Jesse McCaleb Jesse was born on Christmas Day, (December 25) 1837 in Roane County, Tennessee (west of present day Knoxville) to James Newton McCaleb and Susannah Hope. Jesse was one of 7 children. There is not much information about his childhood except for census records showing that the children may have been deserted by their parents and their being raised by close family members. Jesse left Tennessee (at the age of 20) in 1857/8 going to Camden County, Missouri (southeast of present day Kansas City). The 1860 census records list Jesse as living with the James Vernon family (James' wife Harriet was Jesse's first cousin). It was here that Jesse met his second cousin and future bride, Anna Boyd Vernon (Harriet's daughter, who in 1860 was 13 years old). Jesse was working as a clerk in the mercantile owned by James W. Vernon, but when the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the Confederate Army at Camden County, Missouri and ...