PH

This weekend I found some amazing information on my Hazelbaker ancestory. My 5G grandfather, Peter Hazelbaker was conscripted into the British Army in Germany in 1778. He was one of the Hessian soldiers in the Revolutionary War. He was captured when Lord Cornwallis surrendered in Yorktown in October 1781. When it came time to exchange prisoners, Peter apparently decided he wanted to stay in America and hid in a barn. He married the daughter of the farmer whose barn he hid in. (Wonder if she had something to do with his decision to stay in America?) The farm was in what is now West Virgina. Peter and his wife, Elizabeth Shievely, had 6 sons there. They moved to Allen Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Peter died at 41 in 1800. He was buried in the family cemetary on the Sphor family farm. The cemetary has succumbed to time with just a few headstones remaining. Efforts to find Peter's grave have been unscucessful until this past summer when Craig Hazelbaker found the marker. For many years it was thought that the marker was DH but after studying it, Craig determined it was really PH - Peter's headstone had been found.

You will enjoy reading the story of the discovery at http://www.hasselbacher.us/hazelbaker/phgrave/spahrcem.html. These pictures are from that address.

You can find the Hazelbaker Family Tree at http://www.hasselbacher.us/tng/index.phplbacher.us/tng/index.php. Search for Henry Franklin Ralstin or his mother, Margaret Hazelbaker. The line goes back to Steffan Hasselbacher born about 1570 in Gresten, Austria. His three sons were protestant refugees from Austria during the Counter Reformation and followed each other into an area of Germany following the Thirty-Years War that had suffered greatly during the war sometime shortly after 1655.

The Hasselbacher family website, http://www.hasselbacher.us/ , has lots of information with much to explore.