More PROOF Murder of Jesse was a hoax! August Article 1950

The following is the second article of the1950 Police Gazette August issue.

 

Startling new evidence unearthed by Police Gazette proves that J. Frank Dalton is the real Jesse James, bandit of the Old West!

 

By GEORGE McGRATH Special Investigator for

the Police Gazette

 

JESSE JAMES still rode in 1950!" Thus did the Police Gazette in its April issue recognize 102 year old [106 Jesse was born in 1844] J. Frank Dalton as the real Jesse James. This exclusive disclosure created a nationwide furor which now has produced even more evidence that this feeble, white haired man with the bullet scarred body is the most famous outlaw of the old West, a ghost out of the bloody past for whose safety and chance at decency another man was slain. 

It is a slaying fabled in song and story; how young Bob Ford shot Jesse James in the back for a $10,000 reward at St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 3, 1882. 

But it is just that a fable! 

And it was a legend which left a spreading stain on the name of Jesse's comrade in bandit arms. So, after 68 years of stealthy living, James came out of obscurity to make grateful payment by cleansing Ford's tarnished name before he died. 

There was a tremendous uproar when the Police Gazette became the first publication to establish, by almost incontrovertible proof, that the man known for almost seventy years as J. Frank Dalton was in reality Jesse James. But those who leveled scorn and criticism could offer no provable facts to substantiate their denials! 

 Meanwhile, additional evidence continued to pile up that the Police Gazette had been right when it supported the claims of the silvery thatched old fighter that he was the most famous or most infamous bandit in the gory history of the six-shooter frontier.

LET'S REVIEW BRIEFLY facts on which the first recognition was based. These included Jesse's detailed accounts of James' gang depredations, impossible for one of such advanced years to memorize and which checked exactly with accounts available only in old Police Gazette files; physical characteristics and bullet scars, and the sworn testimony of Col. James Russell Davis of Nashville, Tenn., and Mrs. Nellie Shevlin, wife of John Shevlin, one of the most honest and fearless law officers of that roaring era. 

Now to be added to these facts are:

1. The testimony of Henry M. Priest, a Nashville, Tenn., storekeeper who identified Dalton as the man once known as "Mr, Howard," the alias used by James when he supposedly was shot by Ford.

2. Identification of Jesse by John Trammel, 110yearold former cook for the James gang, who was still alive at this writing. 

[John Trammell died at the ripe old age of 121]

3. Jesse's own admission that his outfit perpetrated the Huntington, W. Va., bank robbery in 1875, a surprise even to the historians of that section and a "job" missed by other chroniclers of the gang's depredations.

4. The testimony of De Witt Travis of Longview, Texas, of "Dalton's" continued association with the family of Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden. Jesse alleges they connived politically so that Charles Bigelow, a gang traitor, could be slain and his body passed off as that of Jesse to give the bandit leader an alibi of death.

 

Even in 1950 those who wrote about Jesse couldn’t seem to get away from using the wrong photos… on the left is, was and always will be Dr. Sylvester Franklin James, Jesse’s Kentucky Born full brother… the one on the right looks like a cheep sketch of Charlie Bigelow.

 

[Dewitt Travis mentioned above and hereafter, is Elbert Dewitt Travis, son of Elbert Dewitt Travis Senior, Better known today as non other than William Clarke Quantrill, of the feared Quantill’s Raiders. History has it he died in prison of his wounds in 1865, when in fact he lived a fair life until 1894 giving up his life in Van Zandt Texas. I don’t know who lies buried in his grave but it isn’t Quantrill] 

5. Jesse's continued ability to name incidents and take doubters to the exact spot despite his advanced age.

6. Revelation of how the name J. Frank Dalton was devised as an alias when "Mr. Howard" met his fraudulent end.

7. The inability of opponents to prove that Dalton was not Jesse James at a Missouri probate court hearing.

8. Testimony of Robert E. Lee, 75, of Baton Rouge, La., onetime bodyguard for William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody, that the famed scout identified Dalton to him in 1893 as Jesse James. 

All of these are sworn and certified proofs and substantiations. 

Yet a certain circle is inclined to discredit Jesse's claims — without offering constructive proof. One school of detractors is composed of those who would ask Jesse leading questions concerning unreliable family word of mouth tales handed down from father to son. Added to this are indications of a promotional squabble which threatens to ruin Jesse's dying gesture of gratitude to his old side kick, Ford. 

Priest, 90 year old retired Nashville storekeeper, provided clinching evidence when he recounted an incident out of "Mr. Howard's" past which Was so, trivial as to be remembered only by himself and "Howard." Yet it was told in detail by Dalton when Priest confronted him.

"Howard lived in Nashville in 1881 and I often heard his two children speak of 'Uncle Frank. Priest related. (That would be Frank James, Jesse’s brother.) "One day I was in the store and a boy brought me a note asking me to bring some money to Mr. Howard at a card game. Just as I got there with the money, Howard arose from the laid pointed a six shooter at a man in the game and said: 'Don't let me catch you cheating again' Howard took the money without looking away from the man and the game continued. A short time later Howard came into my store and gave me back the  money." 

