James Gettys (founder of Gettysburg)

[7] Gettys invested in two turnpike companies created to cover dirt roads with gravel for easier traveling and commerce in and out of Gettysburg.

[8] Similarly, on February 6, 1811, Governor Simon Snyder approved the creation of the Gettysburg and Blacks' Turnpike Company, in which Gettys was an investor.

[9] In March 1813, Gettys and several local men petitioned the state legislators for the right to create a bank in Adams County.

The legislators passed an Act of General Assembly approving the request, but Governor Snyder vetoed it.

[21] In 1794, during the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, Gettys was commissioned as a second major in the 4th Regiment of the Militia of York County under the command of Brigadier General Henry Mille.

In 1802, at the height of the political infighting between the Federalist Party and the Democrat-Republican Party, the Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas McKean, mandated the state militia men change from the traditional Federalist black cockade to a new red and blue one to differentiate Pennsylvania's militia.

[27] In March 1815, many members of the Gettys family died of what was thought to be typhus fever, spread from the epidemic in Maryland.

[29] In total, the disease killed five people in his family, leaving his two young sons, James Jr. and Robert Todd, orphans.

[30] Gettys was originally buried in Gettysburg Presbyterian Church's cemetery at Washington and Railroad Street.

When the church moved to its current location, James Gettys, Jr. paid for his parents' exhumation and reburial in Evergreen Cemetery.