a devoted mother, coming of age in a land torn
apart over slavery and divided loyalties.
Jesse’s parents, Kentucky natives, met in the
summer of 1841. His father, Robert, was a stu-
dent at Georgetown College. His mother, Zerel-
da Cole, attended a Catholic school in nearby
Lexington. A classmate remembered Robert as
exceptionally bright, but“his awkwardness and
gawky appearance caused him to be the victim
of many practical jokes.” The easygoing Robert
took the jokes in stride, however, and soon be-
came one of the most well liked men at the col-
lege. Zerelda seemed to have discovered Robert’s
charms as well, and they were married in De-
cember. The groom was 23 and his bride was 16.n the dozen years from 1869 to 1881,
Jesse James may have taken part in as
many as 19 robberies—banks, trains,
and stagecoaches—stretching from
Mississippi to West Virginia to Min-
nesota. Nearly 20 people died as a result of this
outlawry, including seven of Jesse’s cohorts, yet
the brazen holdups continued. Law enforcement
and private detectives failed repeatedly to cor-
ral Jesse and his gang, and Missouri earned the
epithet the“Robber State.”
But before there was the bold and bad and
brave Jesse, and long before there was the mythic
Jesse of song, dime novels, and films, there was
a blue-eyed boy, son of a Baptist minister andFROM
FARMER TO
THIEF
Robert James and Zerelda
Cole meet and marry. They
move to Missouri and start
a family. They have three
children who live to adulthood:
Frank, Jesse, and Susan.The U.S. Civil War begins, and
Frank joins the Confederate
Army and later a band of
guerrillas. Jesse is too young to
fight and stays at the farm to
help his mother and stepfather.Enticed west by the California
gold rush, Robert James dies in
the mining camp of Rough and
Ready. Zerelda is left with six
slaves (valued at $2,050) and the
family farm.1841 1850 1861
SURVIVOR’S
STRENGTH
An undated
photograph of
Zerelda James
Samuel (above),
mother of Frank
and Jesse James,
reveals the toll
that life had
taken on the
resolute Zerelda.
THE TRIALS OF
MOTHER JAMES
D
escribed as a “radiantly beautiful woman” in her
youth, Zerelda James Samuel (1825-1911) stood
nearly six feet tall. More imposing than her height,
though, was her personality. At a time when women
were expected to tend to the children and keep their opinions
to themselves, the strong-willed Zerelda didn’t hesitate to
speak her mind. It was said she was “not afraid of the devil
himself.” It was also said that Jesse James took after his mother.Zerelda’s life was filled with
tragedy, but the hardest of
all to bear occurred on Jan-
uary 26, 1875. In the dark of
night, a small force of men
employed by the Pinkerton
Detective Agency attacked
her farmhouse in the belief
the James boys were home
(they weren’t). The Pinker-
tons forced an incendiary
device through the kitchen
window that unexpectedly
exploded. A piece of shrapnel
struck Jesse’s eight-year-oldhalf brother, Archie Samuel,
causing a fatal wound. Anoth-
er piece mangled Zerelda’s
right wrist so badly that her
arm had to be amputated just
below the elbow. As she did
in the face of other hardships,
Zerelda carried on. In her last
years, Zerelda sold 25-cent
tickets to tour her home and
visit her son Jesse’s grave.
“Much trouble has come to
me there,” she told a reporter,
“but I love the old place and
want to live there ‘til I die.”PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES
78 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019