Colbert County AlArchives News.....Jesse James's Muscle Shoals Robbery August 23, 1883 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Kenneth Stacy klstacyfamily@aol.com January 2, 2007, 11:43 am The Huntsville Weekly Democrat August 23, 1883 Jesse James’s Muscle Shoals Robbery. ---------------------------------------------- Chicago Tribune. What Charley Ford Says With a view to ascertaining further details of the Muscle Shoals robbery, a Tribune reporter last night called on the Ford brothers, Bob and Charley, who are responsible for the sudden taking off of the late lamented Jesse James, and interrogated them as to the part which Dick Little, their particular friend, played in the terrible deed at Muscle Shoals. It may not be generally known here in Chicago, that the Ford brothers have taken to the stage, and appear nightly to crowded houses at the Park Theatre in a sanguinary drama, wherein the killing of Jesse James is graphically depicted, and wherein Bob and Charley give exhibitions of their skill as marksmen. They received the Tribune representative in a subterranean dressing-room of the Park, and told very freely all they knew of the robbery. They expressed considerable surprise and regret to learn of Dick’s arrest, and stated at once that he was in no way responsible for the Muscle Shoals job. –As they tell the story of the robbery, it was like this: In January of 1881, Jesse and Frank James, Bill Ryan and Dick Little located at Nashville, Tennessee, with a view of doing some professional work in that locality.—Leaving Little in Nashville to look after the two wives of the James boys, Frank and Jesse and Bill Ryan took a run down into Alabama on horseback to look the ground over. –The trio halted one day at Muscle Shoals to rest themselves and their horses, not intending at the time to do any robbery in that immediate vicinity. While they were hanging around a corner grocery, a man came up on horseback. It was a United States paymaster, and some loafer in the grocery observed. “There goes a d—n fool, who has about $10,000 in his clothes.” Of course this remark was not lost upon the robbers, who as soon as they could without exciting suspicion, mounting their steeds and started in pursuit of the paymaster, whom they overtook on a lonely road and deserted highway. The robbers came upon him so suddenly that he had neither time to fight nor run away. He had with him something like $4,500 in cash belonging to the government and about $60 of his own money. Uncle Sam’s money he was forced to turn over, but his own the robbers very considerably allowed him to retain. Then they made him abandon his horse and go with them a long distance into the woods, where he was left to find his way back as best he could, Jesse and his pals, meanwhile, riding away with all speed. Jesse killed his horse with hard riding and stole one from a farmer to complete his journey to Nashville. The paymaster was so long getting out of the woods that a party was not organized for the pursuit of the outlaws until too late to be of service. All this time, Dick Little was in Nashville with the women. Bill Ryan took his share of the “haul” and started for the home of old man Hite, the father of the notorious Hite boys, in Missouri. He got drunk on his way, however, and was arrested, not for the Muscle Shoals’ robbery but for the Glendale train robbery. He was tired and convicted, and is now serving a twenty five year term in the Missouri penitentiary. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/colbert/newspapers/jessejam1235gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 3.9 Kb