April 3rd

Who Am I? I Died on April 3.

I was born on September 5, 1847 in Clay County, Missouri. I had two full siblings: my older brother, Alexander Franklin and a younger sister, Susan Lavenia. My father was a commercial hemp farmer and Baptist minister in Kentucky who migrated to Missouri after marriage and helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. He was prosperous, acquiring six slaves and more than 100 acres of farmland. My father traveled to California during the Gold Rush to minister to those searching for gold and died there when I was three years old. After the death of my father, his widow Zerelda remarried twice, first to Benjamin Simms and then in 1855 to Reuben Samuel, a doctor. Dr. Samuel moved into the our home.

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Clay County became the scene of great turmoil, as the question of whether slavery would be expanded into the neighboring Kansas Territory came to dominate public life. Numerous people from Missouri migrated to Kansas to try to influence its future. Much of the tension that led up to the American Civil War centered on the violence that erupted in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery militias.

My brother followed Quantrill to Texas over the winter of 1863–4, and returned in the spring in a squad commanded by Fletch Taylor. When they returned to Clay County, I, only 16-years old, joined his brother in Taylor's group. In the summer of 1864, Taylor was severely wounded, losing his right arm to a shotgun blast. The my brother and I joined the bushwhacker group led by Bloody Bill Anderson. I suffered a serious wound to the chest that summer. The Clay County provost marshal reported that both my brother and I took part in the Centralia Massacre in September, in which guerrillas killed or wounded some 22 unarmed Union troops; the guerrillas scalped and dismembered some of the dead.

I recovered from his chest wound at my uncle's Missouri boardinghouse, where I was tended to by my first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, named after my mother. My cousin and I began a nine-year courtship, culminating in marriage. Meanwhile, my old commander Archie Clement kept his bushwhacker gang together and began to harass Republican authorities. I did not become famous, however, until December 1869, when I and my brother robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little, but I shot and killed the cashier Captain John Sheets, mistakenly believing the man to be Samuel P. Cox, the militia officer who had killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. The 1869 robbery marked my emergence as the most famous of the former guerrillas turned outlaw. It marked the first time I was publicly branded an "outlaw", as Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden set a reward for his capture.

Meanwhile, the my brother and I joined with other former Confederates, to form a new gang. I was the public face of the gang (though with operational leadership likely shared among the group), the gang carried out a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. We robbed banks, stagecoaches, and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the bystanders.

On July 21, 1873, we turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa and stole approximately $3,000 ($51,000 in 2007). F or this, we wore Ku Klux Klan masks, deliberately taking on a potent symbol years after the Klan had been suppressed in the South by President Grant's use of the Force Acts.

The Adams Express Company turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop us. My cousin Zee and I married on April 24, 1874, and had two children who survived to adulthood.

On September 7, 1876, the we attempted their most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. After this robbery, of the gang, only my brother and I were left alive and uncaptured.

Later in 1876, my brother and I surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B. J. Woodson, respectively. My brother seemed to settle down, but I remained restless. I recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri, on October 8, 1879. The robbery began a spree of crimes, including the holdup of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Killen, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of old, battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while we grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another. The authorities grew suspicious, and by 1881 my brother and I were forced to return to Missouri. In December, I rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, not far from where he had been born and raised. My brother, however, decided to move to safer territory, heading east to Virginia.

With my gang decimated by arrests, deaths, and defections, we thought that I had only two men left whom I could trust: brothers Robert and Charley Ford. Charley had been out on raids with us before, but Bob was an eager new recruit. To better protect myself, I asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. I often stayed with the Fords' sister Martha Bolton, and according to rumor I was "smitten" with her. I did not know that Bob Ford had been conducting secret negotiations with Thomas T. Crittenden, the Missouri governor, to bring in the famous outlaw.

On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Fords and I prepared for departure for another robbery, going in and out of the house to ready the horses. It was an unusually hot day. I removed my coat, then declared that I should remove his firearms as well, lest he look suspicious. I noticed a dusty picture on the wall and stood on a chair to clean it. Robert Ford took advantage of the opportunity and shot me in the back of the head.

I am a famous Old West outlaw. Who Am I?

• Burt Alvord
• Rufus Buck
• Jesse James
• Harry Longabaugh

Come back tomorrow for the answer