James, Jesse (Woodson)

James, Jesse [Woodson] (1847–82), born and reared on a Missouri farm, joined the Quantrill gang during the Civil War, and afterward, with his brother Frank (1843–1915), led what became the most notorious band of robbers in U.S. history. Their field of operations included several Midwestern states, and they executed daring and melodramatic robberies of banks and railroad trains throughout the 1870s, causing many deaths. Public sentiment was strongly in favor of the brothers, Jesse especially having become a hero during his lifetime, but a large reward was offered for their capture dead or alive, and Jesse, who was in hiding under the alias Thomas Howard, was killed by one of his accomplices, Robert Ford. Frank, never convicted, gave up his life of crime to become a respectable farmer. As a sort of American Robin Hood, Jesse is the hero of a popular ballad, dime novels, and folk tales, as well as the play Missouri Legend (1938), and the musical pantomime The Saga of Jesse James, by Douglas Moore.