The sampler has seven rows of capital and small case letters separated by six different bands of decorative needlework. The only numerals are related to the date in the upper right corner and the signature line in the lower left. In December, 2006, the sampler underwent conservation by Leila Harritt, textile conservator who noted "a yellow powdery film on the surface, probably nicotine."

The verse is the first stanza of a poem entitled “The Old Mill-Stream” by the English poet, Eliza Cook. It can be found in the book “The Poetical Works of Eliza Cook” and the first verse (sans punctuation by Zerelda), on the sampler reads:
Beautiful streamlet how precious to me
Was the green-swarded paradise watered by thee
I dream of thee still as thou wert in my youth
Thy meanderings haunt me with freshness and truth”

The signature line reads:
Zerelda Cole’s Sampler
St Catherine Academy May the 8 1840

The lineage of Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James, mother of Jesse James, extends from John Cole, a native of Pennsylvania. He married a girl name Susanna. John died in Culpepper County, Virginia in 1757 and his wife in 1761. A son, Richard Cole Sr., was born to John and Susannah in Pennsylvania in 1729. Richard Cole, Sr. settled lands near Midway Kentucky. He married first Ann Hubbard in 1762 and second Emsey Margaret James on July 21, 1795 in Woodford County, Kentucky. Richard Cole owned a farm and tavern known as the Black Horse Tavern on the old Frankfort-Lexington Road. This tavern became a popular stopping place for travelers and politicians of the day. Henry Clay and John Jordan Crittenden, who served as Kentucky’s governor for two years and later as a member of President Fillmore’s cabinet, often visited to campaign around Cole’s popular tavern. This tavern has been recently restored.

As a result of the raw whiskey served in the often rowdy atmosphere of Cole’s Tavern, the religious community of the region began referring to the tavern’s location as Sodom. Richard Cole, Sr. died at Midway, Kentucky on November 21, 1814. Richard‘s children were as follows:

1) John Cole
Married: Nancy Hines.
2) Richard Cole, Jr.
Born: April 23, 1763
Died: July 9, 1839
Married: Sally Yates
3) Jesse Cole
Married: Nancy Sparks
Elizabeth Roberts
Elizabeth Hyatt
4) Rachel Cole
Born: 1760
Died: 1840
Married: Willa Jett
5) Betsy Cole
Married: Mr. Snape
6) Agnes Cole
7) Sally Cole
Married: Benjamin Graves
8) Alsey Alice Cole
Born: June 20, 1769
Died: July 7, 1813
Married: Anthony Lindsay, Jr.
9) Lucy Cole
Married: Jonathan Cropper

Richard Cole, Jr. married Sally Yates. He was a wealthy farmer and took over the operation of the family’s Black Horse Tavern after his father died. Richard and Sally had the following children:

1) William Yates Cole
Born: September 16, 1788
Died: June 19, 1823
2) Mary (Polly) Cole
Born: 1792
Married: Elijah Finnie, July 18, 1806
3) Elizabeth Cole
Married: Thomas Martin, April 23, 1814
4) Sally Cole
Born: July 24, 1807
Married: Henry B. Lewis
5) Jesse Cole
Born: May 21, 1793
Died: August 3, 1833
6) Amos Cole:
Born: February, 1798
Died: killed in a Cole Tavern fight, May 12, 1827
7) James Cole
Born: September 8, 1804
Died: February 27, 1827
Married: Sally Lindsay

James Cole married his first cousin Sallie Lindsay, daughter of Anthony Lindsay and Alsey Cole. James and Sallie had the following children:

1) Zerelda Elizabeth Cole
Born: January 29, 1825, Woodford County, Kentucky
Died: February 10, 1911
Married: Robert Sally James, December 28, 1841
Benjamin Sims, September 30, 1852
Dr. Rubin Samuel, September 25, 1855.
2) Jesse Richard Cole
Born: November 29, 1826
Died: November 16, 1895 Clay County, Missouri
Married: Louisa G. Maret, December 26, 1846.

James Cole died February 27, 1827 after falling from a horse. Zerelda was two years of age at the time of her father‘s death and her brother, Jesse Richard, only one. After her husband‘s death, Sallie and her two children resided with her father-in-law, Richard Cole, at the Black Horse Tavern until he died in 1839. After Richards death, Sallie married Robert Thomason, a widower with six children, and the family, with the exception of Zerelda, moved to Clay County, Missouri.

Zerelda despised Thomason, according to family history and chose to stay in Kentucky. She resided with her uncle, James M. Lindsay, in Stamping Ground (Scott County, Kentucky) while attending school at the nearby Georgetown Catholic Convent.

After marrying Robert James on December 28, 1841, she moved with her husband to Clay County, Missouri. While staying with her mother and stepfather, the Thomasons, and while Robert finished Baptist seminary work at Georgetown College, her first child, Alexander Franklin, "Frank", was born in 1843(d.1915). Robert returned, acquired a farm in 1845, and, after the birth of his son Jesse Woodson (1847-1882), and daughter Susan Lavinia (1849-1889), left for California where he died in 1850.

Zerelda subsequently married a well-known Clay County farmer, Benjamin A. Simms, a widower with several children, on September 30, 1852. This was a very short and, by some accounts, unhappy union. Zerelda made the comment that Simms was a good husband and that their problems were over Zerelda’s children. The James children apparently annoyed Simms and he wanted to send them away. These problems between Simms and Zerelda’s children, and perhaps also Zerelda’s somewhat domineering personality, resulted in a separation after only a few months of marriage. Simms conveniently died in a horse accident before they were divorced.

Certain previous James writers have indicated that the James boys were related to the Younger family who rode with Jesse and Frank James as the James–Younger gang. No family relationship between these families has ever been found. Recent research into the marriage of Zerelda James to Benjamin Simms, however, has uncovered a very insignificant relationship between the families through Simms’s brief marriage to Zerelda James. Augusta Peters Inskeep, a niece of Simms’s, married Thomas Coleman Younger, who was an uncle of Coleman, James, Robert, and John Younger, who were associated with the James–Younger gang. There was, therefore, this tenuous link between the families as a result of this marriage, but there was no blood relationship.

On September 25, 1855 Zerelda married once again, this time to Dr. Ruben Samuel. This third marriage was by all accounts a happy union, and Dr. Samuel became the only father Frank, Jesse, and Susan James ever knew.

Allan Pinkerton, the Pinkerton Agency's founder and leader, attempted to capture the James brothers. On the night of January 25, 1875, he staged a raid on the homestead. Detectives threw an incendiary device into the house; it exploded, killing James's young half-brother Archie and blowing off the right arm of Zerelda Samuel. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was arson, but biographer Ted Yeatman located a letter by Pinkerton in the Library of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to "burn the house down."

Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel died from a heart ailment while on a train near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on February 10, 1911. She had been visiting her son Frank and his wife, Annie, near Fletcher, Oklahoma. Zerelda, at the age of 86, was returning to her Clay County, Missouri farm home accompanied by Annie James at the time of her death. Zerelda was buried alongside her husband, Rubin Samuel, in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri.

AKS Note: The above was used with permission and graciously supplied by The Jesse James Museum in Clay County, Missouri. It is almost entirely from the book “Jesse and Frank James: The Family History by Phillip W. Steele”, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna 2019.