The one about him conducting the last legal hanging in Rowan County? It turned into such a sideshow that the state took hanging privileges away from counties.

Or the story about him standing on the steps of Wachovia Bank and Trust Co. during a national panic, reassuring people in the glowering crowd they wouldn’t lose their money — and keeping them under control?

Or would you rather hear that he was married to Buffalo Bill’s first cousin?

Louisa Cody Monroe was famous for her biscuits, and when Buffalo Bill came here on his circus train, he’d head to Cousin Louisa’s house for a biscuit and a break from circus fare.

That’s the story Big Jim’s grandson, Albert Monroe, tells.

Albert, who’ll be 90 years old on March 1, knows those stories and more — and he and his wife, Mary Henley, have just donated Big Jim’s revolver to the Rowan Museum.

It’s one piece of a two-part gift.

The other is a copy of “Rumple’s History of Rowan County.”

Albert traded for the book, written by Jethro Rumple in 1881 and for a long time considered the best history book on North Carolina.

A Boyden High friend, Henry Kluttz, traded it to Albert during the school’s first year in ’26-27. They were in the first graduating class. What did Henry get in return?

“I don’t remember,” Albert says. “I’ve had it for 74 years. We traded a lot of things in those days.”

But never again.

In 1955, Albert loaned the book to the new Rowan Museum, and there it’s been until he and his wife made the loan a gift.

But the revolver, not the book, will trigger the imagination of museum-goers.

Having the pistol, says Kaye Hirst, museum director, will be significant for the museum because it will interpret those early, rowdy days a century ago. Even citizens carried firearms then, she says, but Big Jim’s is special. “He ran the county. His word was law.”

And growing up Albert had a front seat on his past.

“It was considered beneath the dignity of a sheriff to ride horseback like his deputies,” he says.

So his son, Albert Louie, drove his father’s buggy when Rowan history was being written — and later told his son, Albert R., tales of his grandfather’s days as peacekeeper.

Albert didn’t know his grandfather who died three years before he was born.

And he doesn’t know how he met and married Buffalo Bill’s cousin.

But maybe it was because for a time Salisbury was the largest town and Rowan the largest county in the state and considered an important stopping place for wagons headed westward to make repairs and take on provisions. The town was noted for experienced blacksmiths and tradesmen who could furnish supplies.

Maybe the family split here and hers stayed but Buffalo Bill’s kept going.

Whatever, she was here and married Big Jim, and when Buffalo Bill’s show train wrecked near Linwood, Jim Monroe, friends and former deputies helped destroy injured animals. It was only fitting, says Albert, given the relationship.

While Big Jim was sheriff — from 1890 to 1902 — distilleries, saloons and houses of ill repute aplenty served the traveling public. Streets weren’t paved.

“And when ladies raised their skirts to cross, young bloods were heard to shout, ‘Hurrah for the mud!’ “ Albert says.

The event of most historic significance while he was sheriff was the last legal public hanging in Rowan County on March 25, 1895. One man had killed a deputy; the other, a lover.

A crowd of 15,000 drove wagons, rode horses and walked 75 miles to witness the spectacle.

And entrepreneurs responded with lemonade stands, cameras, salesmen distributing samples, anything they could sell. And people played baseball, bicycled, made music, drank and had a grand party.

But everything stopped when Big Jim led the two men up the 13 steps to the gallows. A prayer, a song, a great moan — and finally the sheriff intoned, “Beware the trap and may God have mercy on your souls.” Then he raised an ax and cut the cord holding the trap beneath the murderers.

But Albert heard other stories, too.

Back then, his father told him, the sheriff collected taxes. People paid with silver dollars. Big Jim would take a two-horse wagon, and by the end of the day, it was about all the horses could do to pull the wagon back. He was allowed 25 cents a day to get dinner for his deputies in some country woman’s home.

“But my grandfather was frugal. He’d buy them a can of sardines for a nickel and some crackers” and save the county money.

And he remembers his father telling him about street people, called drifters in that day. A deputy would give them a few whacks with a night stick and say, “Don’t let the sun set on you in this county,” and they’d be off.

“They just ran them out for small infractions instead of putting them in jail. And he’d send trustiesnext door to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church to rake leaves and use the leaves to bed down the horses.”

Researching his grandfather’s life, continuing an interest in early Salisbury’s people and buildings, collecting early medical paraphernalia and lore, travelling and writing about what he and his wife saw and keeping the home they built on South Jackson Street in 1938 in perfect, shining condition kept Albert Monroe from any thought of boredom since he retired in 1976 after 42 years with the Salisbury Post advertising department.

Probably the highlight of his professional career was being an honorary member of Rotary International Press at conventions in Switzerland and Canada — and becoming the oldest living member of the Salisbury Rotary Club which he joined in 1954.

And a March 1 birthday is wonderful on Leap Year when it gives him an extra day.