The following article is the property of The Iowa Almanac and was posted with permission from the author, Professor Jeff Stein.
Citizens in the town of Corydon in Wayne County were excited the morning of June 3rd, 1871. Recent annual tax collections were completed, and there was to be a town meeting that day to hear the renowned orator Henry Clay Dean. While folks were gathered for that at the Methodist Church, four men rode into town. They were wearing linen dusters, and had been in the area earlier in the week, claiming to be cattle buyers.
But these were no cattle buyers. They were Jesse James, Frank James, Cole Younger, and Clell Miller, already sought for bank robberies in Missouri and Kentucky.
They stopped at the county treasurer’s office and asked the lone clerk on duty if they could get change for a one hundred dollar bill. Their plan was to rob the office of those tax collections. But the safe was locked since the treasurer was at the town meeting, so the clerk suggested they try the Ocobock Bank one block to the west.
All the bank employees were also at the town meeting, except for a single clerk. The four men forced him into the bank safe and made off with $10,000…that would be worth more than $257,000 today.
Not content to simply get away quietly, the gang rode to the church and interrupted the speaker at the town meeting, declaring the bank had just been robbed. But at first, people thought it was a hoax, part of the presentation.
Townspeople quickly figured it out and formed a posse, but the James-Younger Gang got away. Ultimatelly, Clell Miller was returned to Corydon to stand trial, but was found not guilty because of an alibi placing him elsewhere at the time.
For a number of years, Corydon even hosted “Jesse James Days” the first weekend of June, marking the time when the James Gang first robbed a bank in a northern state, on this date in 1871.
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