The Jesse James Home Museum is the house in St. Joseph, Missouri where outlaw Jesse James was living and was gunned down on April 3, 1882, by Robert Ford.
At the time, the house was located at 1318 Lafayette Street in St. Joseph. In 1939, it was moved to a busier Belt Highway location. In 1977, it was moved to a location directly behind Patee House at 12th and Mitchell in St. Joseph, only two blocks away from its original location, which restored more of its historic context.
The investigation into the shooting death of James was conducted at Patee House Hotel (formerly the World's Hotel). Mrs. James, her two children, and Jesse's mother stayed in Patee House for two nights after Jesse James was killed.
The house has a large bullet hole on the north interior wall. The hole was actually much smaller but over the years, souvenir hunters carved shavings from the hole and enlarged it.
The Jesse James Home contains a number of items owned by Jesse James and his family. In 1995, top forensic scientist Professor James E. Starrs, of George Washington University, conducted an exhumation of the grave of Jesse James to settle persistent controversy about the remains. In February 1996, he announced that DNA tests performed on the remains and compared to the DNA of existing known relatives proved a 99.7% reliability that the body in the grave was that of Jesse James. The museum includes new exhibits based on the 1995 exhumation, including artifacts such as coffin handles, bits of wood, and a pin Jesse James wore in his death photo, as well as numerous photos taken during the exhumation.
The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1980.
Famous quotes containing the words jesse james, jesse, james, home and/or museum:
“O Jesse had a wife, a mourner all her life
And the children they were brave,
But the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard
He laid Jesse James in his grave.”
—Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.”
—Jesse Jackson (b. 1941)
“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-fixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“One can think of life after the fish is in the canoe.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 23, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)