Abstract reveals interesting history of ownership
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Staff Photo/TLH
Scaffolding is presently wrapped around the north and east side of Elbert’s Department Store at 104 West Grand in Gallatin as the 141-year-old building gets a touch up, according to owners Judy and Spence Elbert.
Sam Blackwell out of Cameron is redoing the stucco along the upper part of the building and repainting the old ‘eyebrows’ and trim around the windows. The stucco had been chipping off of the brick facade. Renewal is quite a process, Judy said, as the crew first puts on a sealer, then foam board, then mesh, then stucco.
Judy said she had been researching old abstracts and found that the first mention of the building as a structure was in 1873, though the abstract goes back to the 1840s. At that time it was a bank building called the Daviess County Savings Association.
It was owned, Judy discovered in her reading, by people with the last name of Sheets. History buffs know that Captain John Sheets was the bank teller killed by Jesse and Frank James.
The south side of the Gallatin square — what is now Elbert’s far left — back in the 19th century.
There is a note in the abstract that read in part: “I, William M. Sheets, knew John W. Sheets, who was killed and left surviving his widow, Mary, and children, Ernest and Tillie Sheets.”
In time the bank would be called the First National Bank and would be owned by the Tuggle family, which would have eventually included Jane Ann and Bob Paul.
The First National Bank is now called the Farmers Bank. The bank obviously switched from one side of the square to the other. That happened because Spence’s father owned property on the north side of the square. When the bank decided to build a new bank they traded properties with Mr. Elbert.
Judy and Spence took possession of the building now known as Elbert’s Department Store in the late 1960s.
On an interesting side note, Judy said she noticed many of the owners mentioned in the abstract were from Multnomah Falls, Oregon. It just so happens that their son Slade now lives in Baker City, Ore., and they had recently visited Multnomah Falls.