Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Yesterday, on the True West magazine web site where I also blog, there was a shootout. Not with bullets, but with words. The perpetrator was a known stalker of mine, who came gunning for me. The stalker made his violence palpable.
The topic of the blog was titled, “Related to a Historical Person?” (The posting has since been taken down by True West) I don’t think Walker, the poster of the blog, had any idea what was in store. I humorously chimed in about being a cousin to Sam Walton, but always I’m denied the family discount at Walmart. Randomly, out of nowhere, the stalker appeared under the cover of an anonymous alias to execute the dirty work.
Repeatedly, the stalker badgered me to reveal if I was or was not related to Jesse James. By custom, I do not claim to be related. I know full well the danger it produces and the harm it generates. The stalker furthered badgered me about The James Preservation Trust, founded by myself & the great grandson of Jesse James to address the historical interests of the Jesse James family. The stalker charged me with creating a phantom organization. In fact, the Trust is well documented in the public record & its officers publically identified on Stray Leaves for years. As for me, for the last 55 years I’ve lead a very public life, the information of which anyone can find if they just go looking for it.
My first warning about stalkers came from my mother-in-law in my second marriage. Miss Nancy was the daughter of famed tobacco scion R. J. Reynolds. At first, probing to learn if I myself was a stalker of her daughter, Miss Nancy soon turned in a motherly way to advise me of what I myself may expect. Though she spoke of paranoia, as I could expect to experience it, she also made clear that personal and even physical violence would be an ever constant threat. With that said, she then took me for a ride in her highly polished, black Chrysler that was almost twenty years old. She drove off, leaving her chauffeur standing in the garage.
Miss Nancy was right. My Hollywood marriage to her daughter was littered with a constant litany of worthless sycophants, predatory investment schemers, mongering Scientologists, and the occasional crazed drugee who appeared out of nowhere but required removal from the grounds by police. Living behind closed gates was not sufficient. Nor was it enough to employ three Great Danes, two Bloodhounds, and a St. Bernard in a chronic riot of barking for protection. Every moment you knew that someone was out there, trying to get at you for something, usually having nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
Even before Jesse James was assassinated, the James family had formed its own defenses. Their common defense was to decompose the family into isolated cells of protective anonymity. Personal identity was surrendered. Surrendered, too, was any sense of common family. For more than 125 years, the James family has endured under its shroud since. One line of the family can’t even recognize the other, and occasionally won’t. My book Soul Liberty, to begin publication next year in four successive volumes, will address the James family condition and their identity lost to a constant state of seeming redemptive purgatory.
Personally, I do not open the door to someone unexpected. Too many come to the door unannounced. I do not pick up the phone of an unidentified caller, or a caller I don’t know. One stalker called me five times a day, every day for three years. I’ve learned to change my unlisted phone numbers often. Like Frank James, who circumnavigated the exterior residence before sitting down to a meal with his back to the wall, I too have event rituals I will not mention. I’ve notified certain individuals, that should I encounter a violent or unexpected or unexplained demise, there is a list of those who authorities should investigate.
I don’t consider myself a hunted man. But I do consider myself haunted. The last time R. J. Reynolds peered down at me was from a tin advertisement for his tobacco, nailed to the rafter of a log cabin gift shop at the Calico Mine in Barstow, California, as I and his granddaughter blithely shopped for souvenirs. The last time Jesse James peered at me was from the grave of his twin children, when I exhumed them in Waverly, Tennessee, to re-inter them with Jesse and their mother Zee James in Kearney, Missouri, per Zee’s lifelong wish, and per the promise she extracted from Jesse Jr., a promise left unfulfilled for too long.
In some way, I both regret and am happy that Brad Pitt’s movie, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was not as successful as it deserved to be. I got its message in a big way! All it takes is one worthless individual, who is so devoid of self that their own identity must be found by inflicting harm on someone who is better known or recognized.
So, I live more in the virtual world today than in public. More in media, and on the internet, where cyber-stalkers are as real as any true-life physical stalker. Actually, cyber-stalkers are easier to deal with than physical stalkers. When cyber-stalkers appear, I record them, produce the record of their actions against me, and place the record with authorities for any future reference that may be required. It’s far better than living behind electric gates with five barking dogs. And, like Miss Nancy, I’d still get to drive my big, black, 1979 Lincoln Town Car, if I hadn’t sold it when petro-dollars went to four bucks a gallon.
