Jesse Woodson JAMES
1892 - Last Home of Jesse James

St. Joe was the last residence of Jesse James. He lived here quietly, having traveled a great deal formerly by rail during his life, meeting up with strangers on the cars and conversing with them briefly on current topics. Thrown among strangers as he was so much all his life, it is not strange that at the last he courted quiet and rest with complete change of scene.

He lived in St. Joe under the nom de plume of Howard, and those who were impudent to him at that time now often start up wildly in the night and shriek with terror after dreaming that Mr. Howard has returned to life in St. Joe and with a large shotgun in one hand and a John L. Sullivan ultimatum in the other is engaged in settling up old scores.

Mr. James lived a very uneventful life at St. Joe, and the gas man who remembers now the time when he and Mr. Howard were alone in the cellar looking at the meter, and how Mr. Howard spoke rather feelingly about the feeble veracity of the meter, and how he (the gas man) talked loud and got red in the face and bullied Mr. James into paying, now trembles like a leaf when he passes the house, and can hardly look a gas meter in the face.

Aurora Daily Express
Aurora, Illinois
April 19, 1892

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