AREA HISTORY:  History of Adams County, Chapter IV, Adams County, PA

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History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
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Part III, History of Adams County, Pages 14-17

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY 

CHAPTER IV.

FIRST SETTLER, ANDREW SHRIVER-EXTRACTS FROM HON. ABRAHAM SHRIVER’S MEMOIRS-EARLY 
SETTLERS-FRENCH HUGUENOTS-THEIR SETTLEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA.

The border troubles about the dividing line between Penn and Lord Baltimore were 
the real cause of the first adventurous pioneers coming into what is now Adams 
County.  Lord Baltimore, as he construed his grant from the crown, extended his 
possessions several miles north of what is now the dividing line between the two 
States, and Penn claimed that his grant extended to the south, and covered even 
a fraction more territory than is now within the State limits to the south.  
This rivalry of contention was the real stimulating cause of the first settlers 
coming at the time they did.  The particulars of these proprietary grants are 
given in detail in preceding chapters, and in this chapter we will only inquire 
as to who it was that first opened the way here to his fellow white men.

Mr. John A. Renshaw, of Pittsburgh, in a communication to the Star and Sentinel, 
dated March, 1876, makes the claim upon what seems to be documentary testimony, 
which, so far, bears the best evidence yet found on this question, that Andrew 
Shriver (ancient spelling, Schreiber), was the first actual settler in the 
county.  Mr. Renshaw says:

“The memoir from which these facts are gathered was prepared by Hon. Abraham 
Shriver, now deceased, for many years resident judge of the County Court of 
Frederick City, Md., being the result of his researches from various sources 
within his reach, and covers a period from the year 1673 to the year 1829, the 
latter being the date of the original manuscript.”

The memoir states that Andrew Schreiber (Schriver or Shriver) and family were 
natives of Alstenbarn in the Electorate Palatine, Germany, and immigrated to 
this country in the year 1721, landing at Philadelphia, afterward removed into 
the country in the neighborhood of Gashehoppen, near the Trappe, on the 
Schuylkill, where they made their home for some years. 

The father, Andrew Schreiber, died here, and one of his sons, “Andrew, then 
learned the trades of tanner and shoe-maker, and having completed his 
apprenticeship in the year 1732, continued to work at his trade for one year, in 
which time he earned £18.  In the spring of 1733, being then twenty-one years of 
age, he married Ann Maria Keiser, and the following spring (1734) moved with his 
wife to Conowago, then in Lancaster, now Adams County, where, after paying for 
sundry articles wherewith to begin the world, he had ten shillings left. 

“In moving to Conowago, Andrew Schreiber’s step-brother, David Jung (Young), 
came with him and helped to clear three acres of land which they planted in 
corn, and, Young then returned home.  During this clearing (about three weeks), 
they lived under Young’s wagon cover, after which Andrew Shriver pealed elm 
bark, and made a temporary hut to keep off the weather, and by fall prepared a 
cabin.  The wagon that brought him to this place passed through what is now 
called Will’s bottom, and in the grass, which was as high as the wagon, left 
marks of its passage which were visible for several years.  There was no 
opportunity of obtaining supplies for the first year short of Steamer’s mill, 
near the town of Lancaster.”

He purchased 100 acres of land, where he stopped, of John Digges, and the agreed 
price for this land was “one hundred pairs of negro shoes.”  And this debt was 
paid according to contract to Digges, and afterward Shriver bought more land of 
the same party and paid the money therefor.  The nearest neighbor at the time he 
settled here was a family of the name of Farney, living where the town of 
Hanover now stands.  The public road coming from the south was made and passed 
by Shriver’s improvement.

The memoir says: “At the time of his settlement here the Indians lived near him 
in every direction.”  And then follows this historical item: “At this period 
(1734-35), and for several years thereafter, the Delawares and Catawba tribes 
were at war, and each spring many warriors passed by, when they would display in 
triumph the scalps hooped, painted and suspended from a pole, which they had 
been able to obtain from their enemy, and they would require the accommodation 
of free quarters, to which, as there could be no resistance, of course none was 
attempted.  The consequence was they were very social, and smoked around the 
pipe of peace and friendship, without any attempt at wanton injury.”

