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Widow of Frank James, Now Blind, Vows She Will Never Reveal Outlaws' SioryherewasBY HAROLD STRFFTFRKEARNEY, Mo., April 8 —(AP)~ A gemle little blind woman is living out her years, now 86 on a 117 - year - old log cabin farm near Keanrey with the true blood-pulsing story of Frank and Jesse James locked tightly in her heart.Fortunes have been offered her for the story. Unhesitatingly. she has turned them down. She vows the story will go with her to the grave.The woman is Mrs. Annie Raison James.The story which she alone could tell is of her breath-taking romance and married life with Frank James, one of the two most talked about outlaws who ever drew a gun from the hip or galloped at breakneck speed on horoseback across the dusty prairie. The other was his brother, Jesse James.So quietly has this courageous little woman remained in self-imposed seclusion that many persons did not even know she was alive until the news leaked out recently that she had recovered from an illness of bronchial pneumonia.What a story she could tell . . . her big, colonial plantation near Independence, Mo. . . . crash of a war shell through her bedroom . , . appearance at the plantation of Quantrill’s raiders, among their number the .Tame: boys . . . war’s end and the very name of James spreading terror in a pe riod of outlawry . . . 1R75 . . . elopement of pretty, vivacious Annie RalJames was slain, his grave was there. Then the present burial site at Kearney was selected.On that farm in 1915, Frank James died of a heart attack inpause to the thought that sits a woman whose life crowded with daring.She dared defy the wishes of her parents to elope with Frank James in July, 1875, only six months after the detectives tossed the bomb into the James farmhouse and at a time when a price of $10,000 was on Frank's head.A few days after her parentsQueen of Albania Is Heroine of Hungariansthe arms of his faithful wife who had consented to her going tobetter husband eversobbed•'No lived.''To that farm now come the curious.They come to see the big walnut bed in which Bob Ford and Jesse James slept together for three nights before going to St Joseph. Mo,, where Bob shot Jesse as the outlaw leadet stood, unarmed, his back an open target.They come to see the framed preachers’ license of the James brothers’ father.They come to gape at the circled target drawn on tablet paper which was perforated by James’ bullets during target practice.They come to see the framed memorial of Jesse James with the white dove bearing the streamer gone but not forgotten and the printed notation, murdered by a traitor and! Kansas City to visit, her brother-in-law, a note arrived, readingDear Mother:I am married and going West.Annie Reynolds.The name Reynolds proved puzzling. Her brothers began a search for her. They heard reports she had married a Kansas City gambler.Then by accident an uncle of the James accosted one of the Ralston brothers.1 am glad to meet you. he said. My nephew, Frank James, has married your ter.BUDAPEST, April 8.—(AP)— Queen Geraldine of Albania was the heroine of Hungarians today.She arose from her bed in Albania to flee with her three-da.ys-old son in a hazardous 160-mile automobile journey over rough i and winding roads to safety in j Greece.“What would you expect of a Hungarian girl?” asked beaming Magyars in clubs and coffee houses.Budapest friends recalled that a little tnore than • year ago the queen then the Countess Geraldine Apponyi, was an office girl j in the Hungarian National Museum at a reported salary of about 220 pnegoe monthly, something ! less than $45.She was graceful, full of the spirit that makes Hungarians duelists and breakneck horsemen, s'i's^ P°Pular in the smart Budapest so-* | rial set and proficient in tennis,Hectic years followed for An- ; fencing; shnot,inig; nle Ralston. While in hiding atj Baltimore, a policeman halted Frank, unaware of the outlaw's I identity, to ask that he serve on a coroner's jury. The incident so frightened his wife that she persuaded Frank to flee to New York.ston with Frank James . . . an enraged slave-owning ] up in her room, father, stunned by his daughter’s | Tintil her eyes escapade . . . flight with Frank {)vaR . . . days in a covered wagon . . . birth of their boy . . . life fraught with the fear of capture ... in Kentucky ... in Raltimore ... in New York Jesse assassinated Frank in surrender long anxious weeks of murder trials with the state demanding his life ultimate acquittalFrank as a stage actor......as a St. Louis doorman ......and, at long last, retirement to the old farm . the hectic days behind the quiet life j of simple farm folk 1915 I death of Frank James j ahead for her only a long, long | road .... and her memories I These only are lightly brush-touches to the storv. O n I vw7!hy .oW,°pp«rn,h?,VIS n0,Uh5V,r’*d'd h‘mThey come to chip souvenir slain pieces of wood off the old log cabin part of the farm, just as the stone has been completely chipped away over Jesse's grave at Kearney.But all who come never see i Mrs. Frank James. If she is j walking in the vard when visit-j ors approach, she disappears in-1 side the house and shuts herself ifailed, reading her greatest comfort. Then her son read to her. Until recent years she refused to have any stories of crime brought to her attention. Then the work of the federal agents fascinated her.She asked that her son and his wife “read to her every word of the career of Dilhnger and the kidnapers, Bailey, Kar-pis. Campbell, Mahan, Robinson and the rest of them,” Robert James siad.The serenity of her kind face, as she rocks in her chair, at peace with her memories, givegiveup after Jesse was She visited him in his jail cell, sat with him through his murder trials. At Frank's funeral, Judge Charles P. Johnson. who had been chief of defense counsel, paid this tribute: Through all the tempests and storms that beat so hard I upon him, like a good angel, she walked by his side, whispering in his ear, of truth and hope, and where he went she j went if she could and her spirit j brooded over him at all times.I can never forget, the ordeal of the trial of 1883. If there was I on that occasion anything that j gave inspiration to my mind j and flame to my tongue, it was the pale, anxious face and tearful eyes which she turned upon me. I never saw or felt a hap-pier moment in my life than when he was set free and given back to her.Today, the ashes of Frank James are in a bank vault in Kearney. So great was his love for Annie Ralston that he did not want to he buried until he could be buried with her.edin the full, excither cue fromshe could fill mg picture.But she took 1 Frank James.The only direct reference I ever heard him make to the j stories about Jessee and him-1 | self, avers Frank’s son, Robert, j j now 61, who lives on the old farm with his mother, was when he said: T told them all I j about that at the trials and they ! j must have believed me for they j acquitted me. and that was all I the telling I care to makeMy mother. Robert relates,; never has said anything about j them (the James boys) except ridicule some of the wildtoTRYBORDEAUX’S ICE CREAM• Fronted Malted Milks• Fountain Drinks• Better FoodsBORDEAUX’S CAFEOpen 24 Hours Jefferson A McCartyTHE JUNIOR CLASS Of the Senior High SchoolPresentsA Mystery ComedyIN 3 ACTS By Wilbur BrounMONDAY, APRIL 10TH Junior College Auditorium 8 o’clock Admission 25cSNOOPS: What if tha right name for these?**yMedicinal atomizers, Snoops. They're used for spraying the note and throat. And thasa araprecision -made, Jika surgical instruments, furnishing a spray as Ana as ocean mist.IIOUSTHKNX nUMBMUWhere Pharmacy Is Practiced aa a Fine Artstories she has read at times, such as about Jesse once bong a singing teacher when he couldn’t sing a note.The farm where she lives to- i day is teeming with James his-! tory. There the minister-father of the James boys, the Rev. Robert James, brought his bride in 1845.On that farm Jesse James wasborn.Through a window of that farm in January, 1875, detectives seeking the James brothers tossed the bomb which killed an eight year old half brother, Archie, and tore the arm off the mother of the outlawsFor 20 years after Jesse##WhereYOUrvncrT
Newspaper Details
Jefferson City News and Tribune
Jefferson City, Missouri, US
Sun, Apr 09, 1939
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Joplin P.
MO, USA 26 Sep 2024
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