Bloomfield.
Jacob Royer Sheaffer was a socially preeminent man, identified with all the progresive movement in the county, actively cooperating in every enterprise which would make for better business and social condition. He was made Master Mason, 1862, and Odd Fellow, 1863. He had the honor of composing Bloomfield Rebekah Lodge #1, holds the honored position of being the first Rebekah lodge of the world. For several years in the 1870s, he was elected Davis County Treasurer and later, at the beginning of the century, he was president of the Iowa State Poultry association.
The first jewelry location(1) of Jacob R. Sheaffer, Walter’s father, was on the Bloomfield´s West Side Square.
In the mid-1870s Jacob went bankrupt. The financial panic of 1873 and the derived failure of the «Great Western Insurance Company», an institution in which a number of Bloomfield men had invested. Several of them were crippled by its collapse and Jacob was counted among them.
Another possible cause of his economic problems was, probably, what the Davis county resolved to quitclaim the Bloomfield public square to be divided into lots. The proceeds of their sale to be given to the Chicago and Southwestern Railway Company, if they would build their road to Bloomfield, the amount to be given to the railway company was $40,000. J. R. Sheaffer and the other two businessmen were appointed and gave bond as trustees (in the penal sum of $80,000), for the sale of the lots above mentioned. But the company concluded not to come to Bloomfield, but went through the county five miles north, and thus secured no aid from this source. Whereupon the trustees quitclaimed the public square back to the county.
In 1876 Jacob Sheaffer because of his bankruptcy whatever cause, sold out his jewelry business to Samuel Parker Findley.
According to a business map of Bloomfield from about 1880, we see Jacob Sheaffer in jewelry business again. Now in the second location(2) at Northwest Square corner as «Sheaffer & Walton» (this last, surname of his political family) watches, clocks, jewelry, and repair.