Missouri born Alexander Franklin (Frank) James (1843) and Jesse Woodson James (1847) renown for being Confederate soldiers, Bushwhackers, and outlaws made their homes near Nashville, Tennessee from 1877-1881.
Aside from a Confederate guerilla raid on a bank during the Civil War, Frank and Jesse were the first to rob a bank during business hours. They prospered for several years completing over 26 raids and getting away with almost a half million dollars. After a failed robbery attempt in 1876 at a bank in Northfield, Minnesota that left two gang members dead, several others wounded, and a total of $26.70 in plunder, Frank and James decided to give up the outlaw life and move south, closer to their Uncle George Hite in Adairville, Kentucky and in the city that had suffered under Union occupation all during the Civil War, Nashville, Tennessee. They also considered larger towns a place were everyone looked alike and they could blend in.
In August 1877, Frank and Jesse crossed the Kentucky-Tennessee state line in separate wagons with their families. After a heated argument, they each went their own ways vowing never to speak to each other again. Jesse first settled in the county seat of Waverly in Humphreys County, seventy-five miles west of Nashville. There, he and his wife Zee, son James Jr., and daughter Mary introduced themselves as the “John Davis Howard” family and he began life as a gentleman farmer and grain speculator.
Frank and his wife, Annie, travelled on to Nashville and assumed the names Ben J. and Fannie Woodson. In an interview with Frank James in 1881 he states that “he stopped a few days with Ben Drake, a farmer, then stayed a short time with Mrs. Ledbetter, Drake’s sister, until he rented the Josiah Walton farm. From his farm he moved to the Jeff Hyde place, where he lived when Mr. and Mrs. Chas. H. Eastman were his neighbors. He then rented the Felix Smith farm not far from the Josiah Walton place and remained there share-cropping and working ten hour days until he left Davidson County in April, 1881.”[1]
Both Jesse and Frank acted in ways that brought suspicions to their neighbors but they were law abiding, church-going members of society, so they were accepted. In particular, one of the James children became sick and the Eastman’s were called on for help. They are quoted as saying, “We knew the Jameses as Mr. Woodson and Mr. Howard. They and their families were very grateful to us for the assistance rendered while the child was sick. We visited back and forth across the road and Frank would often come and sit with us on our porch of evenings. He was fond of Shakespeare and the drama and could quote extensively from the great play writer, and poet. Jesse seemed ill at ease but the fact that Frank and I had congenial literary tastes brought us closer together. He often rode to town with me in my buggy, and on one occasion went with us to see a noted actor play. He dressed neatly and did not have the appearance of a common laborer. He looked more like a prosperous farmer.
One night someone attempted to rob our house, and Frank said the next day, ‘I will see to it that this does not occur again. There are three or four of us and we will guard your house’. We were not suspicious at the time, but later on we thought perhaps it was one of the men with James who attempted the robbery.”[1]
One other incident from their gang has it’s place in Whites Creek history. Bill Ryan, a gang member also known as Tom Hill, decided to visit the Jameses uncle in Adairville. During his journey on Whites Creek Pike, the weather turned bad and so Ryan stopped at a store run by W. R. Maddux and owned by Davidson County Constable W. L. Earthman.
Ryan announced himself as “Tom Hill, and outlaw against State, County, and the United States Government”. He pulled a pistol on one of the patrons but was convinced in putting it away by the three gentlemen, including Maddux and Earthman. Once Ryan was subdued and mostly intoxicated, Earthman and the other two gentlemen tied him to a chair, searched his property, and took him to jail in Nashville. This later lead to his trial and conviction. Earthman received a reward that allowed him to build a house next to his store.
Documented dwellings of the James brothers while in Nashville are[2]:
606 Boscobel Street
Walton Farm off Clarksville Highway at Kings Lane and Drake Branch Road
Felix Smith house on West Hamilton
3111 Hydes Ferry Pike (pictured)
903 Woodland Street
814 Fatherland
711 Fatherland
Jesse James was killed by a gang member, Robert Ford, in his home in Missouri on April 3, 1882. Frank James lived to be 72 and died at the James farm in Missouri on February 18, 1915.
[1] Story of Frank and Jesse James’ Life in Nashville and Davidson County, Nashville Banner, by M. B. Morton, March 1930
[2] Davidson: Tennessee County History Series, Memphis State University Press, by Frank Burns, Robert B. Jones editor; 1989, page 11
Other Resources:
Jesse James and Bill Ryan in Nashville; Depot Press, Nashville, TN. Ted P. Yeatman, 1981.
The Gunfighters, Buccaneers of the Border States; Time Life Books, Alexandria, VA. Text by Paul Trachtman, 1974.
Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legen; Cumberland House, Nashville, TN. Ted P. Yeatman, 2000.
Submitted by Mack Pritchard, Barbara Wayman, and Marsha Stenberg Murphy