This history was written by a very distant cousin, Barbara Gladwill. She was a grandchild of John and Sarah Gladwill. This story was told when she was elderly, so her memories might be a bit cloudy, but I believe there is more truth here than not. So, in her own words, here we go, and remember, Missouri was a border state during the Civil War.
I don’t have any pictures of the Gladwill’s, so I have included historical photos of….outlaws! So, in her own words, here we go!
“Most of the following information was told to me by Sam Rees, who was the son of Eliza Jane Gladwill Rees, (the youngest child of the Gladwills). He died 13 December 1996 at the age of 94.”
“Sam said the John and Sarah lived at Fayette, Mo until the house was burnt by Union Soldiers. Eliza Jane was a baby and they only escaped with the clothes they had on. The soldiers were looking for Joseph Thomas, who had been in jail and had escaped, and the soldiers thought that he was in the house, and they burned it. The soldiers threw Eliza and a mattress that she was laying on, out a window. Neighbors hid John and then they gave them a wagon after the soldiers were gone, and they moved south of Mexico near Union Church in Audrain County”.
“John quarried the stone for the railroad that goes across the Auxuasse Creek, which is north of I-70 from Kingdom City. Then they lived at Hamm’s Prairie which is South of Fulton. Their next move was to Brown’s Station north of Columbia, Missouri”.
John made boots and shoes also was a miller, gound flour and made meal. The 1960 census listed his occupation as a lawyer and he kept the books for Tom Rees when he owned the coal mine at Brown’s Station. Also, a preacher. Sarah could spin and weave wool. She could start with sheep’s wool and make pants, shirts etc.
“For sixteen years, Jesse James and his gang robbed and murdered people in a half-dozen states. They held a chilling grip on Missouri. Fear of the James gang prevented many homesteaders from coming to Missouri and new businesses from investing in her economy. After James’s death, people lived with less fear, and affairs in Missouri became more peaceful and prosperous. Frank James eventually surrendered to Governor Crittenden, and Zerelda Samuel showed off her infamous son’s grave to visitors. Friends and family members who had supported and protected Jesse James during his years as a raider and outlaw remained loyal to him, even in death. He became the source of countless songs, books, articles, festivals, and movies—all of which painted slightly different pictures of this controversial Missourian. Interest in Jesse James and his legend continues to this day”. Historic Missourians Jesse James – SHSMO Historic Missourians
It was while they were living south of Mexico near Union Church that Sam says that John Thomas found Jesse James and that he was sick and only had on long underwear, that he had Malaria fever, and that he took him to the house. This was at the time that the bomb was thrown in Jesse’s mother’s home and injured his mother’s arm that was later amputated, and killed his half-brother. He said that Eliza was about 9 or 10 and that Jesse stayed there about 2 years. So that would make the year about 1870. ( These dates don’t line up with the historical record. The bomb was thrown into Jesse’s mother’s house in 1875.) Jesse was treated on March 17, 1879 by Dr. W. A. Hamilton for a return of malarial fever he had contacted in the Big Woods swamp after Northfield. (Northfield was the Great Northfield, Minnesota Bank raid of 1876.
John Thomas and Joseph William were all in the Southern Army, and they were Quantrill’s Raiders, as was James William, the son of Nathaniel, Grandfather John Painter’s brother. On one of the census James William is living with John and Sarah.
*Quantrill’s Raiders were the best-known of the pro-Confederate partisan guerrillas (also known as “bushwhackers“) who fought in the American Civil War. Their leader was William Quantrill and they included Jesse James and his brother Frank.
Early in the war Missouri and Kansas were nominally under Union government control and became subject to widespread violence as groups of Confederate bushwhackers and anti-slavery Jayhawkers competed for control. The town of Lawrence, Kansas, a center of anti-slavery sentiment, had outlawed Quantrill’s men and jailed some of their young women. In August 1863, Quantrill led an attack on the town, killing more than 180 civilians, supposedly in retaliation for the casualties caused when the women’s jail collapsed.
