THE ENGLISH WESTERNERS' SOCIETY
JULY 2010 BOOK REVIEW
This review first appeared in the Tally Sheet (Spring 2008, Volume 54, Number 2)
I
KNEW FRANK, I WISH I HAD KNOWN JESSE
By Samuel Anderson Pence. Two Trails Publishing, 2007. 503pp. Illustrations. Index. Hard-cover, ISBN 1-929311-97-4. $65. Also available in a shorter soft-cover version, $26.95.
This book is sub-titled Family, Friends and Neighbors in the Life and Times of the James Boys and is a collection of stories and information about the James boys by the author, mainly in the 1950s. His grandson Dan Pence, has taken the manuscript file and created this present volume, as well as adding new material of his own.
Given the size of the book, there is a great deal of information here, some genealogical, some geographic, some new, some historical and some in error. The latter should be an embarrassment for the authorities who perused this volume before its publication. In a list, for example, of the robberies attributed to the James Gang, the date of the Corinth, Mississippi bank robbery is given as Winter, 1876-7, when it actually occurred two years earlier on December 7, 1874, the day before the robbery of a train at Muncie, Kansas (dated incorrectly as December 13, 1875).The same list includes the robbery of a train in Nebraska, a bank at Riverton, Iowa, and of a treasurer’s office (in 1867) at Gallatin, Missouri, none of which would appear in any self-respecting researcher’s compilation. In fact, the last of above quartet is mentioned again, twenty pages further on, in the section dealing with the 1869 robbery and murder of the bank at Gallatin and here the earlier robbery is attributed to a gang led by John Reno. In another short section on the 1876 train robbery at Otterville, Missouri the participants are given as Bill Chadwell, Charley Pitts, Clell Miller, Jesse and Frank James, Cole and John Younger, and Hobbs Kerry. In discussing these men it is pointed out that John Younger could not have taken part as he had been killed in March of that year; actually two years earlier! And so the errors ‘keep-a-coming.’
Another problem with this volume is that very little is sourced, making it virtually impossible to check details; and as has been mentioned above, there is much here that is new (certainly to this reviewer). The book is split into eight parts – Kentucky Roots; Development of Clay County, Missouri; Hold-Ups and Bad Boys; Frank James; Jesse James; The Younger Boys; Jesse’s Family and Relatives; and Kearney Revisited – and 89 sections (some no more than a page).
Errors apart, this volume is a must for any member seriously interested in the James Boys. The hardcover version is obviously the ideal, containing, as it does, all the material but this is a limited edition of 200 copies. The reviewer’s is number 101, suggesting that more than half the copies have already been sold.
Robert J. Wybrow
Copyright © 2010 English Westerners' Society