When Priest confronted the man who for 68 years has been hiding under the alias of Dalton. old Jesse listened while Priest asked him if he recalled that Nashville card game. Then Dalton recounted the same story.

Trammel, the former James gang cook, attested that he was at the "Howard" home in St. Joseph the day of the killing and knew in advance of plot to slay Bigelow. He added that he saw Jesse a day or two after the funeral and many times that." 

It was Trammel who provided more corroborating evidence when he revealed the slaying of the oven Chisholm brothers by the James boys because the Chisholms were thought to be stealing Junes' cattle. 

"They hung them from a big old oak tree near Guthrie, Oklahoma, and then shot them through head," Trammel recalled. 

Jesse not only corroborated this — but led a party to the old oak with its "hanging branch" Wild brush country, about 16 miles outside Guthrie.

Jesse’s revelation that he had led his men in robbing a Huntington, West Virginia, bank of $20,000 on September 6, 1875, was news even to the people of Huntington. 

“The Police Gazelle cleared up several snarls in the fact” wrote Squire Mauck, associate editor of the Daily Tribune, Gallipolis, W. Va., "For '75 years people have wondered if Jesse and Frank were included in the quartet of bandits who robed he bank of Huntington.  Jesse was not suspected of being there. 

J, K, Oney, the cashier, was reported to have interviewed Frank James when the latter came to Huntington with a circus after the turn of the century. Frank denied he knew anything of the robbery and had ever been there before. Of course, Frank may have thought it expedient to lie to cashier Oney. I received a letter recently from the old bandit leader and he told me that he and Frank had been all over West Virginia and Virginia." 

So again, the dusty files corroborate old Jesse's story.

The testimony of Travis is of particular interest. Travis, a descendant of Captain Travis who defended the Alamo and a nephew of Neil and Jim Patterson who served in Quantrell’s Guerrillas with Jesse James, corroborates old Jesse's tale of Political double dealing. 

According to Jesse, he contributed $35,000 to Crittenden’s campaign coffers the first time Crittenden ran for governor of Missouri. By innuendo, he avers that the $10,000 reward money which Governor Crittenden posted for the death or capture of Jesse James found its way back into the Crittenden coffers when Ford killed Bigelow. The body was passed off as that of "Mr. Howard," the name used by James when he was in hiding. 

Substantiating Jesse's claims of a clandestine meeting with the governor the night before the murderous hoax was perpetrated, Travis revealed that he was with "Dalton" at the Bray Hotel in Kansas City in 1935 when old Jesse spent long hours with H. H. Crittenden, son of the governor. 

Travis, whose mother identified "Dalton" to him as the old family friend, Jesse James, said that Crittenden obtained from "Dalton" most of the facts he used in the chapter "Outlawry in Missouri" for his book, The Crittenden Memoirs. And he asserted that when H. H. Crittenden first met "Dalton" in Kansas City he greeted him: "Old Jesse, my goodness alive, you don't look much older than you used to!" 

LEE, BUFFALO BILL'S onetime bodyguard, said "Dalton" visited Buffalo Bill in his private railroad car at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and the two "talked long" about their old associations. 

"If the world knew what they talked about, people would be dumbfounded," Lee insists. "At that time 'Dalton' discussed with Buffalo Bill whether he should reveal his true identity of Jesse James and the famed scout advised him to 'leave well enough alone.'" 

It is Mauck, the Gallipolis historian, who charts the transformation of Jesse James, alias "Mr. Howard," to the pseudonym of "J. Frank Dalton." 

"There is nothing strange about the name he assumed after the shooting at his home J. Frank Dalton," Mauck writes. "That 'J.' was a fragment of the name he received from his Baptist minister father after his birth on Sept. 5, 1847. The name of Frank may have been favored °tit of deference to his brother. And the name of Dalton was a 'natural' because were not the James’s and the Daltons of Oklahoma related?" 

Actually, they were cousins. As told in the Police Gazette in a recent issue, the Dalton gang was nearly annihilated in a bank holdup at Coffeyville, Kansas, a decade after the hoax at St. Joseph.

Much of the discussion of old Jesse's claims seem to be the result of a promotional squabble.

"Uncle Jesse is still lying and camouflaging and protecting some of the kinfolk," insists Robert E. Lee Baxter of Great Falls, Montana. "But we wonder what has become of the man who really discovered old Jesse James' existence? Lee Howit did all the work upon which certain promoters have based their latest plan to make a million off a crippled old man, and it is not right."

Howk, himself, wrote from Great Falls after the Police Gazette had replied to Baxter and said: "Mr. Baxter showed me your good letter .. Uncle Jesse was born April 17, 1845, but his promoters are apparently running around in circles basing their conclusions on that same old Missouri camouflage. It might surprise Jesse if you have some of your people call on him on April 17 and catch him off guard. You see, we know him!" 

