Saturday afternoon, Jeff Barnes, a Humanities Nebraska public speaker, will make a presentation about Jesse James in Nebraska at the Nuckolls County Museum located in Superior’s City Park. We haven’t heard his presentation and we doubt he will either confirm nor put to rest the stories about the James brothers Nuckolls County connections. However, we want to hear what he has to say.
After learning the 2023 Lady Vestey Festival theme was picked to honor the late Lew Hunter, we recalled a story Lew told about his mother’s family and the James gang. We first told Lew’s story in this space in 2012. In case you have forgotten it or didn’t read it the first time, we are reprinting a portion of it this week. After reading the story, you are invited to attend the Saturday afternoon program at the museum. Admission to the air conditioned hall will be free and the chairs are padded.
Did the James Brothers really sleep in Superior? They may have for it appears the infamous brothers may have had a sister living in Superior as people with connections to the early days of Superior claimed the James Brothers were well acquainted with this area.
Their Superior hideout (if it was a hideout) may have been used by the notorious Jesse and Frank James and their gang between raids, but there is no solid evidence available locally proving the assertion. If they did, their arrivals and departures would probably have been under cover of darkness, and would not have been reported by the village press.
According to Lew’s story, the James brothers and three members of their gang, were headed for Superior, one dark and stormy night about 140 years ago, planning to stop over at the home of Mrs. Lee Burns, a sister of the James brothers who is thought to have been living in Superior at the time.
Some distance east of Superior, then a small village, they encountered a blinding snow storm and were thrown off course, understandable considering the condition of the roads and trails leading from town to town in those days. They missed Superior and finally arrived at the farm home of Mrs. Mary McPherson, a widow with six small children, who lived just west of Bostwick. Mrs. McPherson was the great-grandmother of Lew Hunter. Before her death, Lew’s mother, Esther Hunter, shared her story about the night the James gang stayed with members of her family.
When the five armed men arrived, and politely but sternly requested lodging for the night. Mrs. McPherson welcomed them without protest, “On a night like this,” she told the men, I wouldn’t turn a dog away from my door.”
They would probably have come in anyway, and Mrs. McPherson may have suspected that. She fixed them up for the night the best she could, gave them a hearty breakfast early the next morning and sent them on their way. But just before they departed, the leader handed the widow a $20 gold piece, a sizeable sum in those days.
The men talked but little and did not reveal their identities, but she may have been suspicious of their actions and slept but little that night. Through a crack in the floor of her upstairs bedroom, she had a clear view of the men sleeping peacefully on the floor below, but with an armed guard on watch at all times.
It was from members of a troop of cavalry, on the trail of the James gang that Mrs. McPherson learned the identities of her “distinguished” guests on the night of the storm.
It was about this time in history that Jesse James, his wife and two children were living in St. Joseph, Mo., under the alias of Tom Howard. He had announced his plans to retire from his evil ways, and settle down on a Nebraska farm. It has been theorized it was their search for farm land, that brought the outlaws to the area the night of the storm. Lending credence to this theory is the fact they had a sister living in Superior, and relatives in Nelson. It is assumed they desired to locate somewhere near their relatives. And they would hardly have chosen such an area for one of their raids.
Whatever their mission may have been, it will never be known for on April 3, 1882, soon after their visit to Nuckolls County, Jesse James was gunned down by a member of his own gang and in his own home in St. Joseph. It was Bob Ford, a new member of the James gang, recruited following the disastrous Northfield, Minn., fiasco, in which most of the members of the old James gang were either killed or caught and sentenced to life terms in prison, who fired the fatal shot that, “laid poor Jesse in his grave.” His motive was a $10,000 reward offered for the bandit dead or alive.
The James brothers had been Confederate guerrilla fighters during and after the Civil War, and they had many sympathizers in the border state of Missouri, who admired and almost worshipped Jesse James as a sort of Robin Hood who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Many others thought the James brothers were cold blooded killers.
The location of the “hideout” in Superior is reported to have been in the west part of town.
Perhaps some day, some Superior property owner, looking over his abstract of title my discover the name Burns. If so, the property might have been at one time the hide out of the most wanted man in the nation.
The widow who gave shelter to a gang on a stormy night had met with tragedy of her own a short time before the gang’s visit. Her husband, John Duncan McPherson was brutally murdered on his way home from Red Cloud. Mr. McPherson had been serving as a paymaster for the Burlington railroad, then under construction, and had gone to Red Cloud for money to meet the monthly payroll.
That evening a stranger arrived at the McPherson home, riding in the spring wagon that Mr. McPherson had used on his trip to Red Cloud. He was leading his own horse when he arrived and told Mrs. McPherson her husband had accidently killed himself while shooting at a dog, and this his body was in the wagon. Without help the widow get the body into the house, he mounted his horse and hastily departed.
Neighbors soon arrived and found the distraught and weeping woman. They move the body into the house, and discovered the dead man had been shot twice in the back. There was talk of a lynching party but Mrs. McPherson would have none of it. “There is a remote possibility that the man is innocent,” she said, “and I wouldn’t want on my conscience, any part in the killing of an innocent man.”
A number of years later, her grandson, the late Emerson Phillips, then a Kansas City attorney, learned while perusing the old legal records that this same man had committed another murder near Kansas City. The Phillips expected had the lynch mob had its way after the Bostwick murder, the life of the Kansas City victim would have been spared.
The McPherson family came to Kansas from New York state. They first stopped for a visit at Scandia, then moved to Oak where Mr. McPherson was employed before buying the farm near Bostwick. They were among the earliest settlers in Nuckolls County.
A footnote to the James Story is that his brother, Frank James, a few years later, appeared with a carnival company at the Nuckolls County Fair in Nelson and gave daily exhibitions of his shooting skills. He also assisted the fair management with the horse races that were an important part of the fair in those days. If be was ever tried or convicted for any of his numerous crimes, his sentence must have been light.
Since the above story was printed, we were told the house Mrs. Burns occupied was located at Fourth and Colorado. It has since been torn down. The property’s abstract does not include the Burns name.
Could it be that another crook by the name of Jesse James had a sister living in Superior? In the fall of 1898 and spring of 1899 the Superior Sun published stories about a train robbery and ensuing trial of a man who was accused of having shot and killed a railroad employee. Jesse James Jr., the son of the famous outlaw was involved in the case. It’s a long shot but do you suppose the person thought to have visited a sister in Superior may have been Jesse James Jr. The time frame better fits when housing was developed in the western part of Superior.
The March 2, 1899 issue of The Superior Sun reports on the trial of Jesse James Jr. who was accused of having a part in a train robbery. At the time of the robbery, the accused claimed to be sitting on his porch with his grandmother, his mother and his sister.
We don’t know the outcome of the trial but we have discovered The Superior Weekly Journal of Jan. 29, 1920, reported Jesse James Jr. had returned to Sioux City, Iowa, from Kansas City to answer to the charge of robbing a bank located in a Sioux City suburb on June 7, 1918.
Apparently the apples didn’t fall far from the tree.
And Frank James must have had train robbery in his blood. The Superior Weekly Journal of Nov. 14, 1896, reported Jesse’s brother Frank had taken a job guarding the movement of valuables by train.
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