Jesse Edward JAMES

                   Notes for ESTELLA (STELLA) FRANCES MCGOWEN:
Stella and Jesse Jr were married in the parlor of her parents' home at 415 Landis Court, Kansas City.
Taken from excerpt of Milton F. Perry edits memoir of woman who married into the family by Joan gilbert:
Stella Frances McGowan, a great, great, great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone, met Jesse Edwards James, called Jesse Jr., at a Kansas City party. She married him about a year later and loved him for 50 more. They lived well in Kansas City and Los Angeles on his earnings as an attorney and they reared four daughters. One of those became a bank employee--surrounded to the amusement of her boss, by millions of dollars of other people's money. A grandson the James's reared as a son is a superior court judge in California and is aurhor of I, Jesse James.
Contrary to the natural expectations of her own family, Stella found the James and their connections to be people of intelligence, refinement, and determined respectability. They took religion seriously and pursued education, several going into teaching and other prestigious professions. One was a legislator in California.
Stella found Zerelda Cole James-Simms-Samuel, mother of the outlaws, to be anything but the crude, coarse person of popular portrayal. She was large, 6 feet tall, dignified, about 75 years old, but not an old woman by any means... with the bearing of an educated woman. (Zerelda had far more schooling than most women of her time, possessing a graduation certificate from a Catholic girls' school in Kentucky.
The Jameses experienced pain when books and films were done about the brothers without family authorization and without concern for truth.