Early Life
James was born Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault, in 1892 in Saint-Nazaire-d'Acton, Quebec, Canada. He started drawing at the age of four on the kitchen floor. James, a Canadian Francophone, settled in the new French-Saskatchewan settlement of Val Marie in 1910 and learned to be a western cowboy. Accused of cattle theft, he left three years later and traveled to the United States with a new name, William Roderick James.
During the next several years, he drifted and worked at several jobs. He was arrested in Carson City, Nevada for cattle rustling and took care of the prison's horses during his 15 month sentence. He then worked as a stuntman in movies and served in the U. S. Army from 1918-1919. He began selling his sketches. He was a horse wrangler for the First Annual Nevada round-Up in Reno in July 1919. He met and married Alice Conradt, while living in Reno, Nevada, in 1920.
Read more about this topic: Will James (artist)
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