← Back to the front page

The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

12. The Pinkerton Grudge Match

The Northfield Raid. Western Legend Photo Gallery

The Pinkerton Agency was hired to go after the James-Younger Gang, only for the gang to kill a pair of Pinkerton agents. From then on, the agency’s founder, Allan Pinkerton, took it personal and turned the hunt into a vendetta. Soon thereafter, during a Pinkerton raid on the James household, a bomb was thrown that killed one of Jesse’s brothers and severed his mother’s arm.

In 1876, the gang attempted to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, but it ended catastrophically when armed townspeople resisted. After a shootout and pursuit, only Jesse and his brother Frank escaped, with the rest of the gang killed or captured. The brothers then went to ground in Tennessee, where Frank settled down to an honest living. An honest living was not for Jesse, however: he returned to crime, and formed a new gang in 1879.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.