The Time Capsule: Jesse James slept here (maybe)

Florence Martin wrote from her home in St. Joseph, Mo. She wanted me to know that in the 1870s her grandfather, who farmed near Villisca, was visited by the Jesse James gang.  There were four of them, she said, traveling light and riding hard. They wanted food and water and offered to pay.  
There are other similar accounts. I was once told that Jesse and cohorts put up for the night in my great-grandfather’s barn near Elliott. Chances are, if you had ancestors in the area during Jesse’s robbing years a
similar story was told about them and their barn. Other tales have him trading tired mounts for fresh ones or just riding by.         
Like a lot of folklore, there’s no way to know the facts. Some of the stories, though, could be true. In the years following the Civil War, Jesse was on the move, covering long distances on the fastest horses to be bought or stolen, and he spent some time in Iowa. He probably didn’t pass through this corner of the state when he popped a bank in Corydon in 1871, but he could have. He certainly did when they robbed a train near Adair two years later. This has been called the first train
robbery in the west (it wasn’t), the first robbery of a moving train (it definitely was not that), and a carefully conceived and executed crime (maybe, but they hit the wrong train).        
Jesse somehow got the idea that $75,000 in gold would be shipped out of Omaha on the Rock Island in late July, 1873. The gang came from the south, spending a few weeks, during which part of them picked a location for the derailment while others were in Omaha trying to confirm the shipment and determine which train the gold would be on.  
Exactly how they decided on the day and train is unknown. The late Lillian Boedeker of Adair, who wrote a book on the robbery, tells us the location (a mile west of Adair) was chosen because a grade slowed the train.  James and his crew loosened a rail, attached a rope to dislodge it and waited. The fireman jumped. The engineer, a man named Rafferty, did not.  While Rafferty was killed and the fireman badly hurt, passengers were uninjured.  Boedeker’s account has the gang firing a few random shots, one of which winged the conductor. Finding no gold, the outlaws took cash and valuables from passengers and headed back for Missouri—perhaps sleeping in a barn or two along the way.    
The James boys probably passed through southwest Iowa on other occasions, one being in 1876 while on their way to rob a bank in Minnesota. They didn’t like the look of things in Mankato, checked out several other financial institutions between there and St. Paul and settled on Northfield. Jesse got away with mayhem in Missouri, but ran into problems in Minnesota. Several residents, including Civil War veterans who recognized trouble when it rode into town, got their guns. The cashier was killed when he wouldn’t open the safe, and the shooting continued for weeks.  Two members of the gang were shot dead on the street and two were badly injured. A posse pursued the survivors for nearly a month, eventually killing two more and taking the Younger brothers prisoner.  Only Jesse and his shot-up brother escaped.  
Northfield residents were a proud group, and at one time a sign welcomed visitors with the words:  “Jesse James Slipped Here.”  
No one now living can say how many times the James gang visited this part of Iowa.  But they did, and if Jesse slipped in Northfield, he may have slept in Montgomery County.   
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.