Memorial
Born into a bloodline that will eventually include four Younger outlaws and four Dalton bandits, the brothers are the progeny of Henry Washington Younger (a businessman and mayor of the town of Harrisonville that attempts trying to walk a dangerous high wire ... he supports the Union cause, but also owns slaves) and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe (daughter of a Tennessee judge) ... Jim is the 9th of 14 children, while John is the 11th born to the Youngers. Growing up in the wilds of Missouri, the boys learn how to ride and shoot, and see the violence of America's battle with itself over slavery at first hand. Attacked by both sides, when Henry Younger is shot and robbed of $1,500 by Northerners in 1862, Cole and John Younger decide they've had enough, and join Quantrill's Raiders ... Jim will be there for the Lawrence Massacre (over 150 civilians are butchered in the attack), and will be captured by Northern forces during the raid on Kentucky in 1865 that sends Quantrill to any early grave. Too young to follow his brothers into the guerrilla force himself, John and his brother Bob, spend the war on their ranch watching over their mother and sisters, but that does not free them from participating in the region's violence themselves ... Bob witnesses his home being burnt to the ground by Union soldiers, while John grows up being the fastest Younger with a gun, an angry young man not to be trifled with; a lesson an ex-soldier named Gilcreas learns in Independence, Missouri when he insults the Younger Family and slaps John in the face with a frozen fish. Leather slapped instantly, the soldier dies from a John Younger slug that hits him right between the eyes (a killing that will be ruled a justifiable homicide). Family harassed constantly despite the war being over, Bob beaten unconscious, John hung four different times by men seeking information about his rebel brothers, it is no surprise at all when the youngsters join their brothers, Cole and Jim, the brothers Frank and Jesse James, and a number of other former Confederate raiders in a retribution of robbery and murder that will last until 1876. Immediately a menace, in 1871, John kills two Texas deputy sheriffs seeking his arrest.
Cole
Jim
John
Bob
Tasked to bring law-and-order to the area by several banks and railroads they have security contracts with, agents for the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency begin prowling about Missouri seeking the outlaws (headed by Allan Pinkerton). One prowler, John W. Wilcher, looking for the James boys while pretending to be a farm hand seeking employment, is identified as being a spy for the detective agency and assassinated on 3/11/1874 ... warning system in place among the former guerrillas and their supporters, the word goes out to beware of strangers. Unaware of the fate of their fellow detective, assigned to find the Youngers, Louis J. Lull, a former Chicago police captain (answering to the alias of W. J. Allen), and agent James Wright (operating as John Boyle) arrive in St. Clair County, Missouri, and assisted by local Ed Daniels, begin combing the area for information disguised as cattle buyers. Finding nothing of value in their early efforts to infiltrate the area, in early March the men move their base of operations from the Commercial Hotel in the county seat of Osceloa, to the Roscoe House Hotel in the town of Roscoe, a hospitality operation run by former Quantrill gunman, Oliver Burch.
Pinkerton
Enjoying themselves between jobs (both men are believed to have participated in the gang's robbery of the Iron Mountain Railway at Gads Hill, Missouri earlier in the year), on 3/16/1874, Jim and John Younger attend a country dance at the Monegaw Springs Hotel (a three-story log structure) in which they squire young ladies about the dance floor and drink heavily from the moonshine made available for the event. Afterwards, the brothers spend the night sobering up on the nearby farm of family friends, John and Hannah McFerrin. The next day, the Youngers sleep in before moving further south, and visiting the farm of another friend, Theodrick Snuffer. Conscious they are wanted men, the Youngers tie up their horses behind the farm's chicken coop where the animals can't be seen. Sitting down to a late lunch with their friend, the brothers hide in the attic when the trio of law officers arrive at the farm claiming to be buying cattle and requesting directions to farm of Colonel Sims. Directions given, the Youngers are surprised when the men ride off in the opposite direction shortly after 2:00 in the afternoon. Encounter discussed, the hot-headed John convinces his brother that the suspicious men should be investigated (he threats to investigate on his own if his brother is unwilling to accompany him), and so, armed with shotguns and pistols, the two men mount their horses and ride off in pursuit of the strangers. Reigning to a halt when they hear the Youngers galloping up behind them, the five men confront each other on the rural road to Roscoe (about three miles from the small town).
