Sheets, James H

James H Sheets

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Company C, 59th Illinois Infantry

Place of Birth:

Boone County, Indiana

Date of Birth:

1843

Place of Death:

Murfreesboro, TN

Date of Death:

December 31st, 1869

Place of Burial:

Murfreesboro, TN

Cemetery Name:

Stones River National Cemetery

James H Sheets was born in 1843 in Boone County, Indiana. He moved to Tennessee, McDonough County, Illinois and worked as a farmer. He enlisted at the age of 18 on July 10th, 1861 in Tennessee, Illinois. The Illinois descriptive records descibe him as being 5' 10" in height and having a dark complexion, featuring black hair and black eyes. He mustered in a month later on August 5th, 1861 in St. Louis, Missouri into Company C of the 59th Illinois Infantry regiment as a private.

The 59th Illinois Infantry left Nashville, Tennessee for Murfreesboro on December 26th, 1862. They skirmished along the way and stopped in Triune briefly before continuing into Murfreesboro on December 30th. They made camp on Gresham Lane and settled in for the night. They were startled awake early on December 31st, hearing the sounds of Confederate forces making their way to the 59th's position. At 6am, they made contact and began the struggle. The 59th held their own, but after falling victim to multiple head on attacks, they began to fall back north toward Asbury Lane. As they were falling back, the troops in the 59th Illinois Infantry became less organized and less in number. They had lost so much, so early in the morning that they had no fight left that day.

The registers of death list Private Sheets as dying from "vulnus sclopet," a latin term for "gunshot wound", in a regimental field hospital on the same day that he received the wound, December 31st, 1862.

James H Sheets is buried in the Stones River National Cemetery in plot D-1537.