A month earlier, St. Paul [Minn.] Globe (Aug. 8, 1886):

Once a Slave But Now a Traveling
Showman like Forepaugh and Barnum....

'Jessie James was the lad who slayed de many men,
and robbed de Danville Train;
It was all on de account of little Robert Ford
That they laid Jessie James in his grave.'

This was the refrain of a song of forty-three verses which an ebony-hued individual was singing to an admiring crowd of bootblacks and stablemen on Fourth street last Thursday evening. The singer accompanied his song in praise of the train robber with appropriate and grotesque gestures, and as he described the scenes of robbery and bloodshed, the crowd increased in number.

(The singer gave his name as "Happy Tom Benton Scott, the Black Cinnamon Bear of St. Paul." He was 58 years old and a veteran of the Union army.)