Revised
June 28, 2009
The Boyer
Family
of
Easton, Pennsylvania
This website continues genealogical research on the family of Johann
Friedrich Boyer, who traveled from Europe to America aboard the ship
Nancy in 1752, and focuses on the Boyers who migrated to
Easton.
The section on the Boyers of Orwigsburg covered information on the
immigrant Johann
Friedrich Boyer (1718-1804), his children,
and his
grandson, David
Boyer (1806-1883), a gunsmith of Orwigsburg.
This section focuses on two of David Boyer's children -- George B.
Boyer (1839-1907) and William B. Boyer (1843-1925) -- who moved from
Orwigsburg to Easton about 1872 to work on the Lehigh Valley
Railroad. It then presents information on the two children of
George B. Boyer who lived to adulthood, and in particular his son,
Lewis Elmer Boyer (1869-1948), of Easton, Pennsylvania, and his seven
children, 16 grandchildren, and (as of mid-2008), 32
great-grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren, and 6
great-great-great-grandchildren.
NEW:
This site now includes a photo
gallery
of the Boyers of Easton, ranging from the family of George B. Boyer in
1880
to photos of George's great-great-grandchildren in 2008 |
.
The pages of this site are organized into several sections:
The fifth
child of David and Hannah
Beck Boyer, George was born in 1839 in Orwigsburg, the fourth
generation of the family started by the immigrant Johann Friedrich
Boyer. He married Sarah Ann Dreher in Orwigsburg and about
1873
they moved to Easton. They had six children. Two
boys died
young. In 1886, tuberculosis took two older daughters, and
then,
in 1890, claimed George's wife Sarah. George continued to
work
for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and in 1895 he married Adeline Apgar,
of New Jersey. Of his two surviving children, Sarah (Sallie)
Boyer married George Apgar, of the same Apgar family, and Lewis Elmer
Boyer married Henrietta Waltman.
William Boyer
was the sixth child of
David and Hannah Boyer, and he moved from Orwigsburg to Easton about
the same time as his brother George. He also worked for the
Lehigh Valley Railroad. William married Martha Yeager and
they
had eleven children, greatly increasing the population of Boyers in
South Easton.
In the fifth generation of his
family, Lew was the only son of George B. Boyer to live to
adulthood. He was a creative man who designed tools, made
photographs, and developed a number of new inventions. He
worked
for many years for Ingersoll-Rand Company. Lew married
Henrietta
Waltman of South Easton, and they had seven children. A separate
section of this report presents the history of the Waltman family. This
section draws upon Lew Boyer's voluminous diaries and expense records,
and describes the chaotic and humorous ambience of a home with his many
children, grandchildren and visitors. See pictures of the family in the
Photo
Gallery.
THE
CHILDREN OF LEWIS ELMER BOYER
This section describes the
families
of each of the seven children of Lew and Henrietta Boyer, including
their descendants, down through mid-2009. They are members of
the
sixth and subsequent generations of the family.
About
the Author
Neil
A. Boyer was born in Easton,
Pennsylvania, in 1938. He grew up in Phillipsburg, New
Jersey,
then graduated from Wilson High School in Easton, Moravian College in
Bethlehem, and New York University School of Law. He was a
teacher and lawyer in the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers to go
to Ethiopia in 1962. Upon his return, he worked for the Peace
Corps in Washington and then spent nearly 40 years with the Department
of State, representing the United States at meetings of the World
Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, and the
Universal Postal Union. He retired from government in 2003
and
lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. For more information on Neil Boyer,
go here.
Neil Boyer is the author of The
Boyers of Easton, a 319-page book, published in 1987, with
more than
300 photographs, focusing on his grandfather, Lewis Elmer Boyer
(1869-1948), of Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. That book
traced the Boyer family backward from Lew Boyer to his ancestors, as
far as Johann Friedrich Boyer (1718-1804), who sailed to America from
Rotterdam aboard the Nancy in 1752. The book also went
forward to
Lew Boyer’s children and their children. This paper
grew
out of an effort to bring the Boyer book up to date, drawing on new
information and the growing potential of the internet for genealogical
research.
Neil Boyer's lineage in the Boyer family
is as follows:
Johann
Friedrich Boyer
(1718-1804)
George
Boyer (1769-1847)
David
Boyer (1806-1883)
George
B. Boyer
(1839-1907)
Lewis
Elmer Boyer
(1869-1948)
Lewis
Arthur Boyer
(1909-1985)
Neil
Arthur Boyer (b.
1938).
Corrections
to this material and
supplemental information are welcome.
Please contact Neil
Boyer
at 702 Twin Holly Lane, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910,
or by email at naboyer@comcast.net
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