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Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, guerrilla, gang leader, bank robber, train robber, and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. Jesse and his brother Frank James were Confederate guerrillas or Bushwhackers during the Civil War. They were accused of participating in atrocities committed against Union soldiers, including the Centralia Massacre. After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, they robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, several members of the gang were captured or killed. They continued in crime for several years, recruiting new members, but were under increasing pressure from law enforcement. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang who hoped to collect a reward on James' head. Already a celebrity when he was alive, James became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death. Despite popular portrayals of James as an embodiment of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, there is no evidence that he and his gang shared their loot from the robberies they committed. Scholars usually place his actions in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation alleged economic justice or of frontier lawlessness. ==Early life== Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri, near the site of present-day Kearney, on September 5, 1847. This area of Missouri was settled by many Southerners and became known as Little Dixie. Jesse James had two full siblings: his older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank", and a younger sister, Susan Lavenia James. His father, Robert S. James, was a commercial hemp farmer and Baptist minister in Kentucky, who migrated to Bradford, Missouri, after marriage and helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.〔 He was prosperous, acquiring six slaves and more than of farmland. Robert James traveled to California during the Gold Rush to minister to those searching for gold; he died there when Jesse was three years old. After Robert James' death, his widow Zerelda remarried twice, first to Benjamin Simms in 1852 and then in 1855 to Dr. Reuben Samuel, who moved into the James' home. Jesse's mother and Reuben Samuel had four children together: Sarah Louisa, John Thomas, Fannie Quantrell, and Archie Peyton Samuel.〔 Zerelda and Reuben Samuel acquired a total of seven slaves, who served mainly as farmhands in tobacco cultivation.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jesse James」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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