Jesse James

Tennessee was where the James brothers went to disappear. After the failed Northfield, Minnesota bank raid in September 1876, Jesse and Frank escaped a hundred-man posse and stayed out of crime for almost three years. One regional history places most of the family's time in Nashville, where neighbors knew Jesse as Mr. Howard. The 1880 Davidson County census lists him as George D. Howard and Frank as Ben J. Woodson, who said they were brothers-in-law. Reports of the twins' birth tie the family to Humphreys County too, though that account says they were here only possibly, and briefly.

What the plaque says

Jesse James In August 1877, Jesse James, the notorious outlaw, moved to this site from Missouri and rented a farm from N. B. Link. Using the assumed name of J. D. Howard, he engaged in farming and horse racing. He entered one of his horses, Red Fox, in local races and won several competitions. While living here, his wife, Zee, gave birth to twin boys, Gould and Montgomery, who lived only a few days and were buried on this site. In 1879, Jesse and his family moved to Nashville.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 3.9 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 13 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Mousetail Landing State Park — 24 mi
  A Perry County state park on the Tennessee River where a leather-shipping landing once stood, with ruins of its pier and blacksmith shop, a historic landing trail and quiet water trails.
• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.

More markers nearby

• Captain William Robert Anderson — 5.2 mi
• Hattie Wyatt Caraway — 5.2 mi
• Loretta Webb Lynn — 8.7 mi
• Waverly Disaster — 9.7 mi