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From: Beth Cooper <>
Subject: Re: [ARIZARD] James Gang --- Beth
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:56:17 -0800 (PST)


Vera, You are right, I believe it was Ozark County, MO and that may have been Brush Creek twp but I'm not positive.
There was the hanging and it was by his grist mill. I think that is the story that the wife and kids dug the grave below him
and then cut him down. Yes, pretty gruesome but probably true. I know that one of the stories passed down in the
Alexanders was the one about the grandmother having gotten all the crops harvested and had even killed hogs and had all
the meat salted and drying in the smokehouse, when the farm was raided by bushwackers. The took all they could carry of the
stored corn, emptied the smokehouse and then just to make the grandmother really mad, took her newly finished quilts.
Needless to say, they had a very hard winter.

Like you, Vera I did the research so long ago before computers had acess to the internet (as we use it now) and have moved so many times since I've lost track of the huge folding file about 3-4 inches thick on that family. I will find it most likely when I finally get to clean out ever last box in that basement room, I can't even get into at this point. It is there (more than likely with the adkins pictures that I've got to make sure I get to Delpha as Lloyd Wadkins's Mother Julia was Marion Green's daughter with the Ivie wife {I think it was, correct me Delpha if I've confused this again!?} anyway, I owe Wadkins pictures to Delpha whenever they surface!)

About the connection to the outlaw, when we went to my Dad's Army Engineers' Reunion in OshGosh, WI on the way back we stopped off in MO at that small Jesse James museum, I had collected all the family charts that they had available and made photographs of all the family charts that were on huge boards but not reproduced on paper. I could find so connection. Then at one writer's group convening at War Eagle Mills I had the delight of sitting down with Phillip Steele (now, deceased) from Springdale, AR to go over his info about the James family. Like both of us, Vera-----Phillip Steele could see no connection except something way off with the notarious "robinhood" Jesse James. After I heard that coming from Steele----I pretty much put all of it aside and just concentrated on those I knew more about. I mean
lets face it, Phillip Steele studied that Jesse James Family seriously for years, he knew anyone that was even remotely connected. This, of course, was when Ernie Deanne was still alive----gave me a really hard time about even thinking I was kin to Jesse James and also, Clay Anderson was there too. These guys all gave me a lot of grief about "even the thought" of being related. Those were really some sharp minds, wish I had taken better notes and listened better to what they had to teach from their own experience. Great memories from not so long ago!

Vera, you are right about the Jesse James that was connected to our common cousins those Alexanders in Baxter Co., AR
Thanks a bunch for helping me remember all those special memories about those old writers and their giving grief as well as advise to
a young whipper snapper with more energy than I can ever hope to recover again! Thanks, for the memories!
Beth



Subject: [ARIZARD] James Gang --- Beth

The Jesse James I did research on had nothing to do with the outlaw Jesse
James. What I mean I guess is I didn't find the connection to the outlaw. He
was killed about the time of the Civil War by a gang of renegades. If I
remember correct he was hung near his grist mill. Seems it was Taney or
Ozark County, MO. It's been years since I worked on that and I don't have it
in my computer and I can't seem to find the hard copy. If I find anything I
let you know.

Sorry to leave you hanging. You migth check the Ozark History book. Vera
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