But in 1850, Robert chose to leave his family and parishioners behind to join a party of Clay Countians bound for California. In 1849 he was a founding trustee of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, which operates to this day. When Robert became pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church, its membership stood at 20 seven years later, that number had grown to almost 300. The highly intelligent, once awkward college student became a powerful presence in the region. Robert purchased a 225-acre farm in Clay County, Missouri, and it was on that farm that Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5, 1847. When he reunited with Zerelda that summer, she greeted him with their first child: Alexander Franklin James.
Leaving Zerelda in Missouri, Robert returned to Kentucky to complete his coursework, graduating with a bachelor’s degree on J(he would earn his master’s five years later). On a trip to visit Zerelda’s mother and stepfather in western Missouri the next year, the couple liked the fertile country, and the frontier could always use another man of God. “Much trouble has come to me there,” she told a reporter, “but I love the old place and want to live there ‘til I die.” In her last years, Zerelda sold 25-cent tickets to tour her home and visit her son Jesse’s grave. As she did in the face of other hardships, Zerelda carried on.
Jesse’s eight-year-old half brother, Archie Samuel, was killed, and Zerelda’s right wrist was mangled so badly that her arm had to be amputated just below the elbow.
The Pinkertons forced an incendiary device through the kitchen window that unexpectedly exploded. Searching for the James brothers, men from the Pinkerton Detective Agency attacked her farmhouse. Zerelda’s life was filled with tragedy, but the hardest of all to bear occurred the night of January 26, 1875. An imposing woman, Zerelda James Samuel (1825-1911) stood nearly 6 feet tall and didn’t hesitate to speak her mind.
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