ARE THESE PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRANK AND JESSE JAMES?
Facial Features Analysis and Comparison Is The Answer
by Joelle Steele
The following are known and authentic images of Frank and Jesse James. PHOTO #1-a, b, and-c are of Frank. PHOTO #2-a, b, c, and d are of Jesse. The fourth one of Jesse belongs to the Library of Congress and was reportedly taken in 1882 (he died April 3, 1882), and was verified by his widow as being a true and authentic photograph of her husband. I have analyzed all of these photos, and while I have some minor doubts about the first photo of Jesse because of the ear lobes and mouth, I will allow that it is probably due to the lack of clarity in the digital image, and that these are therefore all photos of Frank and Jesse.
PHOTO #1-a: Frank James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #1-b: Frank James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #1-c: Frank James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #2-a: Jesse James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #2-b: Jesse James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #2-c: Jesse James, authentic photo.
PHOTO #2-d: Jesse James, authentic photo.
There are essentially three sets of photos that I analyzed for the purpose of this article. The images are purported to be Frank or Jesse James, and they are from the Spencer Collection, the Ellison Collection, and the Duke Collection. Here are my findings.
THE SPENCER COLLECTION PHOTO
Jesse James. The unidentified men below were sent to me by a collector in England. who believes they are Frank and Jesse James. Writing on the back of his photo appeared to say Frank and Jesse James, but that kind of writing on photos is often a joke on the part of the person who thought the two men looked like outlaws. That happens more times than you can imagine. I don't know which brother each is supposed to be but, in the end, it's a moot point, since neither is Frank or Jesse.
When I compare faces, the very first thing I look at are the ears. If the ears don't line up or match in shape and pattern, it's not the same person. Well, the ears on these men don't match. Neither does anything else. Unidentified #1 has eyes that are spaced farther apart than those of the other two men. Jesse's eyes are set more deeply with the eyebrows slightly higher than those of the other men. Again, a condition of the brow ridge bones. The shapes of all their noses are different: Jesse's is turned up at the tip, Unidentified #2's is pointed, and Unidentified #1's is flat at the bottom. And both unidentified men have longer noses than Jesse's. That's bones again. Unidentified #2's mouth is not the same as Jesse's. Just these few differences are more than enough to indicate with 100% certainty that neither of the unidentified men could be Jesse.
THE DUKE PHOTOS
Jesse James. Betty Dorsett Duke claims to be the great-granddaughter of Jesse James who she says was not killed by Robert Ford in 1882, and blah, blah, blah. I'm not interested in background stories. I analyze faces. Period. I don't deal in probabilities, e.g., "it's highly probable that this is a photo of so-and-so." It's either a 100% match or it is no match at all. Here are the two Duke photos:
Again, I first looked at the ears. Not a match for either unidentified man. The ears align well, but their individual characteristics do not match. The temple process of Unidentified #1 is much narrower than that of Jesse. The nose is again incorrect, as it tilts down and not up like Jesse's. Unidentified #1 has a "widow's peak" and Jesse does not. This alone will rule out a match since widow's peaks are fully formed by the time a child is 5 years old, and do not suddenly appear with age. The slope of the foreheads for these two men do not match and neither do the slopes of their mandibles (jaw bones). On a more "cosmetic" level, Unidentified #1 has much bushier eyebrows, and they are straighter than Jesse's, whose are more slightly arched. And so, again, not a match.
Unidentified #2 also didn't measure up. The jaw line is not a match. It starts to square off slightly towards the chin, and Jesse's does not. In addition, his nose tilts down and Jesse's tilts up, and his cheek bone is not as pronounced as Jesse's. However, he could be a match with Unidentified #1. But that's too hard to tell for sure because the quality of the image for Unidentified #2 is very poor.