Howk used the same stationery as Baxter. And Howk's envelope was attractively decorated by pen and ink with a crude drawing of a goat and a large "J. J." Separating the two "J's" was a symbol which looked suspiciously like the Indian sign for a forked tongue. 

Many readers have inquired whether old Jesse's identification marks include a left index finger from which the tip has been shot. Jesse recalls he was just a tot when he got hold of a sixshooter and with a child's inquisitiveness, pulled the trigger. The bullet "chewed" off the tip.

The Police Gazette has been flooded with mail both defending and attacking its stand in support of old Jesse. But when he applied to the Missouri probate court for the name to be returned to him legally, there was no proof available that he wasn't Jesse James.

 True, the court did not restore the name. But only because, Judge Ransom E. Breuer ruled, there was nothing to give back because old Jesse never had changed his name legally to "J. Frank Dalton." So old Jesse can use his original name freely, where, if the evidence had been against him, the court certainly would have ruled that he could not use the name Jesse James.

And old Jesse, rapidly running out of seconds, flashed fire from those blue eagle eyes and demanded: "With one foot in tk:grave and the other on the brink, do you think I would lie as to who I am?" For one, the Police Gazette doesn't think so! 

END OF ARTICLE

 

From The Black Book…

 

[“One of the deadliest, wealthiest, most secretive and efficient spy and underground organizations in the history of the world was The Knights of the Golden Circle, which operated over the globe for sixty-five years (1851-1916). Ranking below the Golden Circle in this order were The Knights of the Golden Stirrup, The Knights of the White Camellias, The Knights of the Inner Circle, The Knights of the Outer Circle and The International Anti-Horse Thief Association (TEXYS). The original Ku Klux Klan was the military arm of The Knights of the Golden Circle. There were several dozen "front" organizations, but only a few received any publicity. 

Some of the craftiest, finest brains in the South directed activities of The Knights of the Golden Circle. The group was heavy on ritual, which was borrowed from the Masonic Lodge and later The Knights of Pythias. A couple were members of the Rosicrucians. 

The 13-man Inner Sanctum which ran the Golden Circle in the years immediately following the Civil War elected Colonel Elbert DeWitt Travis, alias William Clarke Quantrill and Charley Hart, as its chief. He served until his death in the middle 1890s. Secretary of the Inner Sanctum was "Uncle George" Payne, while Jesse James was elected treasurer and comptroller in 1867 when former Emperor Maximilian donated $12.5 million to the group. The other ten members were General Nathan B. Forrest, John Patter-son (Jefferson Davis), Bud Dalton, Professor B. E. Bedeczek, Lewis Dalton. George Baxter, Captain John James, Coleman Younger, General J. O. Shelby and Jack (Brae) Miller. As members of the Inner Sanctum died or became too old to serve, they were replaced up to 1916.

On April 18, 1973, I held a secret meeting in Southern California with a handful of the "old Confederates." They explained they varied in age from 67 to 91 and had no desire for notoriety or even publicity, but they verified the thirteen members of the Golden Circle's Inner Sanctum "at one time after The War Between the States." The oldtimers I met with were all sons or grandsons of men who ranked high in the Golden Circle hierarchy. 

One said, "We are dying out fast and our story should be told, but all of us have had bad experiences with reporters in the past. They generally got the story all botched up. Of course, we understand how that can happen because they were dealing with complicated stuff.

"The Golden Circle was like an early day Central Intelligence Agency, but the CIA was never as deadly, rich or powerful as the Circle. My Daddy told me that even during The War Between the States at times the Confederate Army didn't always know what the

Golden Circle was up to. Some years back, a woman wrote a book about the Golden Circle. Now what would a woman know? They were never allowed within two miles of Knights of the Golden Circle meeting. And a member could be shot for whispering any Circle business to his wife, girl friend or sister. There was an organization with real discipline!" 

Old Jesse James was the head of the Circle when its executive body decided there wasn't going to be a Second Civil War and sealed the records in 1916. In October, 1947, Colonel James, alias Colonel Jesse Franklin Dalton, made his first public utterance about the Golden Circle: "All our leaders had taken a blood oath and everyone who took this oath was well-informed about what disloyalty, violation of the oath or disregard of orders would mean. If any man ever disclosed a single secret by talking or writing (without specific permission from headquarters) he could expect the first member who could reach that violator would kill him on the spot."

The U.S. Government never caught a single active member of the Golden Circle. Jesse said, "Once in awhile the Yankees would nab some man and then brag they'd captured a member of the so-called 'James Gang'. Let me tell you we were an organized and operating underground army, backed and directed by the Confederate Underground Government which was seated in Nashville, Tennessee, for nineteen years after the end of The War Between the States." 

Colonel James admitted during its sixty-five years of existence the Golden Circle "manipulated a lot of politics, dodges, hoaxes, double talk and leaks." Because they knew so little about the Golden Circle, news reporters and Northern politicians made liberal use of their imaginations and they eagerly pounced upon each "leak", which was only a crumb.”]

 (The Black Book)

Jesse James was one of his Names

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