In 1881, about three miles south of here, the U.S. Corps of Engineers was building the Muscle Shoals Canal along the north side of the Tennessee River. On March 11, 1881, Alexander G. Smith, paymaster for the camp near the mouth of Bluewater Creek, went to Florence and collected $5,290.18 from the Campbell Banking Company for the payroll. On his return trip the next day, three gunmen robbed him of the payroll, along with his personal money and watch, and forced him north toward Tennessee. Later they divided the money, returned his belongings, released him, and he reached the Bluewater Camp at noon on March 13. On March 26, a man calling himself Tom Hill was arrested near Nashville after a ruckus in a saloon; he was actually William Ryan, a member of the James Gang, carrying nearly $1,500 in gold and currency. On March 30, Smith identified Ryan as one of the robbers. Ryan said Jesse and Frank James had been living near Nashville under assumed names, but before they could be questioned the brothers returned to Missouri. Ryan was sent to Missouri for crimes committed there and sentenced to prison. James A. "Dick" Liddil, also of the James Gang, said he was innocent of the payroll robbery and that Jesse and Frank James and William Ryan had committed it. In 1884, the federal district attorney in Huntsville gathered evidence against the main suspects in the Muscle Shoals Canal robbery. Jesse James had been killed by Robert Ford in 1882, William Ryan was in prison in Missouri, and Dick Liddil was brought to Huntsville and found guilty of complicity in the robbery. Frank James was arrested in Missouri and taken to Huntsville for trial in a noted three-day case beginning April 16, 1884. Prosecutor William H. Smith, a former governor of Alabama, called witnesses who said they had seen Frank James in Lauderdale County just before the robbery, but none could identify him positively. Defense attorney Leroy Pope Walker, a former Confederate general and Secretary of War, aided by two prominent lawyers, presented witnesses who vouched for Frank James's character and emphasized his Civil War service. Public sympathy strongly favored acquittal, and Frank James was found not guilty and left the Huntsville courthouse free. The robbery was never solved, and this was regarded as the end of the Jesse James Gang. Frank James reportedly returned to Missouri and lived an exemplary life until his death on February 18, 1915.