BIO:  George D. Shaffer, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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Part II, Biographical Sketches, Monaghan Township, Pg 149

GEORGE D. SHAFFER, son of James Shaffer, was born in this township, November 15, 
1822.  At the age of eighteen he began stone-masonry, but disliking the trade, 
after three or four years, undertook farming.  April 16, 1846, he married 
Margaret, daughter of John Myers, of Monaghan Township, and went to housekeeping 
on the farm of Judge Dare, near Siddonsburg, for whom he was manager for nineteen 
years.  After the Judge’s death, Mr. Shaffer removed to his present farm of 130 
acres near Bryson Stone Bridge, which farm he had purchased from Jacob Cocklin.  
In addition to this place, Mr. Shaffer is now the owner of two other farms, on 
which there are good buildings.  In 1876 Mr. Shaffer embarked in the lumber and 
coal trade at Bowmansdale, Cumberland County, ten miles from Harrisburg, on the 
Harrisburg & Potomac Railroad, in which road he is a stockholder; he has also 
traveled through the West and the Canadas, and was once a delegate to the 
Eldership of the Church of God at Findlay, Ohio.  Mr. and Mrs. Shaffer joined 
this church in 1843, and Mr. Shaffer has been either deacon or elder ever since.  
He has also served his township as school director, treasurer and auditor.  He is 
the father of eleven children:  Dare G., in Kansas; Samuel M., mining in 
Colorado; James W., at home, assisting on the farm, and in the coal and lumber 
business, and eight daughters, of whom the eldest four are married, and two are 
dead.