Outlaw or Hero? You Decide... Trivia Quiz

Answer: He mistook the cashier for Samuel P Cox, the killer of 'Bloody Bill' Anderson.

During the American Civil War, the James family sided with the Confederates, and Frank and Jesse James joined a group of guerrillas, or 'bushwhackers', led by William Anderson. Formerly of Quantrill's Raiders, Anderson was nicknamed 'Bloody Bill' and was responsible for the Centralia Massacre, in which he and his men hijacked a train and captured and executed 24 Union soldiers. Lieutenant Samuel P Cox was assigned to hunt Anderson down and in October 1864, he and his men ambushed Anderson's group in Albany, Missouri, where Anderson was shot dead.

While robbing the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri, Jesse mistook cashier John Sheets for Cox and shot him dead, later claiming it was an act of revenge for Anderson's death.

Answer: 1873

More specifically, the date of Jesse's first train robbery was 21st July 1873, near Adair, Iowa. Not only was this robbery his first, but it was also one of the world's first train robberies. The James Gang had heard that $75,000 of gold was due to pass through Adair on a train bound for Omaha.

They sabotaged the line by disconnecting one of the rails and hid in a hole nearby. When the train arrived, it was derailed and fell into a ditch, killing two crew members and injuring several passengers. Jesse and Frank boarded the train and forced John Burgess, the guard, to open the safe, but it only contained $2000 in currency as the gold shipment had been delayed.

The brothers stole the currency and an extra $1000 from passengers, and escaped into Missouri.

Answer: No

While Jesse and his gang did prefer to steal from safes rather than passengers, there is no evidence to suggest that they gave their loot to poor people. The idea of Jesse as a Wild West Robin Hood stems from poor rural whites who had lost everything in the Civil War, who saw Jesse as a hero for their cause; the James Gang targeted banks as they blamed Yankee banks for plunging Southern farmers into poverty. Folk historian Stephen Winick stated that during Jesse's lifetime, there were concerted efforts in Missouri to get the Democrats (the pro-slavery party at the time) back into power. One supporter of Jesse's cause in the state was pro-Confederate newspaper editor John Newman Edwards, who wrote editorials praising Jesse and helped foster the myth of him as a folk hero. (It was actually this line that gave me the idea to write this quiz.)

Answer: True

Jesse was cleaning his pistol when he accidentally shot off the tip of his left hand middle finger. He received the nickname 'Dingus' as the result of the accident, because he reportedly shouted, "Oh ding it, ding it, how it hurts." (For all his faults, Jesse was very polite.) In the 2007 film 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford', starring Brad Pitt, the middle finger of Pitt's left hand had to be digitally edited in any scene where his hands appeared.

Answer: James-Younger Gang

Although the other answers are names of gang members (Bill Stiles, George and Oliver Shepherd, and William and Tom McDaniel), the name of the James brothers' original gang was the James-Younger Gang, after Cole, Jim, John and Bob Younger. The James-Younger Gang got its name in 1868 after Cole Younger was named as one of the suspects in a bank robbery in Russellville, Kentucky. Like the James brothers, several of the gang members were former Confederate guerrillas.

The James-Younger Gang fell apart after a failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, when locals raised the alarm and fired on the gang, forcing them to retreat, though not without killing two men.

The Younger brothers were later arrested. Frank settled down in Nashville, Tennessee, but Jesse grew restless and was in need of money, so he assembled a new gang, which included his cousin Wood Hite, farmer Daniel 'Tucker' Bassham, and horse thief Dick Liddil.

The gang held up the train by rolling a boulder onto the tracks and stole $6000 from the safe, believing it to be $60,000.

Although the robbery was a success, the gang were far less loyal to each other than the James-Younger Gang had been; Bassham was later arrested for the robbery and gave the accomplices' names to the police. Three years later, Jesse recruited the Ford brothers, Charley and Bob, which would turn out to be a fatal error.

