During the summer of 2007, I was asked to give a group of visitors a tour of the Spirit Lake Reservation. While visiting various historic places I casually mentioned the area’s Jessie James connection. A member of the visiting group, Roberta Case of Oregon City, Oregon told me she had a story about the James’s. On October 6, 2007 she wrote me a letter, putting down on paper what she verbally told that past summer.

“One time, the James gang of robbers stole my [grand] father’s horses. He had to have his horses to survive. So, he waited until early Sunday morning and then went to the house (or farm?) where they were staying. He crept up closer until he could see through the window that they were all sitting around the table having breakfast. He made his way to the barn and went in. There were his horses. He mounted one, and leading the other, he spurred them to rush out the barn door and gallop away. Looking back, he could see that the gang had all come out on the porch. However, they let him go without trying to pursue him”.

Roberta’s grandfather was William Henry Hazlitt and his brothers, Jake, Robert, and Herbert lived along Cypress Creek near Sarles, North Dakota (Cavalier and Towner Counties). Herbert died young after he and Robert left the area sometime before 1883. Roberta’s grandfather William died in 1933 or 34. Unfortunately I was unable to make additional contact with Roberta as she promised to ask other family members for more information.

Joshua K. James’ father was first cousin to the father of Frank and Jessie. Joshua’s wife (unnamed) was from Foley, Missouri. He homesteaded in 1888 near Hansboro, ND, later moving to Rolla, ND. Joshua’s son Harvey was the auditor for the city of St. John, ND (Dewing).

H.M. Wheeler, a well-known medical doctor and one-time mayor of Grandforks, ND shot and killed one of the James gang when they tried to rob the bank at Northfield, Minnesota. James E. Buttree as an eleven-year-old boy in the fall of 1880 met the James brothers. They came to his parent’s farm requesting a meal, and to rest and feed their horses. Both brothers were heavily armed with two pistols each with their butts turned forward, and muzzle loading shotguns. They freely introduced themselves to Buttree’s parents when they learned the Buttree’s had just arrived last spring from Peterboro, Ontario, Canada, and not likely to know who they were. It is also believed they were on their way to assist a “friend” from Stanton, ND who would drive cattle from Missouri to Dakota Territory to finish them for the market. Some of the herd was driven back to Missouri; it is possible the James brothers were heading to Stanton when they stopped off at the Buttree farm (Hagerty 1988).

Now we move back to Devils Lake. Why would Jessie James travel north to Creel City?

The pieces of the puzzle need more research. Where these men plotters in a grand scheme?

A group of Confederates operated in Canada called by historians the Northwest Conspiracy. They were part of the KGC (Knights of the Golden Circle). Jessie James was reported to be a member and it looks like Herbert Creel was too. We also have the vague tale of the Indians seeing lantern lights on Sully’s Hill where it was reported white men were digging up gold. Perhaps the men were burying the gold, part of a treasury for the future rise of the Confederacy. When Henry Ford died in Brownwood, Texas in 1910, brother Frank James and his mother Zerelda (Mrs. Robert James), remarried to Dr. Reuben Samuel, attended his funeral. Was Henry Ford really Jessie? Also, don’t forget the Younger brothers had their hideout in The Cliffs by Creel City, but this is another story. (To be continued…)

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