First and foremost, one of the most interesting facts about Jesse James is he was a preacher’s son. On September 5, 1847, Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, not far from where Kearney is now. He had Scottish and English ancestry. He was the child of Zerelda Cole James, a native of Kentucky, and Robert James, a Baptist minister and hemp grower who helped create William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. Robert James also owned slaves. Robert James went to California in 1850 to preach among the gold mining camps, but he passed away when James was just three years old during the Gold Rush, not long after he arrived. Zerelda's family, which included Jesse, his older brother Frank, who would later join him in crime, and younger sister Susan, were forced into dangerous financial predicaments.

Robert's widow Zerelda remarried twice after his passing, first to Benjamin Simms in 1852 and then to Dr. Reuben Samuel in 1855, who took up residence in the James family house. Sarah Louisa, John Thomas, Fannie Quantrell, and Archie Peyton Samuel were the four children that Jesse's mother and Samuel had together. Seven slaves in total were purchased by Zerelda and Samuel, who used them primarily as farmworkers for growing tobacco. Zerelda, who had an iron will, continued to be a steadfast supporter of Frank and Jesse even after they had grown up to be criminals.

The border state of Missouri had a fierce battle during the Civil War, during which both sides routinely killed prisoners and civilians alike, dismembered enemy corpses, plundered property and cattle, and set cities and homes on fire. At the beginning of the war, Frank James served in the pro-secession Missouri State Guard. Later, he joined a group of Confederate guerrilla fighters called the "bushwhackers," who launched assaults against Union sympathizers on the frontier. A teenage Jesse was ambushed and his stepfather was hanged from a tree by Union militiamen searching for Frank and his fellow insurgents in May 1863 while he was at his family's farm. The stepfather is still alive.

In August of that year, Frank participated in a notorious raid on the Lawrence, Kansas, abolitionist community, during which more than 150 men and boys were slaughtered and other structures were demolished. By the age of 16, Jesse had joined the savagely violent group commanded by William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, following Frank as a roving bushwhacker. In a notorious September 1864 massacre in Centralia, Missouri, the rebels kidnapped and killed two dozen unarmed Union troops who were returning home on leave. Then they killed almost 100 federal troops who were pursuing them.

Jesse was wounded in the chest during a battle with Union forces close to Lexington, Missouri, in May 1865, one month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Jesse eventually formed a gang with his brother and other former Confederate guerrillas to rob banks, stagecoaches, and trains after being nursed back to health by his cousin Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (whom he would marry in 1874 and have two children with).

Jesse committed an act of vengeance during the Gallatin bank robbery of 1869 when he shot and killed the bank's cashier, believing the man to be Samuel Cox, the commander of the pro-Union militiamen who had executed insurgent leader Bloody Bill Anderson in October 1864. (In actuality, Cox was not the dead cashier.)

After the fatal theft, Jesse became friends with John Newman Edwards, a powerful pro-Confederate newspaper editor in Missouri, who went on to champion the former bushwhacker as a hero and resolute Southern patriot of the Reconstruction era. James personally defended his behavior in letters to journalists. Edwards contributed to the fiction that Jesse James was a Robin Hood figure who stole from the rich to give to the needy through his writings and editorials, a lie that historians have disproved. This is one of the most interesting facts about Jesse James. There is no proof that any of the gang's loot was shared. Instead, the gang was accountable for more than 20 bank and train robberies, innumerable killings, and the theft of almost $200,000 between 1860 and 1862.

John Newman Edwards, who authored articles about the gang and said that "[the James gang are] men who may have sat with Arthur at the Round Table, ridden in the tourney with Sir Lancelot, or won the colors of Guinevere," helped to meticulously cultivate the gang's lofty reputation.

In January 1874, Jesse and Frank robbed a train at Gads Hill, Missouri, and their whereabouts were sought after by Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant who had been the first full-time detective on the Windy City's police force before he founded the private agency in Chicago in 1850, was skilled at apprehending railway robbers. After the agency took on the James gang investigation in March 1874, a Pinkerton detective looking for Jesse and Frank in Missouri ended up dead. A Pinkerton agent looking for Cole and Robert Younger, two other members of the brothers' gang, was also killed.

Allan Pinkerton, an abolitionist who assisted slaves on the Underground Railroad, discovered a plan to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln, and acquired military intelligence for the federal government during the Civil War, making catching the James brothers a personal mission.

Based on an old report that Jesse and Frank were at their mother's property, a party of Pinkerton agents carried out a raid there just after midnight on January 25, 1875. The agents tossed an incendiary bomb into the farmhouse, causing an explosion that killed Jesse and Frank's half-brother at the age of 8 and injured their mother Zerelda by causing her to lose a portion of her arm. After the raid, Jesse and Frank gained more support from the general public, and the Missouri state legislature even came close to enacting a bill that would have granted the men amnesty. Near Zerelda's farm, the James brothers also started a campaign of intimidation against their alleged adversaries, and in April of that same year, one of their mother's neighbors—a former Union militiaman who had helped the Pinkerton agents prepare for the raid—was fatally shot. Frank and Jesse's whereabouts were never further investigated by Allan Pinkerton.

On the afternoon of September 7, 1876, Jesse and Frank James attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, along with Cole, Jim, Robert Younger, and three other accomplices. After learning that Adelbert Ames, a former Union commander and the Republican governor of Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, had recently relocated to Northfield, the gang decided to attack the bank. It was said that Ames had put $75,000 in the bank with the help of his father-in-law Benjamin Butler, a Radical Republican politician, and former Union commander.

