As you can imagine, my story and family photographs have created a great deal of controversy. In the spirit of full disclosure I will reprint a message I posted summarizing my positions on the James Family Forum (Genforum) in September of 2000. Again, my goal has always been to determine the true identity of my great-grandfather and to that end I welcome others' opinions and suggestions.


September 6, 2000 7:19 p.m.

There has been an ongoing dispute as to whether or not a photo of my great-great-grandmother has been reversed. The photo in question is pictured in my book and the caption reads: “In this Courtney family photo, James Courtney’s mother is clearly missing her right arm. Close examination of the photo reveals a large pin in the middle of the right sleeve. When the author found this family photograph, she knew that her great-great-grandmother and Zerelda James Samuel was the same person.” (I believe that my opposition also knows the importance of this photo and that is why it as been so vigorously attacked. After all, how many women could have been running around Missouri looking just alike, wearing the same dress, and missing the same arm?)

It was brought to my attention that one way to determine if a photo has been reversed is to examine the buttons on the clothing of the individual pictured in the photo in question. Traditionally, the buttons on a woman’s garments are located on the left, whereas the buttons on a male’s garments would be on the right.

I have examined the photo in question, and based on the information presented above, the buttons are on the wrong side. I will concede that it does appear that the photo in my book has been reversed at some point in time. According to the location of the buttons, my great-great-grandmother was missing her left hand instead of her right hand. Max Courtney was the first to bring this matter to my attention, but Kathy Reynard and Linda Snyder also deserve credit for their continued efforts in pointing out this discrepancy. I sincerely thank each and every one of them for the time and attention they devoted to this matter. If they had not been persistent, I may not have ever discovered an error in the historically accepted photos of Zerelda James Samuel.

Nearly every written account that I have read concerning the subject of Zerelda’s missing arm, reports that it was her RIGHT arm that was amputated due to it being severely shattered by a Pinkerton bomb. But as I examined the questioned photo of my great-great-grandmother, I also examined the buttons on known photos of Zerelda James Samuel. And that is when I discovered that Zerelda’s right hand was not missing - it was her left hand... just like my great-great-grandmother.

I kept remembering a conversation that I had with George Warfel and Betty Barr in 1996 (Mr. Warfel is the photo authenticator for The James Farm & Museum in Kearney, Missouri, and Betty Barr claims to be the great-granddaughter of Jesse James). They were looking at a photo of my great-great-grandmother, and I told them that not only did the women look alike, they were wearing identical dresses and they were missing the same hand. Mr. Warfel then asked which one of my great-great-grandmother’s hands was missing. When I said that I thought it was her right hand, they looked at each other and laughed as if it were a trick question. When they walked away, I told my daughter that there was something about Zerelda’s missing hand that they apparently did not want us to know.

I decided to call Mr. Warfel last week and ask him if he remembered the aforementioned incident. He did. I then asked him which one of Zerelda’s hands was missing. He said it was her right hand. At that point I asked him if he had ever believed that Zerelda was missing her left hand instead of her right hand. He said that he indeed had. I asked him what had made him think that, and he said it was because photographs had indicated that it was her left hand. (I now know it was the buttons on her clothing that made him think it) In fact he had believed that Zerelda’s left hand was missing from the time he started researching the James/Samuel family in 1936 or 1937, up until four or five years ago. Mr. Warfel is eighty-four years old, and for over fifty years he had believed that Zerelda was missing her left arm. Now it appears that he changed his mind about which arm was missing at about the same time he saw the photo of my great-great-grandmother. Hmmm. I of course asked him what had made him change his mind about which arm was missing, and he said that he had read some books that said it was her right arm (He hadn’t read any of those books in fifty years?) I then asked him if it is true that one can tell if a photo had been reversed by looking at the buttons. He replied that it was definitely true. In fact, while we were speaking he was looking at the photo of Zerelda on the cover of the book, MaMaw, by Susan Dodd. This particular photo is also pictured in Phillip Steele’s book, Jesse and Frank James: The Family History. Using the buttons as a guide while I was examining both photos, I saw that it was Zerelda’s left hand that was missing. Mr. Warfel still insists that Zerelda’s right arm was the missing arm.

I can not say why most of the written reports claim that it was her right hand, but either the buttons on all of Zerelda’s garments that I have seen so far were on the wrong side, or it was her left arm that was missing. The same would hold true in my great-great-grandmother’s case.