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From: "Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri" by Robert L. Dyer,
published by University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1994,
pages 40 & 42.
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"Jesse James joined the guerrilla gang led by 'Bloody Bill' Anderson
in the spring of 1864 when the guerrillas began returning to Missouri
from Texas, where they had spent the winter. Soon after Jesse joined
Anderson's guerrillas he got a nickname that stuck with him for the
rest of his life. The nickname was 'Dingus'. He got this nickname
after he accidentally shot off the tip of his third finger on his
left hand while he was cleaning his pistol. Jesse did not like to
use curse words so he just shook his hand and said, 'That's the dod-
dingus pistol I ever saw.' The other guerrillas thought this was so
funny that from then on they called him 'Dingus'.
Jesse took part in several guerrilla raids during the summer and fall
of 1864 and got wounded in one of those raids. In August 1864 he was
with Bill Anderson at Rocheport, Missouri, on the Missouri River.
Anderson's gang stayed in Rocheport for several days shooting at
steamboats passing by and making life miserable for the people living
in the town..."
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From:http://www.civilwarstlouis.com/History2/tuckerswar.htm#_ednref7
"Edward Frazor was a St. Louis steamboat striker, and the second member of the boat-burners to turn state's evidence. Frazor told Baker of the Louisville fire and the subsequent trip to Richmond and Mobile. He also admitted to being one of the saboteurs responsible for the St. Louis levee fires in 1863. Murphy and Frazor helped Baker map Tucker's organization and assign credit for the various acts of sabotage.
See also Provost Marshal J. H. Baker's report on the Boat-Burners
Baker's report claimed sixty-one steamboats "owned in Saint Louis" had been destroyed in suspicious circumstances since the beginning of the war. He told his superiors most of them had been destroyed by Tucker's group "or similar emissaries of the rebel government". Recent investigations into the matter using sources both contemporaneous and modern have produced a list of approximately one hundred Union-controlled boats destroyed under suspicious circumstances in the Mississippi River valley during the war. Approximately eighty of these were destroyed in 1863 or later.[69] Certainly not all were sabotage, but Baker's estimate is not unreasonable."
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