MALAD — Did legendary outlaw Jesse James ever call Malad his home?

    The story has been part of the Palmer family folklore for over a century. They say the 19th century bank robber from Missouri married one of their relatives in 1869 and lived in a cabin that once stood on their ranch property four miles west of Malad.

    Now, with compelling historical evidence in hand to prove their story, the family is looking to restore the currently dissembled cabin to its original state and turn it into a historical site.

    To help raise funds for the restoration, they will be hosting the “Cowboy Christmas (After Christmas) Concert.” The concert will be held at the First Presbyterian Church at 7 South Main Street in Malad on Dec. 27 at 7 p.m.     

    Keeping in tune with James’ outlaw history, the concert will feature cowboy-stylized Christmas songs. Though the Palmers are recommending a $5 entry fee, it is a “pay-what-you-can” fundraiser.  

William Cole or Jesse James?

    The story begins around 1869 in Utah. A woman named Susan Palmer Dubuque loses her husband to a drowning and is widowed. She relocated to Malad, where she caught the eye of a young farmhand named William Cole.

    The two are married on May 20, 1869 and lived together in a cabin on the Palmer family ranch. However, within a few months, Cole abandoned his new wife and disappeared.

    Ernest Palmer, who grew up on the ranch and is Dubuque’s great-great nephew, has a photocopy of their 1869 marriage license, which looks like a standard pioneer-era document. However, another document, a signed affidavit from local Justice of the Peace R.G. Evans, dated exactly three months later on Aug. 20, 1869, reveals a little secret about the wandering Mr. Cole.

    “R.G. Evans states here that William Cole is actually Jesse Woodson James,” Palmer said, pointing to the affidavit. “William Cole was one of the aliases Jesse James would use.”

Finding proof

    “I’ve been trying to find certified proof to disprove that Jesse James ever lived here, but I can’t find any,” Ernest Palmer said.

    For years, the Palmers have dug through books and historical documents to find what they could about Jesse James’ life during this period, and they found a large gap.

    James and his brother Frank robbed a bank in Richmond, Missouri on May 23, 1867. Palmer says the next verified sighting of Jesse was on Dec. 7, 1869, when he robbed a bank in Gallatin, Missouri and killed a cashier he believed was a Union Army officer. It was this robbery that made him famous.

    What James was doing and where he was during the two-and-a-half year gap between the two robberies is a mystery.

    “It is plausible he could have been in Idaho during that time,” Palmer said. “There’s no way to prove it definitively, but Jesse James’ great-grandson swore he was in Idaho at this time.”

    The rare 1975 book “Jesse James Was One of His Names,” which collaborates the Palmers’ claims, even has a picture of William Cole and Susan Palmer Dubuque. The man in the grainy black and white image is wearing a hat and sporting what appears to be a beard, making a photo identification difficult.

    “James was becoming well-known because his earlier crimes were being documented in dime store novels that were popular at the time, so he would have altered his appearance,” Palmer said.

    The 1869 farming year was terrible in Idaho, with infestations of crickets and grasshoppers destroying crops. The Palmer family even has a poem, allegedly written by Cole aka Jesse James, titled “Grasshoppers and Crickets,” which describes the damage the bugs were doing to the ranch.

    Large numbers of farmers in the valley left after the infestation. Whether this was the reason why Cole abandoned his wife and land is a mystery.

    “He sounded like he liked to be around for the good times and then took off when something else interested him,” Palmer said. “Some say Frank came out to get him and they robbed a stagecoach on their way back to Missouri, but who knows? There’s so many stories out there.”

    James’ descendants told Palmer that there were lots of women and lots of marriages during this time period.

The cabin

    In the early 1970s, James’ descendants visited the Palmer Ranch to take a look at the one-room cabin. The Palmers had been using it for decades to store horse tack.

    But about five years ago, a historical frontier park was proposed in the small town of Samaria, seven miles southwest of Malad. The Palmer family donated the cabin to the park, agreeing to disassemble it and move it.

    However, plans for the new park fell through, and now the cabin sits disassembled in a cattle shed in Samaria, like a stack of giant Lincoln Logs.

    Christened the Jesse James Cabin Restoration Project, the Palmers hope to rebuild the cabin and turn it into a historical site at its original location on the family’s ranch. They hope to restore it in a similar fashion to the Olive May Davis Osmond Cabin and Museum, located in Samaria.

    The Osmond Cabin, which was dedicated in 2010, was the birthplace of Donnie and Marie Osmond’s grandmother.

    The estimated cost of restoring the cabin is $6,500, and $800 has been raised since the project’s website, which can be accessed at www.gofundme.com/jessejamescabin, was launched.

    Funds raised by the “Cowboy Christmas (After Christmas) Concert” on Dec. 27 will go toward the restoration project.