Did an Iowa immigrant ancestor really sell a horse to Jesse James? That was a family story when I was growing up. Could it have happened? 

This is the cover story in The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland.

The older bearded man spoke with the heavy brogue of the Old Country. The younger man was an outlaw. They just may have met up southeast of Dexter, Iowa.

Dethlef Ohrt was born in 1837, on the five-mile-long island of Pellworm, then part of Denmark. About the time this North Frisian Island in the North Sea became part of Germany in 1865, Dethlef married Martha Jensen. Their first thatched-roof home was on the low-lying island, criss-crossed with canals, dotted with windmills to pump water from the land.

Jesse James, born in 1847, and his brother Frank, were gangsters who robbed 26 banks, stages, and trains, including a train robbery at Adair, Iowa, in 1873. 

If Dethlef Ohrt did indeed sell the outlaw a horse, he would not have known who the buyer was. And according to several accounts, Jesse James–ten years younger than Ohrt–was polite when dealing with ordinary people.

Perhaps it was after news circulated about the train robbery that Ohrt realized that he’d sold one of his prized horses to the famous outlaw.

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This story was first published by The Des Moines Register, October 31, 1996.

The old Ohrt place was SE of Dexter, Iowa. Years later, my dad’s family lived there when he and his siblings were kids. Their mother (Ruby Blohm Neal) was a granddaughter of Dethlef Ohrt, so she probably spent time at this farm, although I have no photos. (I’m pretty sure her mother (Anna Ohrt Blohm) is in the photo above, second from left.)

The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland will be released on Amazon.com May 13. The ebook is available for preorder now.