Jesse James

Bank robbery, William Jewell College, Pacific House Hotel, River Market

Jesse James, an outlaw born near present-day Kearney, Mo., robbed the Liberty, Mo. Bank alongside his brother, making them the first daylight bank robbers in our history. Their father, Robert, was a hemp farmer who helped cofound the William Jewel College in Liberty, Mo. James could often be found at the Pacific House Hotel lounge on Delaware St. in Kansas City’s River Market neighborhood. James was buried in Kearney,Mo., after his supposed accomplice, Bob Ford, shot James in his back in 1882 when James turned around to straighten a crooked picture on the wall. “The killing of Jesse James,” claimed an 1882 front-page editorial in The Evening Star (later named The Kansas City Star), “is one of the most important events that has ever happened in the state of Missouri.” According to the writer of the editorial, James had brought more damage to the good name of Missouri “than any and all other agents combined, since the extinction of slavery.”