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Following the erection of
Cumberland County Peter Shaver was then a resident of the new County
and on December 21, 1751 he was granted 200 acres in Pennsboro Township,
Cumberland County. In 1753 he was naturalized as a Quaker and in the
same year he took steps to protect his land from squatters as follows:
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“Edward Shippens, then a proprietary, entered
a caveat against a warrant or patent of any kind of grant issuing
to any person or persons for the land whereon Peter Shaver, an
Indian Trader, is living, on the North side of Conodoguinet Creek,
in Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County.” (Locate
Conodoguinet Creek) |
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The geographical areas of most of the present day counties, originally
embrace considerably more territory then is shown in our maps of today.
Historians have placed these early settlers in present day counties,
as is only natural, but these pioneers began their settlements in
counties not then erected. This has added to the difficultly of tracing
the wonderings of the founders of Pennsylvania.
Here is an example of the confusion that surrounds the localities
in which our ancestor settled:
We first located Peter Shaver in Philadelphia and then in Bucks County.
Bucks County, one of the three original counties erected in I682,
embraced all the land lying west of the Susquehanna and Schuylkill
rivers to the extent of the province. Cumberland County was erected
in 1750 and Peter Shaver’s land then was a part of Cumberland
County. But Bedford County claimed Peter Shaver in 1771 when that
county was erected from Cumberland County. Still fate or fortune followed
Peter Shaver for his property lay in that part of Bedford that Huntingdon
County carried him along when, in 1787, that County was erected from
Bedford County. So now we have Peter finally settled in Huntingdon
County, where historians have placed him, on the North bank of Conodoguinet
Creek, at the mouth of Shaver's Creek, which bears his name.
continued