Jesse James II

from Chap.2...

"Jus' wait 'til dey find dem St. Jo bricks!"

Barely a week after the "death" of Jesse Woodson James in St. Joseph, Missouri, April 3, 1882, this prophecy spread like wildfire through the Negro shantytowns of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, south to Louisiana and Texas, east to Kentucky and Tennessee and west to Colorado.

Throughout his life Jesse James appeared a white Robin Hood to Mississippi River Basin blacks. He always had a few dollars for an old Negro couple down on its luck or a job for a young black with a family to raise. Whether you accept history's death date for Jesse, April 3, 1881, or August 15, 1951, there is no written or spoken record of Jess Woodson James mistreating a Negro. The blacks loved him, along with the Indians and the Mexican-Americans who worked on his ranches and in his mines.

"Just wait 'til dy find dem St. Jo bricks!" What did it all mean? Were some bricks lost? Who would find what bricks? Where did the prophecy originate?

27


29... Major John Edwards, dubbed by historians as a Confeerate veteran and unreconstructed Southerner, wrote in his Sedalia, Missouri, Democrat: "I wish Jesse were still alive to make a righteous butchery of a few more of them!" Who was Major Edwards? None other than Kentucky Frank James(or Dr. Sylvester Franklin James). It is not surprising he would defend his brother, Jesse Woodson James, but the imprortant thing is that he got away with his blistering editorials and emotional pro-Jesse speeches.

30... Only 11 days after the St. Joseph hoax, the Liberty Tribune commented: "Certain parties still aver that Jesse James is not dead, and intimate that the man killed and buried was not Jesse, but someone inveigled into Jesse's house and killed, to get the reward. Such a conclusion would implicate Mrs. James, Mrs. Samuels, Governor Crittenden, Sheriff Timberlake, Police Commissioner Craig and others in a scheme of fraud and perjury. We believe nothing of the kind and have no doubt of Jesse's death."...

31The St. Joseph "hoax" ruined Crittenden's political career. He was a one-term governor of Missouri. In the autumn of 1885, the Missouri Democratic delegation in Congress recommended that Crittenden be given an appointment in the diplomatic service, but President Grover Cleveland curtly replied he could not consider Crittenden for a diplomatic post because in the East "people believed he had bargained with the Fords for the killing of Jesse James." When things cooled down, Crittenden was appointed Consul.-General in Mexico City, serving from 1893 to 1897...

32..."Jus' wait 'til dey find dem St. Jo bricks!" Well, three of the bricks have been found and their message announced to the world. Most of the pieces that made up Jesse W. James' jigsaw puzzle life extending from his "murder" on April 3, 1882, to his death on August 15, 1951, have fallen into place.

What message did the bricks contain? One brick announced the death of John Bigelow, Charles Bigelow, and Bert Bigelow, but no precise date was given. Another brick contained an image of a Spanish dagger, the numerals 777, KGC, and JJ. Of course, KGC and JJ stood for Knights of the Golden Circle and Jesse James.

"The experts be damned," the James family says, "they have kept our story too long in the musty shadows of so called history. Our story is one that needs to be told. The world has the right to hear it... and judge it."

-Del Shrader and Jesse James III, Jesse James was one of his names