THE ELLISON COLLECTION
Here are some photos that are believed by their owners, Greg Ellison and Michele Ellison, a.k.a. the Ellison Collection, to be those of the James brothers. (Ignore the big copyright symbols since these photos are not copyrighted by the Ellisons as they are all in the public domain.) According to the Ellisons, they had these and other James gang and James family photos authenticated by Philip W. Steele (no relation to me), a historian and author who served for more than 40 years at the Jesse James Farm and died in 2007. After measuring and comparing all of these photos with known photos of Frank and Jesse, I do not agree with his findings.
BELOW: Five photos believed to be of Frank James (Ellison Collection).
Frank James. In analyzing the photos purported to be of Frank, I immediately ruled out the first three of the Ellison photos shown above. In the first one, nothing is a match to Frank. In that photo and also in the second, the ears are completely wrong. The first one's are way too small to belong to Frank. In the second, the ears don't stick out nearly enough to be Frank's. And, lastly, in the third photo, the eyes are far larger in proportion to the head than those of the real Frank. Ruling out those three left me with two images that could potentially be of Frank.
Unidentified #1 was apparently hand-tinted by a less-than-skilled individual many years ago, and so some of the features are not as accurate as they should be, and it's impossible to tell what they might have looked like before someone took a paintbrush to them. With doctored photos like this, it is always difficult to make a 100% match. The ears are close in appearance to Frank's, and so is the nose, and they align correctly, as do the eyes. But the eyelids aren't a good match and neither is the mouth. Can't say it's a match for sure, only that it is a maybe, and in my book, that's not a match unless I can analyze the originals and see something in them that I don't see in the digital image above.
As for Unidentified #2, I thought this might be Frank at first because the features align so well. But, after measuring and looking at the details of the face and ears, they are too far off to be Frank. The ear does not match in shape, the nose is a different shape, and the forehead and chin are not tall (high, deep) enough in proportion to the rest of the face to be Frank's.
BELOW: Five photos believed to be of Jesse James (Ellison Collection).
Jesse James. After analyzing the above photos purported to be of Jesse, I ruled out some immediately. The first and fourth have mouths and eyes that are bigger in proportion to their heads than are those of Jesse. The first and second also have "widow's peaks" and Jesse does not. Again, as I mentioned previously, widow's peaks do not come and go from a person's hairline during their lifetime. That left the third and fifth photos as possible matches, so I measured them.
I selected two known and authentic photos of Jesse for this comparison because Unidentified #1 looked young, and so I compared it to Jesse at age 16. But, as it turns out, the photo of Jesse at 16 is not the best exemplar for use in comparisons because Jesse was photographed from a very slightly elevated angle that alters the alignment of the upper part of the ears with the eyes. Not a very significant variation, but even so, I compared Unidentified #1 with another photograph of a young Jesse, and it's not a match either. Unidentified #1's nose is not tilted upward, and the bone structure indicates that the eyes are too far apart and the chin is not quite long enough to be Jesse's.
Unidentified #2 is also not a match with either of the two known and authentic photos of Jesse in the composite. In addition to other differences in measurements, the nose is not tilted upward, the eyebrows are not arched, and the ear shape is not the same. I also noted that the hair was quite curly/wavy in Unidentified #2, and I see no evidence that Jesse's was that wavy, if at all. (The hair is really not an issue as it could have been waved, just an observation.)
HISTORICAL WESTERN PHOTOS
These photos were referred to me by someone who found them on the Web at a site called Historic Western Photos where they were purported to be of Jesse James. Neither are Jesse. Not even close. Ears don't match and neither face looks at all like Jesse James.
SUMMARY
It is always disappointing for me to discover that a photo is not of the historic figure it is purported to be, and it is often devastating to the person who owns the photo. But, it would be a far greater disservice to the real person and to their role in history to misidentify them. And the reason so many would-be historic photos are regularly misidentified is that they are being authenticated by people who lack the anatomical knowledge and attention to facial details that is necessary to make a proper identification. That lack of knowledge and attention further results in a mistaken belief that there can be a percentage of probability as to whether or not a face is that of a particular person. Collectors beware! Do your homework and make sure you hire someone who knows what they are doing when they authenticate the identity of the people in your photos.