his twentieth year, 1825, being well supplied with money, he left his
home for the purpose of traveling. He went to the Southwest, and in that
year wrote to his mother from New Orleans.

No other letter was received from him during that year or the next, and
in 1827 word was brought to Jones County that Jesse Bunkley was dead.
The rumor, for it seems to have been nothing more, was regarded by the
family as true. At any rate, no attempt was made to investigate it.
Jesse was the black sheep of the family; he had been away from home a
good deal; his conduct when at home had not been such as to commend
him to the affections of his people; and his mother had married a third
husband, a man named Lowther: consequently the vague news of the young
man's death was probably received with a feeling of relief. There was
always a probability that such a wild and dissipated youngster would
come to some bad end; but with his death that probability ceased to
be even a possibility, and so, no doubt with a sigh of relief, young
Bunkley's people put aside the memory of him. He was dead and buried.
Those who survived him were more than willing to take the care and
trouble of managing the estate which young Bunkley would have inherited
had he returned and claimed it.

But in 1833, Major Smith of Jones County received a letter purporting to
be from Jesse L. Bunkley, and it related to matters that both Smith and
Bunkley were familiar with. In December, 1833, Mrs. Lowther, his mother,
received a letter from a person claiming to be her son Jesse. The letter
was dated at the New Orleans prison. It appears from this letter that
the family of Bunkley had already taken steps to disown the person who
had written to Major Smith, and who claimed to be Jesse Bunkley. The
letter to Mrs. Lowther was very awkwardly written. It was misspelled,
and bore no marks of punctuation; and yet it is just such a letter
as might be written by a man who took no interest in his books when a
schoolboy, and had had no occasion to look into them or to handle a pen.
He said in this letter that he wrote to convince his mother that he was
her own child, though it appeared that she wished to disown him. This,
he declared in his awkward way, he knew no reason for, unless it was on
account of his past folly. He then went on to relate some facts about
the family and his own school days. The mother did not answer this
letter, because, as she said afterwards on the witness stand,