WILLIAM -SHAEFFER, one of the old and respected citizens of Fairfield was born in Stark County, Ohio, July 28, 1817. His parents, Daniel Shaeffer and Elizabeth Rinehart, were of German parentage, the father of the latter having served as a Drum Major in the Revolutionary war. The Shaeffers also were represented in the United States in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
Daniel Shaeffer was born in Pennsylvania, and there married to Elizabeth Rinehart, soon after which - in 1812 - they settled in Stark County, Ohio. He was the proprietor of the town of Waynesburg of that county, and was killed in that county March 14, 1848, by the falling of a building.
William Shaeffer, in 1838, left Ohio and came to Graysville, Ill., and there engaged at his trade. having learned the trade of house carpenter in Ohio.
He came to Wayne County, Ill., in 1840, and was married, in Fairfield, May 18, 1848, to Miss Maria Alexander, of Carol County, Ohio, where she was born December 14,1822.
For fifteen years they pursed the interests of farming, located in Barnhill Township, two miles south of Fairfield; but he, being of a speculative turn, soon found broader fields upon which to bestow his energies, and became variously interested in merchandising, stock-dealer, and also dealing, in grain, in which be still engages.
He has had a family of children as follows:
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