Jesse James 1847–1882

Also known as Jesse Woodson James

Jesse Woodson James was an American outlaw, a robber of banks and trains, and the leader of the James-Younger Gang. He was born on 5 September 1847 and died on 3 April 1882. Raised in Missouri's Little Dixie, he and his brother Frank rode with pro-Confederate bushwhackers in Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War, among the followers of William Quantrill and William T. Anderson, called Bloody Bill. The English Wikipedia article names the Centralia Massacre of 1864 among the atrocities of which those guerrillas were accused. After the war the brothers robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest. They were most active from about 1866 until 1876, when an attempt on a bank at Northfield, Minnesota, left several of the gang captured or killed. The portrait is a black-and-white copy of an oval photograph. The photographer is unknown. Wikimedia Commons carries it as a Library of Congress image in the public domain, a United States work whose copyright has expired. Wikidata is Q213626.

Existence span 1847–1882