Family Lore-Jesse James and the Wrights

Genealogists warn of  misleading and often incorrect information in family myths and lore. Sometimes there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. Maybe these stories have just become miss told or misunderstood through the years. These tales are often quite fun and hard to let go. We have one of those stories in our family. 

It has to do with Jesse James and the Wright family of Sac City, Iowa. According to the story after Jesse James and his gang robbed the Northfield Bank in Minnesota, they stopped by the Wright farm on their way back to Missouri to water their horses. Now another family genealogist has pointed out the fallacy of this claim. The robbery took place in 1876. The Wrights moved to Sac City in the early 1880's.

However, it is believed that indeed the James brothers and gang did stop in Sac City after that Minnesota robbery to water their horses.  According to an article written in the Rockwood (Pennsylvania) Gazette in 1904 and reprinted in History of Sac County, Iowa by William H. Hart, the James boys halted for a drink on their retreat from the north to their home in Kansas City country, although at the time they were not recognized by the citizens of Sac City.

 "One bright summer morning while pumping a pail of water at a well in an unfrequented part of the hamlet of Sac City, near the office of the Sac Sun, two unkempt, unshorn and not altogether fierceless looking men on saddleless horses, steaming with perspiration, rode to the well and with ugly oaths demanded of a boy his bucket to water their horses." 

"In dismounting one of the men appeared crippled and in great pain, and he cursed with awful oaths.  He rolled up his pantaloons and exhibited a badly swollen limb, which he bathed in the cold water.

As you read the next part, remember when this article was written. Today=1904

"News then traveled slower than it does today, but a day or two later the daily papers came out with full reports of the great Northfield robbery, in Minnesota, telling of the capture of the Younger boys and of the escape of the James boys on two white horses taken from a farmer in northern Iowa."

I imagine the residents of Sac City talked about this big event for decades. So, it is easy to see how this story was told over and over and over from the early 1880's until, well... look here I am telling the story in 2017. I can just imagine Charlie or Jennie Wright, Nathan or Anna Olmstead re-telling the story they heard after their arrival in Sac City. Then their children told the story to their children. The years go by. Someone overhears or misunderstands part of the story and there we have it. The two strangers stopped at the Wright farm to water their horses. Only later, did the family realize it was probably the James brothers.

There is a grain of reality in the story.  The Wright family lived in Sac County, Iowa. Jesse James probably watered his horses there on his escape from that well known caper in Minnesota.  Who cares about those pesky dates.

Off a little

Does anyone notice when I fall off my regular schedule of posting on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. One week it was Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or so I thought. Upon further review I discovered it was Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday. Did anyone notice? I doubt it. It really shouldn't matter, but I feel like I missed an assignment. I suppose it is the old teacher in me.  I think I might be off my schedule for awhile but still posting three times per week. I just thought I should warn my regular readers. 

My time is being taken up with rabbit trails down holes that contain information on the Olmstead family and the DeHart family.  Nathan and Anna DeHart had a daughter named Jennie who married Charles Howard Wright. Jennie and Charles are my great-grandparents.  I recently read an article or heard a speaker mention that just because one's great-grandparents are no longer living doesn't mean they aren't still your great-grandparents. Thus, the present tense is accurate.

I am also in the midst of discovering more about great-grandma Jennie's parents and ancestors. This has been one of my goals for a long time. I think a lot of this information has been out there. I just had to discover it. The Olmsteads promise to be an interesting family.

Jennie and Charles had a son named Albert, who is my paternal grandfather. He married Miss Nina Frances Borden. Her parents were Emma Susan DeHart Borden and William Borden.

The DeHarts lived in Lake City, Iowa and the Olmsteads and Wrights lived in Sac City, Iowa just up the road.  I wish to concentrate on these families for awhile. These are the ancestors of my father on both his mother and his father's side of the family.

I am disappointed with how this pedigree chart looks. I will be working on another way to present it. I hope it will help in clarifying whom I will be talking.

Those Collaterals (siblings, etc. of direct line)

My whole purpose with writing this blog is to record and share with my cousins what I know about our family's ancestors. It is a way of organizing the papers, pictures, pedigree charts, and assorted slips of paper that came from my mother, the saver of everything. And in the case of genealogy, how glad I am that she did.

Growing up where my mother's family had lived for generations, I was very familiar with my maternal collaterals. My great grandmother's brother and sister-in-law lived close by. Their daughter, my first cousin twice removed, is the source of much of the Vorhies genealogy.

I thought I knew about my dad's side. He was born in Lake City where my great grandmother Emma Borden lived when I was young. She had a couple of sisters, Great Great Aunt Mae and Great Great Aunt Alice. They were the children of George J. DeHart. He seemed to be quite a prominent member of that community. He left Iowa and moved to Texas with his second wife and daughter ( GGrandma Emma Susan DeHart Borden's  half sister). I have written about George Jackson DeHart and found his grave in Dalhart, Texas a year or two ago. There is quite a lot of research already done on the DeHart side. The needed information for membership in Daughter's of the American Revolution traces back to Abraham DeHart. This is not new information.

So where am I going with this, you might ask. I mentioned in my Easter 2016 that I had recently received (on loan) some of my aunt's genealogy papers. I am just starting to look at them. The very first paper I read is a photocopy of the obituary of William Calahill  DeHart. I have come across that name when doing DeHart research but I would need to do a little more to confirm what I think. I think he is George Jackson DeHart's brother. And he lived in Lake City.
 
Who Knew? More collaterals in Lake City to explore.

The same thing has happened on Dad's side. I have mentioned in  Cousins  I knew very little about the origins of my Great Grandmother, Jennie Emily Olmstead Wright. After some late night obsessive explorations, I have found her parents. I learned that they along with Jennie's younger siblings  moved from Illinois to Sac City, Iowa.  This was about the time Jennie and her new husband, Charles Howard Wright, settled in that same community.

Who knew?

I am still amazed at the geographical closeness of these collaterals. Lake City and Sac City, both, had more ancestors and collaterals than I realized.

Thanks to my Aunt Bonnie, I now have more information on the DeHarts, the Wrights, and the Olmsteads.

My Aunt Bonnie and me.
She is so pretty, and I have a stupid curl on top of my head.

I imagine the  furtherest thing from her mind was that I would be picking up her genealogy research about 65+ years after this photo was taken.