Son of Peter Shirts and Margaret Cameron

Married Mary Adeline Lee, 23 Aug 1857, Parowan, Iron, Utah, later separated

Son - Don Carlos Shurtz

Married Elizabeth Williams, 23 Aug 1857, Parowan, Iron, Utah

Children - Alonzo Shurtz, Peter Shurtz, Wallace Shurtz, Marcy Ann Shurtz (Shirts), Emma Gean (Jane) Shurtz, Ambrose Shurtz, Myron Shirts, Melissa Shurtz, Don Carlos Shurtz, Perry Martin Shurtz, John Shurtz, Maud Shurtz

History - Don Carlos ("Carl") Shirts (var. Shurtz, Schertz, Schurtz) were from Hesse, Germany and settled in Bergen and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey, then moved on to Ohio. His Swedish forebears immigrated from Stockholm to New York County, New York, then to Bergen County, New Jersey. He also had Scot (Cameron) and Irish (Kelly) forebears who immigrated to Pennsylvania. Don Carlos Shirts was named and blessed by the Prophet Joseph Smith in honor of the dead prophet's brother.

On 23 Aug 1857, Don Carlos took his brother's widow, Elizabeth Williams, and Mary Adeline Lee, daughter of John Doyle Lee, to the home of Apostle George A. Smith and was married to them both in the church. One day shortly before the Mountain Meadows massacre, John D. Lee sent Don Carlos to advise the Indians what they should do when the emigrant train came in view. Don Carlos gave the Indians the opposite counsel from what he was told to do, making John D. Lee angry, so Don Carlos left the area, leaving both wives together in the house. Shortly after he returned, Mary gave birth to a boy on 5 June 1859 and named him Don Carlos. Eleven days later, Elizabeth had a baby boy whom she named Don Carlos.

Don was one of the first settlers in Escalante Utah, then known as "Potato Valley", building the first adobe house in the valley. He was a carpenter and made many beautiful pieces of furniture including tables, mantles and coffins.

Don was very musical playing the violin with his brother Darius at dances. In 1861 when he was twenty-five, he made a dulcimer out of red cedar from the Kanarraville trees. That dulcimer was still being played many years after his death by his son, Ambrose. At the present time it is in the Daughters of Utah Pioneer Museum in Salt Lake City.

Heart Throbs of the West, Kate B. Carter, Vol. 12, p. 380

Don Carlos Shurtz, Sr., and James McInelly, Sr., were carpenters and cabinet makers. Don Carlos made a piano and a violin for use in the early days of Escalante. James McInelly was also a maker of caskets. Hyrum Norton and his brother worked as carpenters on Escalante's first public building in 1876-1877. This was a log building about 18 x 36 feet. Most of the pioneer men in Escalante, after their crops were planted and the ditches made, would take their broad axes and travel to the canyons where they would chop down logs, flatten the sides and use in building their homes. James B. Woolsey, Sr., boasted the first home with a lumber floor. Other earlier floors were made of flattened logs, hand hewn.

Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, Benjamin Hawkins Company (1850); Age at Departure: 13

Residents of Old Fort Harmony

Hurricane Hintons and Spendloves. This book about John Nock Hinton mentions that Don Carlos, King Darius, and others were some of the first settlers in the Virgin City and Grafton. Mentioned on pg 24 & 26 of book. Building roads for the Nephi twist.