The land first occupied by Andrew Shriver became the homestead of George 
Basehoar.  It lies about three miles east of Littlestown, and five miles 
northwest of Hanover, near Christ Reformed Church.  In the ancient grave-yard of 
this old church rests the dust of many of the early pioneers of this county.

Unfortunately the paper does not give the dates of the coming of those who 
followed Andrew Shriver.  The first to come were Ludwig Shriver, a brother, 
David Young, mentioned above, Middlekauf, Wills and a few others that, in the 
words of the memoir, “followed in a few years,” and made settlements near him.

Among the early settlers in this region, who followed the Shrivers, and with 
whose families they intermarried, were the Ferrees and LeFevres, of the 
Huguenots, who had been driven from the towers of Linden, France, in the year 
1685, by the cruel persecutions of Louis XIV, and took refuge in Germany, when 
hearing of the province of Pennsylvania, then under the great and good William 
Penn, they made their way to London, and there embarked for America and settled 
in Pequea, Lancaster County, and afterwards came to Conowago, where their 
descendants still occupy some of the farms in this rich valley.

Here then was the first little fringe of civilization planted deep in the dark 
old forests of Adams County, sheltered under the wagon cover of Shriver’s and 
Young’s wagon, the avant couriers of the increasing sweep of that grand race of 
men who created the greatest empire in the tide of time; fertilizing its seed 
with the spirit of independence and liberty that was to leven the human race all 
over the world and yield the rich blessings of mental and physical freedom that 
we now enjoy.  Shriver was a typical representative of the American pioneer, the 
most admirable, the greatest race of men and women that have appeared upon the 
earth in nineteen hundred years.  The just judgment of the great men of this 
world is the full measure of the results that flow out from their actions.  This 
is the sole criterion by which the last final and irrevocable judgments are to 
be made, and, by this standard, there is nothing to raise a question when 
intelligent men come to hunt out their real heroes - their truly great - in 
awarding the world’s mood of praise to the pioneer.  Those lowly, silent, 
obscure men of the wilderness and the solitudes-full of gloomy religion, quaking 
with superstitious fears, stern, inflexible and often grotesque in their ideas 
of moral tenets, illiterate generally, illiberal, nearly always, reading only 
their old family Bibles, and laboriously spelling out from this good book, 
precepts upon precepts, that to them and their families were literally “the law 
and the gospel,” that were administered upon those in their care and themselves 
with rods of iron; rude in dress and manners, crude in thought and practice, 
with coarse, scanty fare, generally wretchedly served in brush and pole tents 
and cabins on dirt floors, unwashed, unkempt, without books, without papers, 
without a polite literature, without information and without culture mostly; 
they had been long yet willing sufferers of cruel persecutions for conscience 
sake; they had been beaten with many stripes, imprisoned, starved, branded with 
hot irons-naked fugitives from their native land, in sorest poverty, seeking a 
refuge in the unknown world, among the red savages and the wild beasts of the 
forests.

What a school!  What a grand race of men it bred!  Men of iron and action.  No 
braver men ever lived.  They were brave physically and morally.  They absolutely 
knew no fear of anything mortal.  Their hard school had superbly developed their 
minds and bodies for the great work they had sought out to do.  They were men of 
large bone and muscle and brain, and knew nothing of the enervating influences 
of wealth and idleness.  The spirit of religious persecutions pervaded the old 
world, and no class of men in civilized or semi-civilized people are so 
pitilessly cruel as the religious fanatic and bigot; and their scourged and 
banished victims were the seed of that civilization that has overthrown the 
bloody tyrants and liberated a long suffering world.

Behold the magnitude of the results, and the paucity of means.  In the world’s 
history of great social or political movements, there is nothing at all 
comparable to that of the fruits and labor of the pioneers as we have the 
results today.  Their only school was the world’s saddest travail, and, in their 
direst suffering, no murmur escaped their tongues, in the darkest hour of their 
long gloomy night, no cry for succor found breath in their lips.  They walked 
with God.  They knew no anger, because they knew no fear.