Absalom Stonecipher Humbard

There seems to be a common misconception that the Missouri guerrillas during the Civil War were little more than outlaws. Of course, that's how Union authorities tried to brand them, but the truth is that many, if not most, of the guerrillas were respected citizens before the war (or, in the case of the younger guerrillas, came from respected families). An example is Absalom S. Humbard of Jasper County. Humbard got married in Jasper County in 1856 and was an established farmer when the war came on. In the years immediately preceding the war, he was a member a group calling themselves the Minutemen who formed in Jasper County for protection against Kansas jayhawkers. Leader of the group was county judge John R. Chenault. At the outset of the war, Humbard joined the Missouri State Guard but declined to re-enlist when his initial six-month term was over. Many of the men who initially joined the State Guard did so with the limited goal of protecting their own soil, and this was true of Humbard. By the end of the six-month enlistment, though, most of them were being asked to join the Confederacy or were being otherwise expected to fight outside Missouri. Like a lot of his fellow State Guardsmen, Humbard balked at this idea and instead returned to Jasper County, where he began recruiting his own small squad. Not long afterwards he fell in with Tom Livingston and became an officer in Livingston's command. Although officially affiliated with Standwatie's Cherokee Indian regiment as part of the Confederate army, Livingston's men were usually referred to as a guerillas. At one point during the war, Humbard was taken prisoner and held at Springfield for six weeks. At the end of the war, he moved to Texas and became a prominent farmer. Humbard's story is probably more typical of the Missouri guerrillas than that of the men we tend to hear about--men like Frank and Jesse James, who became post-war outlaws.

Jesse James Was My Great Uncle

Yesterday, I was looking through some books in the local history room of the Joplin Public Library about Joplin's early history. Some of the stories chronicled in a couple of the books appear to be based mainly on oral legend and after-the-fact exaggeration rather than contemporaneous evidence. One such story that caught my eye was the oft-repeated assertion that the infamous outlaw Jesse James spent considerable time in and around Joplin. For instance, Jesse, using an assumed name, was supposedly introduced to a Joplin banker during the 1870s, and when the banker found out Jesse''s real name, he worried that the James gang would rob his bank. Jesse, though, upon learning of the man's concern, assured the banker that he would never rob a bank around Joplin because he considered it his hometown.
From what I've been able to discern from first-hand sources, this story and those like it are, at best, exaggeration. It's true that Jesse James was known to have passed through the Joplin area at least a time or two, but there's no documentation that he ever spent any considerable amount of time here. Same goes for the Younger brothers, who, like Jesse, are sometimes reported to have been denizens of Joplin. The Youngers' half-uncle Bruce Younger did frequent the town during its early days, and Fletch Taylor (Quantrill lieutenant and the James boys' immediate commander during the Civil War) did move to Joplin during the early lead-mining days and became a leading citizen of the town. Jesse's sister was even reported in a local newspaper as having visited Taylor in Joplin. But the Younger gang and the James boys mainly spent their time (when they weren't actively on the run) farther north around Jackson County, St. Clair County, and so forth, or else in Texas.
The exaggerated stories about Jesse James's exploits in and around Joplin, though, are hardly unique. Nearly every county in the Ozarks (or the Midwest for that matter), it seems, lays claim to some connection to the notorious outlaw. And if you get to talking about family history with the people you meet, it seems that about half of them claim kinship to Jesse, as though it were some badge of honor.

Jesse James

If one were to believe all the legends and folklore about Jesse James that I've heard during my lifetime of living in the Ozarks and especially during my adulthood living in Joplin, one would think that Jesse spent a good deal of time in these parts, particularly the Joplin area. I've found very little documentation, however, to support such a claim. I do know that Fletch Taylor, who led a company of Quantrill's guerrillas during the Civil War that included Frank and Jesse James, moved to Joplin during the 1870s and that a sister of Jesse paid a visit to Taylor here one time around 1880. (Taylor was involved in mining and became a respected businessman in Joplin.)
However, the only time that I know about that Jesse himself was in this area was when George Shepherd, another ex-Quantrillian, tried to kill him near Galena, Kansas, in the fall of 1879. In fact, Shepherd rode into Galena claiming that he HAD killed Jesse. Few people believed him, though, even at the time. Some thought Shepherd was merely a fanciful liar, while others suggested that he was in cahoots with Jesse and the whole incident had been staged to make people think Jesse was dead so the law would quit looking for him.
What is known for sure is that some sort of gunplay between Shepherd and Jesse's gang did occur, and, given the severity of the wounds sustained by both Shepherd and one of the gang members, it seems unlikely that they were participants (at least not willing participants) in a staged event. Although the following possibility was scarcely mentioned at the time, my research has led me to believe that Shepherd sincerely thought he had killed Jesse but that the desperado survived the assassination attempt and seized the opportunity to try to stage his own death.
You can read more about this incident in my book on Ozarks gunfights, which is supposed to be released later this month.