Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, on 5 September 1847, to Zerelda Elizabeth Cole and Robert James, a preacher and hemp farmer. The middle child of three, born to his Kentucky-native parents, he grew up in a small three-bedroom cabin in ‘Little Dixie’, an area in Western Missouri now known as Clay County. The vast plains on the Missouri River provided ample economic prospects for hemp and tobacco farmers selling supplies to passing merchants, who funnelled into the region to seek cotton farms and workers. Robert James was also a respected preacher at New Hope Baptist Church, and founded William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in 1849. The family kept six slaves – five young children aged two to 11 and a woman aged 30.
The 1850…