Editor's Notebook

Earlier this year the Superior development office produced a self-guided video tour of Superior's Victorian-style homes.

The video may have missed one of Superior's most notorious homes but it may not have.

It appears the City of Superior is preparing to tear down a house at Fourth and National which may have sheltered, Jesse James, a notorious bank robber, and his sister.

But the connection with Jesse James may not be true.

According to the historical research conducted by the late Stan Sheets, the house being prepared to be razed was not constructed until after Jesse's death.

I have been told his sister once called the house home and that Jesse visited her here. But I'm not sure any of his sisters ever visited or lived in Superior. He apparently had one full-sister and two half-sisters.

Stories previously printed in this newspaper eluded to Jesse visiting one of his sisters who lived in the western part of Superior or perhaps in the western outskirts. During his lifetime, the western part of Superior would probably have been that area west of Central Avenue and south of Eighth Street.

Susan Lavenia James was a full-sister. Considerable confusion surrounds the facts of her life. An internet source I checked, said she married Henry Barr, had three children and died in 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Find-a-Grave reports she died in 1889 at age 39. Her death was said to have happened during childbirth at Wichita Falls, Texas.

Along with her mother, she supposedly was imprisoned at age 14 for refusing to cooperate in the quest to capture her older brother, Frank James, and Rebel guerilla leader, William Quantrill. As part of the same quest, her stepfather, Dr. Samuel, was hung three times in one day but survived with permanent brain damage. Her 16-year-old brother, Jesse, was severely beaten. Her mother was pregnant at the time and named the child, Jesse's half sister, Fannie Quantrill Samuel.

Susan married a former member of Quantrill's Raiders, Allen Parmer, in 1870, and moved to Archer City, Texas, She is said to have had nine children before her death in 1889. The James Boys are thought to have frequently visited the Parmers' Texas home.

If the Find-a-Grave account is correct, she probably never lived in Superior. But if the story reporting her death in 1935 is true, she may have lived here.

There were two half sisters but Find-a-Grave has little information on either.

Sarah Louise Samuel Nicholson was married in 1878.

WikiTree indicates Fannie Quantrill Samuel married Joseph C. Hall on Dec. 30, 1880.

It is possible one of those sisters may have lived in Superior for a time but probably after their marriage.

Superior was founded in 1875 and grew rapidly. The population was 458 in 1880 and 1,614 in1890.

Lots of stories circulate about the life of the long-deceased outlaw. Some are true and some are 100 percent fiction. I don't know where to classify his connection to Superior.

It is a generally accepted fact that prior to his assassination by a fellow gang member, Jesse was planning to move to a farm along the Republican River near Franklin. Once there, it is assumed he planned to give up his life of crime.

But he was shot in the back and killed prior to the move.

The stories about his sister living in Superior and his hiding out in her house in the west part of Superior are fun to think and talk about but most likely they are just stories.

Jesse James died in a house on the outskirts of St. Joseph, Missouri in 1882. After the Burlington and Missouri Valley Railroad lines connecting Superior with St. Joseph were completed in 1881, it would have been possible for the outlaw to have taken the train from St. Joe to Franklin and inspect the land he was considering. And since the train passed through Superior, he may have gotten off to visit a sister.

It is also possible he may have arrive here on horseback after robbing a bank or train and was sheltered by a sister.

Whether true or not, I have in the past enjoyed looking at that little house and wondering if it indeed had sheltered a bank robber.

As a grade school student I had a ViewMaster reel with pictures of the house in which he was shot. And I visited that house with my grandparents. My grandfather told about seeing older brother, Frank James. at the Nuckolls County Fair. Frank was part of the crew responible for the fair's horse racing.