![]() Since he didn’t like to swear, he reportedly said, “that’s the dod-dingus pistol I ever saw.” When his body was later exhumed for identification, his skeleton’s missing finger proved key in proving that it was him. Jesse earned the nickname ‘Dingus’ after shooting off the tip of his finger while cleaning a pistol. Even when Frank and Jesse grew up to be outlaws, their mother Zerelda remained their staunch supporter. Zerelda left the marriage, returned to the family farm, re-wed in 1855 and had four more children. In 1852, Zerelda remarried again, but Jesse, his brother Frank and his sister Susan were made to live with another family. In 1850, Robert James travelled to California to preach in the gold mining camps, but soon became sick and died. A prosperous family, James’ mother was Kentucky native Zerelda Cole and his father, Robert James, was a Baptist minister and slave-owning hemp farmer. Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, on 5 September 1847. A man who was born to a prosperous family of slave-owning farmers, James was deeply loved by his mother throughout his life and went on to become a family man and father himself. In addition to Jesse James’ actions as a ruthless murderer, calculating robber and elaborate showman were lesser-known characteristics. It wasn’t James’ life alone which beguiled the public, though: until disproved in the 1990s, rumours circulated that James had faked his death, and individuals even claimed to be the outlaw himself. As a prominent member of the high-profile James-Younger gang, his nefarious terrorising and robbing of banks, stagecoaches and trains in the mid to late 19th century earned him celebrity status. Jesse James is one of the most notorious outlaws in the history of the American Wild West.
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