Casper Shafer

Casper Shafer (c. 1712 – 17 December 1784) was among the first settlers of the village of Stillwater along the Paulins Kill in Sussex County, New Jersey in the United States. A successful miller and early tavern owner, Shafer later served in the first sessions of the New Jersey Legislature during the American Revolution. During these sessions, New Jersey had become a newly independent state, established the first state constitution, ordered the state's last Royal Governor deposed and arrested, and actively supported and financed the Continental Army.

Shafer was born in 1712 in the Rheinland-Pfalz in present-day Germany. He was among tens of thousands of German Palatines who escaped conditions of war and poverty in southwestern Germany throughout the eighteenth century and journeyed up the Rhine River to Rotterdam seeking passage to the New World. From Rotterdam, Shafer emigrated to the American colonies aboard the ship Queen Elizabeth commanded by Alexander Hope, and entered Philadelphia on 16 September 1738. At some time after 1741, Shafer married Maria Catrina Bernhardt (1722–1794), the daughter of Johan Peter Bernhardt (d. 1748). Shafer, his father-in-law, Johan Peter Bernhardt, his brother-in-law John George Wintermute (1711-1782), and their families settled along the Paulins Kill in northwestern New Jersey circa 1742. Over the next few decades, more German Palatine families settled here, and this settlement became the village of Stillwater.

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