Finding our ancestor, Peter Shaver.

Tradition has it that there four brothers who came to America and settled in Pennsylvania. With this thought in mind and endeavoring to identify the Peter Shaver who was our forbearer, and the locality of his settlement, the writer has discovered Peter Shaver with three or four other Shavers, possibly brothers, in several counties, mentioned herein. From the frequency by which the four names are associated and the similar locations of their settlements, it is believed that the four brothers were Peter, Jacob, Henry and John Shaver. The name David also appears frequently associated with the others, and he could be one of the brothers, recalling that one of our early ancestors was named David.

In Lancaster County, from which place the early German settlers migrated to Franklin County, then a part of Cumberland County, there were five Shavers named Peter, Jacob, Henry, John and David. And about the same time these same Shavers, Peter, Jacob, Henry, John and David were residents of Cumberland county. Series 5, volume 4, page 478, Pennsylvania Archives, lists these five Shavers as having received from Cumberland county depression pay as soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line. York County records show the names of Peter, David, Henry and John, but the spelling is Shaffer, except in the case of John and Henry Shaver. In Franklin County we find the names of Peter, Paul, Andrew and John Shaver, while Bedford county records the names of Peter, George, and Simon Shaver. It was mentioned previously that a son named Peter was born to Peter and Margaretha Shaver in 1752 and baptized in 1753. On September 29, 1759 a Peter Shaver was born to George and Anna Marie Shaver and was baptized in 1760, June 10. There is no data, authentic or otherwise, that would prove that either of these babies was a Shaver ancestor.

According to the tradition about our ancestor, a Peter Shaver, with his brothers, came to America about the middle of the 1700’s and one historian gives the earliest arrival of these German Palatines from Germany, to Cumberland County as 1762.

To ascertain the facts pertaining to their arrival in America is doubtful if not impossible. Pennsylvania is the only American colony that required the registration of vessels carrying the immigrants but the Captains prepared their lists carelessly and without regard to uniformity or orthography. Few gave complete lists and many reports were lost. Unaccountable thousands came to this country from the old world through other ports in the East and in the South.

The publication "Pennsylvania German Pioneers", published by Ralph B. Strassburger LLD, containing the original list of arrivals through the Port of Philadelphia between the years 1727 and 1818, gives the names of Peter Shaver and several others, all of whose names were spelled differently, as having arrived in Philadelphia on the ship "Hero", in September 1764. It is possible that upon arriving in Pennsylvania, these four or five Shavers settled in Lancaster County, then moving to Franklin County prior to its erection from Cumberland County with the westward movements of the Germans prior to the Revolutionary War.

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