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Nashville Banner, April 4, 1933

Daughter of Jesse James ReturnsTo Pay a Visit to Place of Her Birth

Mrs. Barr says BanditFather Not so Bad asHe Has Been Pictured

By BEN WEST

Back in Nashville to trace the steps of her glamorous father, Jesse James, idol of schoolboys and one-time terror of the Middle West,and to see her birthplace she left a half century ago, yesterday came Mrs. Mary James Barr, fifty-four-year-old daughter of the bandit.

By coincidence, she arrived at the old homestead near Bordeaux yesterday on the fifty-first anniversary of the killing of her father bythe Ford brothers. The incident occurred in St. Joseph, Mo., while he was hanging a picture and a song memorializing his death hasbeen written.

Mrs. Barr carried with her the old picture frame and the duster which her father was using at the time Bob Ford shot him downfrom a chair.

Quiet, unassuming and soft-spoken, Mrs. Barr toldnewspaper men that she had always wanted to return to herbirthplace here and was on a vacation tour with her husband,Henry Barr. She went straight to the old home place, locatedjust-off the Hamilton Road near the county tuberculosishospital, now owned by E. B. Smith.

There she spent the day with her husband as guests of Mrs.Smith. She pointed out to newspaper men the hitching postwhich her father and uncle, Frank James, used to tie theirhorses, never unsaddling them.

She showed how the brothers slept in separate rooms, nearwindows, out of which they could vault on a moment's noticeand make a getaway on their horses. She pointed out thathouse itself is situated on a knoll, giving a view of a mile in anydirection, as a further protection.

"My father was never understood," the quiet andbespectacled woman said. She showed by relating tales told toher of how he helped the poor and oppressed. She told the now-famous story of how her father paid off the mortgage on awidow's home, later holding up the mortgagee and taking themoney from him.

"He was accused of many more things than he ever did andthe records I have gone over prove it. He could not have beenwith the Younger brothers when they robbed the bank atNorthfield, Minn., because he was right here at the time," Mrs.Barr declared.

The James brothers, with a half-brother, John Samuel, whodied last winter, rented several hundred acres of ground fromthe grandfather of the present mistress of the homestead, Mrs.Smith, and under assumed names lived here for five years ormore.

Both families left hurriedly when one of their band visitedthem, got drunk in Nashville, and told about the escapades ofthe James brothers back in Missouri. No one around here evensuspected that the men who were known -to them as DaveHoward (Jesse) and Ben Woodson (Frank), were the Jamesbrothers.

"My mother didn't have over $100 when my father was killedand I don't believe he buried any money anywhere. People toldmany wild tales of how he got rich off holdups and otherlawlessness, but my mother had to borrow money," thedaughter said.

"We never knew our real name was James until Father waskilled. Both my father and uncle went for sixteen years with a

price on their heads, dead or alive. The State of Missouri gave Bob Ford $9 to get out of the State on, and some time later he was killedin a similar manner which he h hot my gather. Charlie Ford, his brother, committed suicide six months later," Mrs. Barr declared.

She says she will always believe that a private detective attempting to capture or kill the pair of bandits was responsible for thedeath of her uncle. Archie Samuel, then aged 8, and the loss of an arm by her grandmother, Mrs. Zerelda Samuel, when a bomb wastossed into the home. Several agencies were trailing the bandits for a share of the $25,000 reward offered.

Members of the immediate James family still living are Mrs. Barr, her brother, Jesse James, Jr., California attorney; Robert, son of

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Frank, and Frank's wife.

Despite all the hair-raising tales she could tell in first person about her colorful father, Mrs. Barr is very unpretentious, and admitsshe never remembered the bandit. She has heard her mother time and again tell of him, however.

She plans to visit several spots of interest in Tennessee and return home within a few days to her old home in Kearney, Mo.

Above shows the house where the noted bandit, Jesse James, was slain just fifty-one years ago. On the right is Mrs. Mary James Barr, daughter of thebandit, who is in Nashville for a visit to her birthplace. Mrs. Barr has in her possession the frame of the picture her father was hanging when he was shot todeath.