"The Kansas City Star" (Missouri) Sunday, February 21, 1915 ORATION AT BANDIT'S BIER. A handful of ashes and a name engraved upon a copper urn is all that will remain tonight of Frank JAMES, Missouri's Robin Hood. Last night his body was taken to St. Louis. Today it will be cremated. Tomorrow the ashes of the former bandit will come to Kansas City and go into a box in a safety deposit vault in a bank, and there they will rest, behind great locked doors of armor plate, until --- well no one can tell; maybe until resurrection day. Yesterday the relatives and friends of Frank JAMES gathered on the JAMES farm, near Kearney, Clay County, for the funeral. A strange funeral! Not a prayer. Not a song. No word from a minister. Just a short speech from a man who saved him from the gallows, and was his intimate friend --- that, and tears of real love and affection. Maybe, after all, those tears coursing down the cheeks of old men who had fought with him, who had seen his loyalty and friendship tested in the "dark days," who knew of his struggles to "beat back" to good citizenship, held greater promise for his soul than all the prayers, that might have been said, or hymns sung. Frank JAMES was one guerrilla beloved and looked up to by all the others. Those veterans of the days of the "red border" went long distances to be at his funeral yesterday. One came all the way from Oklahoma. One got up from a sick bed to go, and as he helped carry the body of his old comrade, he staggered under the weight. When Judge John F. PHILIPS, in his funeral speech, standing beside the coffin, half turned and laid his hand upon it and said: "Since his surrender he acquitted himself always as a man of high honor," a dozen voices, tremulous under the weight of years, answered: "Amen." "From my many conversations with him I learned that he believed in the divine authenticity of the Bible," the judge said, "He believed in the divinity of Jesus and had sublime faith that his sins were forgiven and that he was the recipient of God's mercy and that his soul was saved. He told me that he did not join a church because that act would be misconstrued; the world would look upon it as some sort of hypocrisy, as being done for show. He did not believe that it was necessary to join a church. Knowing that he had been saved by grace, believing that this was a matter between his own heart and God alone, he did not think that religious services were necessary at his funeral. He met death serene and unafraid, confident of the future. The whole countryside went to the funeral. The buggies line the fence for a long distance each side of the road gate. Not one-fifth of the crowd could get into the house. And the country roads were thick with black, sticky mud, and there was promise of rain in the lowering clouds. Those who went by train had to go three miles from Kearney to the JAMES farm and there they waited for hours, walking about the farm, standing in groups on the wet sod under the bare trees, talking of the old times. There was Morgan MATTOX who was a comrade of Frank JAMES under Quantrell, the raider. He came all the way from Bartlesville, Ok., to be at the funeral, and, out under the big coffee bean tree, besides the grave of Jesse JAMES, he told stories that made the blood tingle, more thrilling than you'll find in any story book, and the hero of them all the man lying dead within the little cottage. "Ah, he was the fighter for you --- never afraid, true always to his comrades, a fine soldier" said MATTOX. There was William GREGG, Quantrell's lieutenant. who received Frank JAMES into the band when he was a beardless boy, his heart aflame with hate of the "blue bellied Yankee soldiers." GREGG is old and feeble now and it was a great effort for him to go from his home in Kansas City to the funeral. "The last time I saw Frank JAMES was last spring when I was down with pneumonia," said GREGG. "He came out to my house to see me, and, as he was leaving he came up to me and laid a 10-dollar bill in my hand and said: "Bill, take it, you need it, I know; and when you want more let me know and it will come to you." And the tears rolled down the sunken cheeks of William GREGG as he told it, and his voice choked. The pallbearers were: Ben MORROW of Eastern Jackson County George SHEPARD of Lees Summit John WORKMAN of Independence George WIGGLETON of Independence William GREGG of Kansas City all old Quantrell men; T. T. CRITTENDEN, whose father, while governor of Missouri, received the surrender of Frank JAMES. Among those from Kansas City at the funeral were Judge Ralph LATSHAW, Charles POLK, Lynn S. BANKS, William M. CORBETT, Hal GAYLORD and "Dusty" RHOADES. Immediate relatives of Frank JAMES who were present were: Mrs. Betty PATTON, his aunt Mrs. J. C. HALL, half-sister Mrs. William NICHOLSON, half-sister John SAMUELS, half brother Jesse JAMES, Jr., nephew and his family, and his sister. ====================================================== (I have no connection with this family.) johnobrien@kc.rr.com ====================================================== neirbo5