Colbert County AlArchives News.....Jesse James's Muscle Shoals Robbery August 23, 1883
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Kenneth Stacy klstacyfamily@aol.com January 2, 2007, 11:43 am

The Huntsville Weekly Democrat August 23, 1883
Jesse James’s Muscle Shoals Robbery.
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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.

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