Jesse James Killer in Carlisle for Two Nights

Robert “Bob” Ford (1861-1892) Photo c. 1883
Wikipedia: accessed March 26, 2025

To-Night! To-Night!
“The Ford Brothers, exterminators of Jesse James, the noted outlaw chief and his band of desperadoes, are with the Ramblers’ Comedy company. The manager says that nothing will be done to offend the most fastidious.”¹

There was a fair-sized crowd at the Sentinel Opera House in Rheem’s Hall on a chilly Thursday evening, February 1, 1883. The evening opened with the Ramblers Comedy Company, who created more continuous laughter then had been seen at the opera house in a long time, reported the newspaper. Oddly, they were followed by outlaws turned bounty hunters, the Ford Brothers. The next day a Sentinel newspaper reporter wrote that anyone who has not seen the Ford Brothers “imagine them rough and uncouth beings, with long shaggy hair, with the dime novel red shirt and top boots to match, but we were most agreeably disappointed to find them young gentlemen, who really look more like some of our college students than secret service officers of Missouri who have endangered their lives in removing and exterminating the noted outlaw chief Jesse James and the greatest band of criminals the world has ever known.”²

The next night the Ramblers and the Ford Brothers appeared at the Repository Hall in Chambersburg. The Ford Brothers gave the audience a demonstration of how rapid shooting was done in the far West and showed them the pistol that they used to shoot Jesse James.³

The Ford brothers, Bob and Charley, were members of the James-Younger gang under Jesse’s leadership. It was Bob Ford who shot Jesse in the back on April 3, 1882, and claimed a reward from the Governor of Missouri. Bob’s brother Charley committed suicide in May 1884, and Bob, known as the man who shot Jesse James, was killed in Colorado in 1892 by an admirer of Jesse James.⁴