The will and estate file of his father, Leonard, listed, as one of his children, son George, deceased.

1800. He lives in Penns Township. He is 16-26 as is his wife.

“American Boyers” shows only four children for George and Hannah -- missing Polly -- and says that daughter Elizabeth married Yerger. The source of this error is the Evelyn Haas Jones work as that is exactly what she shows. I have never figured out why she may have thought that but I have a feeling there may be some mention of Yerger in an estate file perhaps and that Elizabeth was the only daughter Evelyn Haas was aware of.

George Boyer is documented in “American Boyers”, based on Union County estate files and Orphan’s Court records, as the son of Leonard and father of Mary. He died young.

His children are known from an Orphan’s Court petition and from the 1831 release whereby his five children released their court appointed guardians.

There are a series of deeds recorded in Northumberland County in book P and Q that tell the whole story. On 27 Jan 1806, after Henry had died intestate, Abraham Haas, eldest son of Henry Haas of Penns Twp deeded his share of 448 acres of land on Middlecreek to Andrew Straub. It mentions that Henry Haas died intestate leaving 11 children and their names were also recorded: Abraham, Henry, William, Sarah married to Paul Kerster, John, Valentine, Hannah married to George Boyer, Maria married to Jacob Nagle, Susanna, Elizabeth married to Frederick Moyer and Samuel.

1810. The widow Hannah Boyer, age 26-45, lives in Penns Township with 3 males and 1 female 0-10, 1 female 10-16.

1820. Hannah Bayer age 45+ lives in Penns Township with males 10-16 and 16-26, two females 16-26.

1830. Hannah Boyer age 40-50 lives in Penns Township with one male 20-30. A neighbor is John Boyer, age 20-30.

When I started working on my family tree, I knew there were many kinds of source documents that could prove useful and I knew that land deeds were one particular type. Sometimes a deed simply records the sale of land from one seller to one buyer and while useful, if the goal is to trace when a particular tract was bought or sold, might have little of genealogical value. Then I found the deeds associated with the sale of Henry Haas’ Penns Township land by his heirs. They were a veritable genealogical gold mine.

They were a whole series of deeds that spelled out the names of Henry’s eleven heirs and, for his daughters, the names of their husbands. Each such deed was one of the heirs selling their share to someone else (another heir or in some cases Andrew Straub). Since, in the complicated ways of America’s early days, when a daughter was the heir, it really was her husband who became the owner of the land she inherited and he needed to be a party to any subsequent transactions involving the land. So nothing could be clearer than this series of deeds at naming Henry’s heirs and for his daughters the names of their husbands.

George Boyer, whose wife was Hannah, was one of the parties who did not sell to Andrew Straub. They sold Hannah’s share in 1806 to William Haas, Hannah’s brother, who had married George’s sister. (So George was William’s brother-in-law both ways.) Then in 1810, Leonard Boyer also sold his share, of the jointly owned tract, to William, his son-in-law.  And one of Henry's daughters, Sarah, never sold her share to anyone. So ownership of the land consolidated to Andrew Staub, William Haas and Sarah who then partitioned it among themselves.