Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1919 — FEW VISITORS AT OLD HOME OF FAMOUS BANDITS. [ARTICLE]

FEW VISITORS AT OLD HOME OF FAMOUS BANDITS.

Surrounded by weeds and underbrush, a squat and weather-beaten cottage of four rooms stands almost forgotten near the heart of St. Joseph Mo., and within two blocks of two trolley lines. The house was once occupied by Jesse James, the famous bandit. A sign on the front door of the cottage informs the casual passerby that for the modest sum of 15c, including war tax, presumably, the visitor may see the room in which the chief of the bandits was shot to death by “Bob” Ford on‘the morning of April 3, 1882, as he was flanging a picture. The bullet hole in the wall of the room and the place where the blood stains are said to have been are pointed out to the curious. A score or more of years ago a visit to St. Joseph was not considered complete without a jaunt to the home of Jesse James. But times have changed—the war and everything, the old couple who are completing nearly twenty years’ residence in the former bandit’s dwelling explained—and visitors are rare. So far as maintaining the place for the historic name, it is a -failure, they say. In the last six months only one person came to see the house where Jesse James lived and died.