UPDATE
The page for the blog link “Related to Historical People” has since been removed from the True West web site.
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Stray Leaves Daily
Daily updates from the family of Frank & Jesse James with stories, photos, & two searchable genealog
VIDEO of the Clay County Board of Commissioners bestowing honor upon our James colleague & friend Charlies Broomfield. Recognition begins at 2:00 min. mark.
Congratulations Charlie!!
We have hints from the Clay County Archives in charge of James Farm in Kearney, Missouri, that a road leading to the farm will be renamed Charles Broomfield Rd. Charlie was a Clay County Commissioner who took an active role in arranging the sale and transfer of James Farm from the James family to Clay County.
Cant say that I understand the significance of this.
Do you have the address of Jesse & Frank James Cabin in Paseo Robles, California?
SLAVE TRADERS AMONG OUR JAMES FAMILY . . . For a decade Stray Leaves has been researching this most distressing discovery. Finally, it’s time to bring this story to light. There’s much to report. The entire story will take time to tell. As we begin, we are also compelled to reconcile what this history means for us. More specifically for those who are now known to descend from these slave traders, whom it can be assumed never knew of this element of their ancestry, but also for the James family as a whole. The resolution will not come easy.
Forks of the Road Slave Market – Violence In Silence
ericjames.org
“Just at the Forks, where the Washington and Kingston, or Palatine roads converge, stood a low squatty frame building used during the winter monthsI ran a DNA test on all the James names I could find in these stories and didn't get 1 DNA match. My DNA is closer to Jesse than that James line is. I am looking into it being through Robert Thomason (step grandfather of Jesse Woodson James) and Julia Ann Singleton (Aunt to Jesse Woodson James).
I am a descendant of Betty G Woodson.
Waterproof, La in Tensas Parish to be more exact.
Tensas Parish. J. G. James and M. Kerrigan.
The King family. Descendants of Viking slayers. archive.org/stream/Kingswood/Kingswood%20reduced_djvu.txt
"In the middle of 1864, Captain Jason W. James was on scouting duty in the southern part of Madison Parish. About eight o'clock one morning he and his company arrived at the Plantation home of Hr. Joshua James on Roundaway Bayou, who also owned the Ione Plantation in Tensas Parish." You will have to read the rest. I am not posting it here. 😲 😲 😲 sites.rootsweb.com/~lamadiso/articles/ward/chap05.htm
And I do believe this James line is connected to Lucille Ball.
And speaking of slave traders. Nicholas Trammell is mixed in with the Carrigans somehow. www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/trammell-nicholas
And I am a descendant of Elizabeth Woodson Thomas. Wife of Captain Edmund King.
I am also showing DNA matches to the James grandparents of Jesse Woodson James and all 8 of his great grandparents. This is what I need help figuring out. All of my James DNA matches will be in the replies to this comment. In this screenshot they are all the white ones
The sons of Colonial Edmund King.
I am a descendant of Mary Joicy who was widow Woodson, mother of Elizabeth Woodson Thomas.
By the way I am not a Kerrigan by DNA. I am a Carrigan. Civil War name change. Descendant of William Michael Carrigan and Nancy Holt. Nancy Holt was the daughter of Michael Holt III and Rachel Rainey. youtu.be/IsK2eSTVW8A
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When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.Where does Lucille Ball fit?
FIND-A-GRAVE BLUNDERS LEAVE JAMES FAMILY HOWLING . . . Can you spot the errata in this Find a Grave post for the grandfather of Frank & Jesse James? The most glaring deception is the photograph!
History tells us the photograph was invented about the time John M. James was dying. Neither history, nor the administrator of this posting, Charlotte Raley McConaha, can tell us is how photographic technology made its way from France to the distant American frontier to take a photo of John M. James, months before his demise.
Another imprecise miscalculation in this post is the attribution of the middle name “Martin” to John M. James. The name never has been proved by evidence. To guess the name is unreliable and wrong.