continued from previous page

Efforts to procure the war record of Peter Shaver in Harrisburg, in the Division of Public Records, Pennsylvania Historical Society and Museum, were met with the following:

“The armed services during the early days maintained no individual service records to reflect the whole military career of each soldier, neither did it record places of birth, residence or information as to marriage or kinship – also there existed a strong probability of a contemporary being registered for each individual soldier, and that it is impossible for the Division of Public Records to either furnish inclusive statements regarding the service of an individual or to verify such statements when compiled by others. The investigators who uncover positive evidence in even one instance, must consider himself fortunate. Under no circumstances does the Division of Public Records guarantee an identification.”

The files of the same division also contain the names of TEN men named Peter Shaver, some spelled differently, residing in Pennsylvania and participating in the Revolutionary War. To ferret out the right Peter Shaver, our ancestor, was a tedious and time-consuming task in searching for essential and pertinent data. Especially confusing was the task of deciphering spelling and defining geographical locations.

David Shaver, the son, in his autobiography, states that his father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, but there are no records showing what happened to his father when hostilities ceased. Franklin County, however, does record him as a taxpayer in Lurgan Township in 1786, two years after the county was erected from Cumberland County. On October 26, 1790 he received a grant of 200 acres of land in Montgomery Township, formerly a part of Lurgan Township, Franklin County.

The son David, in his autobiography, also states that his mother was a Miss C. Piper, of Franklin County, and his search for her identity in Harrisburg resulted in the Division of Vital Statistics, Department of Health, giving the following:

“In the early days, prior to 1882, a notice through publication of banns could make a license unnecessary. Even in cases where licenses were used, seldom, if ever, were the names of licensees recorded. No returns were made from the person officiating and very few records of marriages have survived the older periods of time.”

continued — war record