In the 18th century, thousands of French and German protestants migrated to Pennsylvania seeking religious freedom and rich farmland. George Beaver, a Huguenot from Alsace, arrived in 1741 and settled in Chester County. His grandson Peter Beaver was born in Strasburg, Franklin County, on December 15, 1782. Drawn to the ministry, he became a deacon, an elder, and a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Bishop Francis Asbury, the "Father of American Methodism," ordained him in 1809 at Elkton, Maryland. He preached without salary in German and English churches in Lebanon, Berks, Dauphin, and Cumberland (Perry) counties. In 1810, he was assigned as a missionary to the Germans and moved to the predominantly German Pfoutz Valley in Perry County. He served the valley's first Methodist church, established in 1807 just west of the present brick United Methodist Church. Peter constructed a log homestead along the current Sunbury Path and supported his growing family by working at a local tannery and operating a store. He continued preaching until he left the valley in 1840 to serve in the administrative offices of the Evangelical Church in New Berlin, PA. Peter had nine children with his first wife Betsy before her death on February 2, 1818. He then married her sister Hannah and fathered five more children. Peter died on August 25, 1849, and is buried in the New Berlin cemetery. His son George bought the family homestead in 1830 and became a farmer, and at one time his progeny were associated with a third of the farms in the valley. His son Jacob fathered James Addams Beaver, governor of PA. His son Thomas moved to Danville in 1857 and became one of the preeminent iron mongers in the United States, using his great wealth to establish endowments at Lafayette and Dickinson Colleges, the Danville Free Library, the Danville YMCA, and the United Methodist Church in Lewisburg.