Three of the gang members entered the store during the attempted robbery and requested that the cashier unlock the safe, but the cashier refused. Townspeople outside, who had learned that a robbery was going on, got involved in a shootout with the gang members who had been posted on the street. In the end, the gang murdered the bank teller and a bystander, while two of the outlaws were slain by villagers' gunfire before the rest of the gang fled.

Following a shootout two weeks later, close to Madelia, Minnesota, the Younger brothers were apprehended, and another gang member was murdered. (The Youngers were given life sentences; Robert Younger passed away in custody in 1889, while his siblings were released from prison in 1901.) The James brothers, who had broken away from the Youngers before Madelia and were the only gang members who were not apprehended or executed after the botched robbery, hid out in Tennessee for a while using aliases. But in 1879, Jesse enlisted a fresh group of thugs and started committing crimes once more.

The infamous Jesse James was shot in the back of the head on April 3, 1882, while cleaning a picture on the wall of his leased home in St. Joseph, Missouri. He did not perish in a hail of gunfire during a theft. In the next room, he could see his wife and two kids.

Bob Ford, a recent addition to the James gang, had planned the murder with the help of his older brother Charley, who was already a member of the organization. Bob Ford planned to apprehend the infamous outlaw in exchange for a bounty and held covert talks with Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden about it. The James brothers' capture was Crittenden's main aim, and he said in his inaugural speech that they could not be protected by political motivations.

The Fords were found guilty of murder and given the death penalty after telling the police they had slain the notorious bandit; however, the governor swiftly commuted their sentence. James's murder captured the public's attention, and the Fords quickly started staging a traveling production of the crime. In 1884, Charley Ford shot himself to death; in 1894, Bob Ford was shot to death in a Colorado tavern.

After James's death, rumors persisted that he had staged his demise and that someone else had been interred in his grave. Many other men have made Jesse James claims over the years. In particular, the claim that Robert Ford had killed another man to let Jesse James elude capture became a renowned one. This story became one of the most interesting facts about Jesse James.

Scientists excavated James's presumed remains from Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri, where they had been moved in 1902 from the original burial location on the James family property, to determine who was interred in his grave. Following DNA testing, the experts concluded that the infamous 19th-century outlaw's resurrected remains were almost probably his.

In 2009, the History Channel aired the documentary Jesse James' Hidden Treasure, which focused on the subject of survival. In a review for The James-Younger Gang Journal's Winter 2009–2010 issue, historian Nancy Samuelson criticized the documentary as pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

According to J. Frank Dalton and Jesse James existed. When Dalton made his debut in front of the public in May 1948, he was reportedly 101 years old. In Granbury, Texas, on August 15, 1951, Dalton passed away. He had 32 bullet wounds and a rope burn on his neck, according to a visual postmortem examination by Hood County Sheriff Oran Baker. His grave is marked with the name "Jesse Woodson James" in Granbury Cemetery. When pressed by James's remaining family, his story fell apart.

According to Jesse James, Jr.'s narrative, Jesse James rode up to this house on horseback while dressed as a young girl and summoned the mistress. He lived nearby, that he was a girl who enjoyed exploring new places, and that he would want to visit the house that night with two or three neighbor girls "to have a nice time." The purported girl on horseback said he and the other girls would be there that night, and the mistress of the home gave her approval.

Four fresh girls would be staying at the mistress's residence that night, so she immediately notified the federal agents in Independence of this.

After riding up to the home after dark, Jesse James and the other guerrillas dismounted, snuck up to the windows, and peered in. There were twelve federal officers inside with the women. No sentinels or guards were on duty. It was safe for the Federals. Five women and twelve males were present in the same room. On the hearth of the vintage fireplace, a joyful fire flared and crackled.

Jesse James went to a window with five other males. With five men, Bill Gregg went to another. In the shadows beyond, each of the nine guerrillas chose his man. Nine revolvers fired at once at a signal that had been established, creating the sound of a single gun. Nine of the Federal soldiers died at that first volley as a result of the glass shattering into a thousand pieces and crashing to the ground. The other three died a split second later. The rebels mounted their horses and rode off.

Jesse James only has one great-grandchild with three separate James heritage lines. Elizabeth Ann Barr, sometimes known as Betty Barr, is Jesse James' great-granddaughter. The three lines provide unmistakable proof that the Jesse James family's lineage is deeper and more pervasive than previously believed. Furthermore, it is a given that Elizabeth Ann Barr will not be pleased about it.

Even though he married Jesse James' daughter, Betty Barr's father, Lawrence Henry Barr, was never content with his relationship with the Jesse James family. Joan Malley-Beamis, a genealogist for the James family, wrote letters to Lawrence seeking information about the connection that her research indicated they had in common, but Lawrence refused to respond. Joan repeatedly asked Lawrence for a response, but he rudely never gave her one. Thelma Duncan Barr, Betty's mother, decided to step in and restore decorum and decency among the James family's descendants. Thelma begged Joan Beamis to comprehend her husband's puzzling silence in a letter to her.

Betty Barr may seek refuge in a fortress of quiet, but she will never be able to escape the unalterable truths of her genetic heritage. Betty Barr has multiple lines of James genealogy, according to a recent study into the genealogical details of the Jesse James family conducted in the 135 years following her great-murder. grandfathers Three are hers. Together, Betty's three statements provide her with more than enough justification to leave the Barr family stronghold where she has been imprisoned.