Caldwell County MO Archives History .....KILLING OF BANKER SHEETS AT GALLATIN, MO 1869 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 4:43 pm

THE KILLING OF BANKER SHEETS AT GALLATIN, MO 1869
	Narrator:  Frank Stewart, 79

     This is one of the unsolved murders in the history of Daviess county.  
Banker John Sheets was cashier of the Daviess co. Savings Association, an 
early bank in this section.  Mr. Stewart's father knew him and banked there.  
Sheets had also been sheriff two terms and probably had some enemies as early 
sheriffs did.
     One day, two strangers came in the bank and asked for change for a 
hundred dollar bill.  Mr. Sheets went back into the rear room to open the safe 
to get the change.  Suddenly, McDowell the other man in the bank heard a shot 
and saw the cashier wounded in the chest, while the robbers were shouting to 
him to keep away.
     Aroused by the shots and the shouts, people on the street knew a bank 
robbery was on.  They were common those days.  They ran to the bank.  The 
robbers ran out with their loot and mounted their horses' but in the get away, 
one of them had trouble getting his foot in the stirrup and his horse 
escaped.  Two robbers rode away on the same horse.  The loose horse was 
caught, and people said it was the property of Jesse James, a bandit of the 
near by town of Kearney.  The James boys declared by notes that James had sold 
this horse previously.  But people always laid the murder of Banker Sheets to 
the James boys.  However, it never was proved.  
     There were those who said that personal enemies incurred while he was 
sheriff had done the deed.  There was also a rumor that because of a likeness 
to a bitter Union leader, some one had killed him by mistake.
     Interview  1933.


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