The Confederate government, which had granted Quantrill a field commission under the Partisan Ranger Act, was outraged and withdrew support for such irregular forces. By 1864 Quantrill had lost control of the group, which split up into small bands. Some, including Quantrill, were killed in various engagements. Others lived on to hold reunions many years later, when the name Quantrill’s Raiders began to be used. The James brothers formed their own gang and conducted robberies for years as a continuing insurgency in the region. -Wikipedia*
Now for another version given to me by Sam’s sister who was older that Sam: Ida Mae Rees. She says that Eliza Jane found Jesse and that he had been shot. She found him when she went for water from the spring and went back to the house to get one of her brothers. Jesse stayed at their home about 2 years. John preached at the Union Church and Jesse led the singing. While Jesse was staying with them, he also worked at the mill for John.
Uncle Noah used to set up cans and Jesse shot at them. (SO glad our family helped him with his gun shenanigans!) At nights he slept with Noah and he always laid 2 loaded guns on a stool bottom chair by the bed.
If they had a gathering and the men would have a shooting match, Jesse would pretend he couldn’t shoot very well and when they would get home, Sarah would say “how come at a match you can’t hit nothin’”, and Jesse would say “Sarah, I always hit what I am shooting at.” (gulp).
Sometimes when they would get a paper it would say that Jesse had robbed a bank. He would say “Sarah, how could I have done that, when I was sitting here in your house”?
A man in the church told the Pinkerton’s that Jesse was leading the singing at the Union Church. When they came, Jesse ran out of the church and got on his horse and went to John’s house and hid. When John got home, he put him in a wagon, covered him with hay and took him to St. Charles, and that is the last time the family saw Jesse.
Jesse was a complicated character and was violently pulled between the requirements of a religious life and the demands of banditry.
*Pinkerton, founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in the 1850s and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB.[1] Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton agents to conduct espionage against the Confederacy and act as his personal security during the Civil War.[2][3] The Pinkerton National Detective Agency hired women and minorities from its founding, a practice uncommon at the time, as they were useful as spies.[4] At the height of their power, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world.* Wikipedia
Frank James, Jesse’s brother was a horse starter at country fair and with a circus.
At that time the Boone County fair (Columbia, Missouri) was larger than the State Fair. Frank James would start the horse races and they did that by holding a strap across in front of the horses and when the gun went off they released the strap.
My dad, Frank E. Gladwill (Flood’s son), was sitting on the fence watching the races and when Frank James released the strap, it came back across and hit my dad across the face and knocked him off the fence. Later, Frank James came to the house to visit Noah Flood, and he wanted my dad to sit on his lap and daddy didn’t want to and Frank asked flood what was wrong with him and he said “Oh you knocked him off the fence today at the horse races”, and Frank said “OH was that who that was that was sitting up on the fence. Well, he shouldn’t have been sitting up there”. Then my dad said he was really mad with him because he wasn’t sympathetic.
Bill Cody was also a frequent visitor at Noah’s house and once my dad (Frank E. Gladwill), remembers that Noah took him to see a show of Bill Cody’s.
(Buffalo Bill Cody William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917), known as “Buffalo Bill”, was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman).
What Sam had to say about each of the children:
Joseph William was in the southern army, was a Quantrill and was scheduled to be hanged in 1861 or 1862 when he escaped from Leavenworth, Kansas. Possibly lived south of Hartford, AK. After 1870. In 1850 and 1860, he was on the census in Howard County. In 1870 he was in Audrain County. He married Nancy E. Bartee in Howard County October 23, 1860. Jane Scruggs, daughter of Sarah Frankie Gladwill Doran ,and Sam Rees’s sister Mary went to see the family of a Joe William Gladwill in Hartford, AK and that family didn’t know where Joe had come from.
Sam said that Mariah Minerva’s (Minnie) husband, Thomas Bradley was killed in the civil war and she died of a heart attack when she heard the news that he was killed, and that John and Sarah raised her son, Will. (my great-grandfather.)