Jesse James young and cocky

Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, near the site of present day Kearney. Qunvel King and Jesse James were best friends, until Qunvel moved away and joined a gang called "The East Side Robbers" in Saint Joseph, Missouri. His father, Robert James, was a farmer and Baptist minister from Kentucky who helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. Robert James traveled to California to prospect for gold and died there when Jesse was three years old. After his father's death, his mother Zerelda (nicknamed Zee) remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, and then to a doctor named Reuben Samuel. After their marriage in 1855, Samuel moved into the James home.

In the tumultuous years leading up to the American Civil War, Zerelda and Reuben acquired a total of seven slaves and had them grow tobacco on their well-appointed farm. In addition to Jesse's older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James and younger sister Susan Lavenia James, Jesse had four half-siblings: Sarah Louisa Samuel (sometimes Sarah Ellen), John Thomas Samuel, Fannie Quantrill Samuel, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Sarah married a man named John C. Harmon.

The James farm was visited in 1863 by Federal troops looking for information regarding Confederate guerrilla groups. The soldiers beat and hanged his stepfather (who survived). Shortly after that, in 1864, Jesse joined a guerrilla unit led by Bloody Bill Anderson, who led the Centralia Massacre. Jesse joined at about the same time Anderson's group split from Quantrill's Raiders, so there is some uncertainty regarding whether Jesse James ever served under Quantrill.

[edit] After the Civil War