Hello! My name is Michelle and I have lived in Hailsham all my life. I work in a local primary school, love reading, family time and being creative. An early love of history was nurtured first by teachers at Marshlands Primary School, then at HCC and now, I coordinate history-based events at the school where I work.
My interest in American outlaw, Jesse James, began many years ago through Hollywood movies and then blood and thunder paperbacks sold in secondhand book stores. I was interested in the scale of his story, the intricacies of his make up, the spaces between fact and fiction. Safe to say, by the time I met Professor Starrs, the man in charge of Jesse’s 1995 exhumation, I was pretty much an enthusiast, and yet I still thought my first trip, in 2002, to Missouri would be the last thing I did before moving on to other topics. Visiting the James Farm in Kearney where Jesse was born and the House On The Hill in St. Joseph where he was killed merely fed my intrigue and I have been back several times since.
Eventually, I decided to use my growing archive of research to write short articles and I joined groups like the English Westerners’ Society and the Friends of the James Farm. I have spoken on podcasts, contributed to blogs, given presentations both here and in the US, have authored Legends Born Where Men Die, Witnesses To The Passing of a Legend and Jesse James’ Physicians, and have been the editor of the James Farm Journal for the past seven years. As a Jesse James historian and Friend of the James Farm board member, I share a dedication to preserve the history of the James family and that of the times in which they lived.