Answer: Zerelda

Zerelda Amanda Mimms, a preacher's daughter, was Jesse James' wife and the mother of his children, and also his first cousin; she shared her first name with James' mother. She has been played by actresses including Nora Lane, Ali Larter (of 'Heroes' fame) and Mary-Louise Parker in various films.

She and Jesse fell in love with each other while she was nursing him, following a serious chest wound. The pair were married in 1874, while the James-Younger Gang were active, and Jesse was the first of the gang to marry.

After Jesse's death, she fell into depression and had writers and publishers urging her to share details of her late husband's life with them, but refused. Zerelda died in 1900 and eighteen months later, Jesse's body was exhumed and buried next to her at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Answer: 2

The four children of Jesse and Zerelda James were Jesse Jr., twins Gould and Montgomery, and Mary. The twins died in infancy, while both Jesse Jr. and Mary survived to adulthood. Jesse Jr. went by the name of Tim Edwards to hide his relationship to his notorious father.

After Jesse's death, his wife and children went to live in Kansas City; ironically, Jesse Jr. befriended Thomas Crittenden Jr., the son of governor Thomas Crittenden, who had signed Jesse's death warrant. Jesse Jr. was arrested and tried for the robbery of a train in 1899, but was acquitted.

The same year, he wrote a book about his father. He later became a lawyer and acted as technical advisor for the 1927 film 'Jesse James', which was heavily criticised by viewers who remembered Jesse's crimes.

Answer: Wood Hite

Robert 'Wood' Hite was the cousin of the James brothers on their father's side, and one of the later gang recruits. He had been arrested earlier in 1881 for shooting a black man, John Tabor, but managed to bribe one of the guards and escaped from prison.

He and fellow gang member Dick Liddil were living with Martha Bolton, the Fords' sister, and both men were competing for her affection. An argument broke out and Liddil and Hite had a gunfight. Robert Ford intervened and shot Hite in the head, killing him.

The Ford brothers buried his body in an unmarked grave.

Answer: The Governor of Missouri offered to pardon him if he delivered Jesse to the Governor.

Bob Ford and Liddil both surrendered to Sheriff James Timberlake, one of the main investigators of the James-Younger Gang. Governor Thomas Crittenden offered to pardon both men for the murder of Wood Hite in return for them delivering Jesse to him, dead or alive, within a ten-day period.

At the time, the Ford brothers were living with Jesse's family (hence the line about eating his bread and sleeping in his bed); Jesse had invited them to move in with him for protection, and Bob and Charley were among the few people he still trusted. On 3rd April 1882, Jesse read in the papers that Liddil had confessed to Hite's murder and grew suspicious that the Fords had not mentioned it to him. Bob said later that he suspected Jesse knew they would betray him. Jesse went to clean a picture on the wall and while he was standing on a chair, Bob shot him in the back of the head, an act seen by many of Jesse's supporters as cowardly (one of Jesse's aliases was Mr Howard, and another version of the song features the line 'the dirty little coward who shot Mr Howard').

The Fords contacted the authorities and were arrested for first-degree murder, and sentenced to death by hanging, but Governor Crittenden pardoned them.

Answer: Murdered

After Jesse's death, his mother wrote the following epitaph: 'In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and a Coward Whose Name is Not Worth to Appear Here'. Although Bob Ford was a hate figure in some quarters, and gained a reputation in history as a disloyal coward, he capitalised on the death of Jesse James, posing for photographs in dime museums and performing in a stage show with Charley, where they reenacted the killing. Both Ford brothers came to a sticky end. Charley, who was dying of tuberculosis and addicted to morphine, shot himself on 6th May 1884, just two years after Jesse's death. Bob briefly lived in New Mexico, where he opened a saloon, and then settled in Colorado, where he opened other properties, including a dance hall which was destroyed in a fire.

In 1892, Bob operated a tent saloon in the silver mining area of Creede; on 8th June 1892, he was shot dead by Edward O'Kelley, who walked into the saloon, called, 'Hello, Bob" and shot Bob in the neck. Bob was buried in Creede, but his body was later returned to his home state of Missouri.

His grave marker says 'The man who shot Jesse James'.