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Jesse James in Texasby
Bob Bowman | |
| The
recent hit movie, “The Assassination of Jesse James,” stirred more than
a passing interest in East Texas,
especially in Collin, Grayson, Hood and Leon counties. In 1863, during the Civil
War, William Clark Quantrill led his guerillas from Missouri to winter quarters
in north East Texas. Among the men who rode with him were Jesse and Frank James. |
Quantrill
camped northeast of Sherman
in Grayson County, and Jesse developed an affinity for the town, and later spent
his honeymoon there, using money taken in a Missouri train robbery.
The
James boys also stayed in McKinney,
the county seat of Collin County, and circulated freely among the townspeople.
They were looked upon not as outlaws,
but as Confederate heroes.
One incident in McKinney
helped endeared the James boys with local people. |
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When the federal government
sent its agents to buy mules from East
Texas, farmers who had to sell their mules
to feed their families. Some 400 mules were bought and penned in McKinney.
One
night, the James boys took down the fence and freed all 400 of the mules.
Many of them wandered home to their previous owners.
On
April 3, 1882, Robert Ford and his brother Charley entered the home of Tom Howard,
an alias used by Jesse James, at St. Joseph, Missouri. As Jesse stood on a chair
to clean a picture, Ford shot him in the head, killing him instantly.
But
in Texas, a long-standing legend says that Jesse
didn’t die in Missouri, but faked his death, moved to Texas,
and died in Granbury, the county
seat of Hood County, when he was 104. |
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A Texas legend says Jesse James was buried under an assumed name in Granbury’s
cemetery. Photo courtesy Bob Bowman |
Now, to Leon County.
According to local history, a old man known as J. Frank Dalton registered
at the Sullivan Hotel in Centerville,
the county seat, in the 1940s.
Author Clovis Herring wrote that “there
are still some people who remember that the old man “looked like an older version
of Jesse James” as he and a friend looked for Jesse’s buried treasure from his
outlaw days.
In 1951, Dalton and his friend appeared together in Granbury,
Texas, where Dalton died and was buried in the Granbury Cemetery.
According
to reports, Dalton or James’ body of 104 years had all the scars Jesse James had
accumulated during the days when he was riding with William Quantrill during the
Civil War and as an outlaw with Frank following the war.
Herring later
wrote: “I have looked up all the evidence and my theory is that the old man who
signed the register at the Sullivan Hotel was, in fact, the infamous Jesse James.”
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