As I continually researched, I found existing history books confused my John M. James with the John M. James of the Jesse James family. Dates of the two show them as contemporaries.
Beyond that, my James family is expansive & encompasses many related James lines that now could be documented. Yet, for all the notoriety & focus showered upon the Jesse James family for six generations, this family had not grown beyond what's described in "Jesse & Frank James, The Family History," by Phillip Steele, and in "Background of a Bandit, the Ancestry of Jesse James" by Joan Beamis & William E. Pullen. I questioned why.
Other questions arose, too. I wanted to know where did Robert Sallee James get his name Sallee? Who was Rev. Lewis Chaudoin who married his parents John M. James and Mary "Polly" Poor, Jesse's grandparents? For answers I turned to the in-law families and social relationships found in my own James family.
