Jacob Scheerer

Submitted by Elizabeth Burns, Aug 2002

Arizona, The Youngest State, 1913, pg 348

Jacob Scheerer now retired in Douglas is one of the well known pioneers of Cochise County where for many years he operated a cattle ranch. He was born in Lancaster Pennsylvania in 1853, and is a son of Jacob and Mary Scheerer. The parents were natives of Germany but were married in America and passed the early period of their domestic life in Pennsylvania. They removed to Michigan, thence to Illinois and later to Missouri. In 1869 they went to Kansas taking up a homestead in Osage County on which they passed the remainder of their years. Of the four children born to them but two are now living: Jacob and George W. who is living on a ranch in this county.

Jacob Scheerer passed the first twenty two years of his life under the parental roof. He attended the public schools of Missouri and Kansas and when not occupied with school assisted his father about the farm. In 1875 he left home and located in Chico California and ran an engine in a sawmill for several years. In 1880 he came to Tombstone Arizona where he bought a freighting outfit, consisting of thee ox teams and equipment for three thousand two hundred dollars. He followed the freighting business for twelve years and in 1883 purchased a half interest in a sawmill located in Mormon Canyon, Cochise County and operated it for three years. He disposed of this interest and used the proceeds to purchase land twenty five miles north of Douglas where he established a ranch, called the Double Rod Ranch. He began with a hundred and fifty head of Mexican cattle and two freight teams and on his retirement in 1907 sold it for a hundred thousand dollars. He holds title to twelve hundred and eighty acres of alfalfa and fruit land in Corcoran California and also owns several mining claims thirty five miles north of Douglas.

Mr. Scheerer was married in 1886 to Miss Virginia M. Smith, a native of Virginia City, Nevada and a daughter of B.F. Smith. Her father passed away at Pearce Arizona but the mother is still living and makes her home in Cochise County. She is one of the pioneer woman of Arizona, coming to this state in 1882. Her husband came in 1880 and later sent for his family. Six of the children born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith are living. Mr. and Mrs. Scheerer have two children: Pearl, born 1887 and is now the wife of Earl Reed of Bisbee and George W., born November 19, 1889 and is at the University of Arizona in Tucson and will graduate in June 1916.

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