DAVID M. SHEETS
David M. Sheets was born in Adams county, Pennsylvania, April 13, 1842. He is a son of Daniel and Barbara Ann Sheets, who are now living in Frederick county, Maryland, engaged in farming, to which occupation, David M., was reared. The latter, in 1866, went to Carroll county, Illinois, and spent six months, and then to Hardin county, Iowa, where he remained, also six months. He then went to Montana and stopped there three months, engaged in the freighting business, driving his own team. In the summer of 1867, he came to Cass county. While in Hardin county he purchased one hundred and sixty acres of land in Cerro Gordo county. He spent three months in Cass county with his uncle, Henry Meyers, and sister, Mrs. Mary J. Krise. He then returned to Pennsylvania, and was there married to Mattie R. Pitzer, February, 18, 1869. She is the daughter of Samuel and Hettie Pitzer, was born January 13, 1848, in Adams county, Pennsylvania, upon the site of the battle field of Gettysburg. Her father died in 1877, at the old homestead. Her mother now lives with a son, John E. Pitzer, at Gettysburg. Mrs. Sheets' grandfather, Emanuel Pitzer, and her father and his family, were living at their home in Gettysburg during the war. When the memorable battle at that place occurred. Mrs. Sheets and the other children, five in all, left home and passed to the rear of the Union army. The parents remained until after the second day's engagement, in their house, which stood between the contending armies. The house and barn were' riddled by shot and shell before they decided to evacuate. They lost all of their property that could be carried or driven off, and their buildings were almost, if not quite, destroyed. In connection with the history of the family, the following is copied from the "Gettysburg Compiler" of August 19, 1884. "Our citizens are all acquainted with the fact of how Mr. Jim Parr, a gallant member of the Third Georgia regiment, while hunting for a head-board for a dead comrade, discovered a lot of specie hidden beneath the hearth of a bake oven in the town of Gettysburg, and succeeded in getting it home, where he bought a substitute with a part and used the rest to start himself in business after the war." Then followed a particular description of the discovery of the money. It then says: "He (the owner of the money) was an old farmer who distrusted banks and decided that the safest place to deposit his money would be under the hearth of his bake oven, as no one would think of looking in such a place for a treasure." The "old farmer" was Emanuel Pitzer. The family never had the money restored to their possession. Emanuel Pitzer died only a few days before the battle. In 1873, David M. Sheets came again to the west, accompanied, this time by his wife and one child, and settled in Bear Grove township where he had one hundred and twenty acres in sections 17, 18 and 7, land for which he had exchanged his Cerro Gordo farm. He has since added to his farm and now owns two hundred and two acres, all finely improved. Mr. and Mrs. Sheets have four children--Harry, born July 20, 1870; Daniel, born September 30, 1873; Murray, born September 13, 1875, and Grace, born September 20, 1881. Henry Patterson, an orphan son of Mrs. Sheets' sister, born in Pennsylvania, July 16, 1869, makes his home with Mr. and Mrs. Sheets.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pp. 726-727.
