into exile as Union troops under Nathaniel Lyon and John C. Frémont took control of the state. Still, pro-Confederate guerrillas resisted; by early 1862, the Unionist provisional government mobilized a state militia to fight the increasingly organized and deadly partisans. This conflict (fought largely, though not exclusively, between Missourians themselves) raged until after the fall of Richmond and the surrender of General Robert E. Lee, costing thousands of lives and devastating broad swathes of the Missouri countryside.
The conflict rapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities committed by both sides. Union troops often executed or tortured suspects without trial and burned the homes of suspected guerrillas and those suspected of aiding or harboring them. Where credentials were suspect, the accused guerrilla was often executed, as in the case of Lt. Col. Frisby McCullough after the Battle of Kirksville. Bushwhackers, meanwhile, frequently went house to house, executing Unionist farmers.
The James and Younger brothers belonged to families from an area known as "Little Dixie" in western Missouri with strong ties to the South. Zerelda Samuel, the mother of Frank and Jesse James, was an outspoken partisan of the South, though the Youngers' father, Henry Washington Younger, was believed to be a Unionist. Cole Younger's initial decision to fight as a bushwhacker is usually attributed to the death of his father at the hands of Union forces in July 1862. He and Frank James fought under one of the most famous Confederate bushwhackers, William Clarke Quantrill, though Cole eventually joined the regular Confederate Army. Jesse James began his guerrilla career in 1864, at the age of sixteen, fighting alongside Frank under the leadership of Archie Clement and "Bloody Bill" Anderson.
At the war's end, Frank James surrendered in Kentucky; Jesse James attempted to surrender to Union militia but was shot through the lung outside of Lexington, Missouri. He was nursed back to health by his cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, whom he eventually married. When Cole Younger returned from a mission to California, he learned that Quantrill and Anderson had both been killed. The James brothers, however, continued to associate with their old guerrilla comrades, who remained together under the leadership of Archie Clement. It was likely Clement who, amid the tumult of Reconstruction in Missouri, turned the guerrillas into outlaws.
Early years: 1866 to 1870 On February 12, 1866, a group of gunmen carried out one of the first daylight, peacetime, armed bank robberies in U.S. history when they held up the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri. The outlaws stole some $60,000 in cash and bonds and killed a bystander named George Wymore on the street outside the bank. State authorities suspected Archie Clement of leading the raid, and promptly issued a reward for his capture. In later years, the list of suspects grew to include Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger, John Jarrett, Oliver Shepherd, Bud and Donny Pence, Frank Greg, Bill and James Wilkerson, Joab Perry, Ben Cooper, Red Mankus, and Allen Parmer (who later married Susan James, Frank and Jesse's sister).
Four months later, on June 13, 1866, two members of Quantrill's Raiders were freed from prison in Independence, Missouri; the jailer, Henry Bugler, was killed. The James brothers are believed to have been involved. The gang began a string of robberies, many of which were linked to Clement's group of bushwhackers. The hold-up most clearly linked to the group was of Alexander Mitchell and Company in Lexington, Missouri, on October 30, 1866, which netted $2,011.50. Clement was also linked to violence and intimidation against officials of the Republican government that now held power in the state. On election day, Clement led his men into Lexington, where they drove Republican voters away from the polls, thereby securing a Republican defeat. A detachment of state militiamen was dispatched to the town. They convinced the bushwhackers to disperse, then attempted to capture Clement, who still had a price on his head. Clement refused to surrender and was shot down in a wild gunfight on the streets of Lexington.
Despite the death of Clement, his old followers remained together, and robbed a bank across the Missouri River from Lexington in Richmond, Missouri, on May 22, 1867, in which the town mayor John B. Shaw and two lawmen [Barry and George Griffin] were killed. This was followed on March 20, 1868, by a raid on the Nimrod Long bank in Russellville, Kentucky. In the aftermath of the two raids, however, the more senior bushwhackers were killed, captured or simply left the group. This set the stage for the emergence of the James and Younger brothers, and the transformation of the old crew into the James–Younger Gang. John Jarrett and Arthur McCoy were mentioned in numerous newspaper accounts, so they were likely active in gang activities up to 1875.
On December 7, 1869, Frank and Jesse James are believed to have robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. Jesse is suspected of having shot down the cashier, John W. Sheets, in the mistaken belief that he was Samuel P. Cox, the Union militia officer who had ambushed and killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. The James brothers were unknown up to this point; this may have been their first robbery. Their names were later added to previous robberies as an afterthought.
1871 to 1873
John Younger was almost arrested in Dallas County, Texas, in January 1871. He killed two lawmen [Nichols and Mcmahan] during the attempt and escaped. On June 3, 1871, the gang robbed a bank in Corydon, Iowa; the James and Younger brothers were suspects. The bank contacted the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago, the first involvement of the famous agency in the pursuit of the James–Younger Gang. Agency founder Allan Pinkerton dispatched his son, Robert Pinkerton, who joined a county sheriff in tracking the gang to a farm in Civil Bend, Missouri. A short gunfight ended indecisively as the gang escaped. On June 24, Jesse James wrote a letter to the Kansas City Times, claiming Republicans were persecuting him for his Confederate loyalties by accusing him and Frank of carrying out the robberies. "But I don't care what the degraded Radical party thinks about me," he wrote, "I would just as soon they would think I was a robber as not."
On April 29, 1872, the gang robbed a bank in Columbia, Kentucky. One of the outlaws shot the cashier, R. A. C. Martin, who had refused to open the safe. On September 23, 1872, three men (identified by former bushwhacker Jim Chiles as Jesse James and Cole and John Younger) robbed a ticket booth of the Second Annual Kansas City Industrial Exposition, amid thousands of people. They took some $900, and accidentally shot a little girl in the ensuing struggle with the ticket-seller. Apart from Chiles' testimony, there is no other evidence this crime was committed by the James or Younger brothers, and Jesse later wrote a letter denying his or the Youngers' involvement. Cole was furious over this, because neither he nor brother John had been linked to the crime before the letter. The crime was praised by Kansas City Times editor John Newman Edwards in a famous editorial entitled, "The Chivalry of Crime." Edwards soon published an anonymous letter from one of the outlaws (believed to be Jesse) that referred to the approaching presidential election: "Just let a party of men commit a bold robbery, and the cry is hang them. But [President Ulysses S.] Grant and his party can steal millions and it is all right," the outlaw wrote. "They rob the poor and rich, and we rob the rich and give to the poor."
On May 27, 1873, the James–Younger Gang robbed the Ste. Genevieve Savings Association in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. As they rode off they fired in the air and shouted, "Hurrah for Hildebrand!" Samuel S. Hildebrand was a famous Confederate bushwhacker from the area who had recently been shot dead in Illinois. Arthur McCoy had lived in this area and knew it quite well; he was likely involved and may have been the planner and leader.
On July 21, 1873, the gang carried out what was arguably the first train robbery west of the Mississippi River, derailing a locomotive of the Rock Island Railroad near Adair, Iowa. Engineer John Rafferty died in the crash. The outlaws took $2,337 from the express safe in the baggage car, having narrowly missed a transcontinental express shipment of a large amount of cash.