![]() The village women were in their homes attending to chores, and their children were outside playing. Also present in the store were several men who had dropped by to chat with the storekeeper and station agent Tom Fitz. His 16-year-old son, Billy, had just arrived with team and wagon to meet him and was inside the store warming himself at the stove. On this chilly Saturday afternoon, January 31, 1874, the southbound Little Rock Express was scheduled to stop and put down a passenger - State Rep. Passing trains generally only slackened speed there to exchange mailbags, but today would be different. Louis, the tiny settlement contained only about 15 people, three crude houses, a store/post office and a small railroad platform. Gads Hill, according to one contemporary observer, was ‘a small place, of no account.’ Situated in the piney Ozark wilderness of southeastern Missouri, 120 rail miles south of St. They were planning to rob a train - something never done before in Missouri. ![]() Jesse James and his gang, it seems, had one more bit of illicit business to attend to before making the long ride back home to St. Soon after leaving the blacksmith shop, the ‘daring band’ crossed the state line into Missouri and proceeded north along the St. Louis Dispatch expressed ‘very little doubt’ that they were members of the infamous James-Younger Gang, consisting that day of Frank and Jesse James, Arthur McCoy and two of the Younger brothers. Calling them ‘the most daring band of robbers the country ever contained,’ the St. Even more disturbing were their suspected identities. Newspapers reported that they were Missouri outlaws, former Confederate guerrillas, fresh from a stagecoach holdup committed January 15 near Hot Springs, Ark. Only later would the smithy learn a shocking truth about his mysterious patrons. When he finished shoeing the animals, the travelers paid him and rode on. The blacksmith asked no questions but went straight to work. What’s more, each man wore several Colt Navy revolvers, three carried double-barreled shotguns, and their horses, although of superior quality, were noticeably jaded from hard riding. ![]() They were strangers to the area, and the bedrolls, extra clothing and other gear behind their saddles indicated they were traveling men. Army overcoats stopped to have their horses shod at a village blacksmith shop on the Chalk Bluff Road in northeastern Arkansas on Tuesday, January 27, 1874. Jesse James and the Gads Hill Train Holdup Closeįive armed riders wearing U.S.
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