Gunfight Road
As if knowing what is coming, when John Younger produces a shotgun, and Jim Younger pulls out a pistol to question the strangers, Wright spurs his horse and bolts away from the encounter, his hat knocked off his head by a pursuing slug from the gun of Jim Younger (successfully escaping, he will never be seen in Missouri again). The men questioned as to why they are so heavily armed and why their comrade fled into the nearby woods, in the momentary distraction provided by Jim taking into his possession the expensive English-made.43 caliber Trantor pistols of one of the agents (more proof to the outlaws that the men are not in the cattle business), Lull is able to pull out a hidden .32 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and snap off a single shot in John Younger's direction ... a round that rips through the throat of the outlaw, who answers by sending a double barrel of shotgun buckshot into the left shoulder and arm of Lull, who gallops away, but not for long ... seeking refuge in the woods, Lull is knocked off his horse by a low hanging, wayward tree branch ... lying n the ground, he is quickly dispatched by a pursuing John Younger (already mortally wounded by the buckshot he's taken, the Pinkerton takes a revolver slug to the chest ... still alive, the detective will be taken to Osceloa for medical treatment, but will die from his wounds 23 days later), who then falls off his horse as a result of the loss of blood from the fatal wound he has taken to the neck. Also dying of a fatal neck wound, a moment after his brother is shot, Jim Younger puts a fatal round in the throat of Daniels.
A Trantor Revolver
Younger Spurs Left Behind
County in an uproar as its residents pick sides, Jim makes quick arrangements for his brother's body to be buried nearby ... a duty that friends in the area take care of so well that John Younger's final resting place remains unknown to this day. Then, aware that lawmen will soon be flooding the region, Jim rides south for Arkansas, and a secret hideout that he knows his brothers Cole and Bob are using near the town of Hot Springs. Enraged by the deaths of three agents and continuing robberies, Pinkerton will continue his war on the gang, savagely striking again at the Kearney, Missouri farm of the James Boys in 1875. But the raid only escalates the hatred both sides feel for each other ... botched, the brothers easily escape the Pinkertons, while their mother, Zerelda, suffers injuries from an incendiary device thrown into the James home that requires the amputation of her right arm at the elbow, and the death of Frank's and Jesse's half-brother, 9-year-old Archie Samuel (and of course, tit-for-tat, suspected of providing information to the Pinkertons, neighbor and former Union militiaman, Daniel Askew, will be shot to death in April by an unknown gunman).
Zerelda
Archie
The Youngers - Bob, Jim, And Cole
With Their Sister, Henrietta
Back and forth, the Missouri mayhem finally ends in Minnesota, in 1876, when the James-Younger Gang attempts to rob the First National Bank of Northfield (an establishment rumored to be tied to two former Union generals, Adelbert Ames and Benjamin Butler) ... in the raid, outlaws Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell are killed, Cole Younger is wounded in his left hip, Jim Younger is shot in the jaw, Bob Younger has his elbow shattered by a citizen bullet, Frank James is shot in the right leg, Charlie Pitts is wounded in the leg, and Jesse James is shot in the thigh (not without their own casualties, bystander Nicholas Gustafson is shot dead by Cole Younger, assistant cashier is gunned down for refusing to open the bank's vault, and teller Alonzo Bunker is wounded in the right shoulder running out of the building). Finally brought to ground when the James Brothers break off from the group and flee south (Jesse will be murdered by Bob Ford in 1882, while Frank, in a deal that sees he is not returned to Minnesota to face justice, will surrender and then be found not guilty of two different robberies, dying in 1915 at the age of 72) Charlie Pitts will be killed, while Cole, Jim, and Bob will be shot to pieces before surrendering to authorities (there will be fourteen pieces of lead in Cole's body when he dies at the age of 72 in 1916) and being sentenced to life in prison at the state prison in Stillwater (but not quite ... Bob will die in prison of tuberculosis at the age of 35 in 1889, while Cole and Jim will be paroled out of prison in 1901, with Jim committing suicide in St. Paul in 1902 at the age of 54).
Miller & Chadwell
Pitts
Bob
Jim
Cole .
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