Those Who Were Challenged Most

In my years of researching our family, a few individuals stand out as having overcome severe personal challenges. They are people who had to endure hardships that most of us would find hard to fathom.

Willie Davis Russell. I have always admired and respected my uncle Bill Russell (1908-1997) for the way he dealt with the loss of a leg to bone disease as a young adult. Despite the difficulty of being an amputee, Uncle Bill was a good humored individual. Whenever our family gathered he enjoyed the occasion. I remember how he would sit down next to one of us kids, and very discreetly take our hand and put in on his knee. The child would be shocked at the hard plastic feel of his prosthesis. He got quite a kick out of surprising kids that way. After all these years, I must say, that behavior now seems a bit creepy to me, but that was Uncle Bill.

Uncle Bill Russell with wife
Pauline Shepard Russell, 1978

Despite his disability, Bill did well for himself. He worked hard for much of his life as a tax consultant. He made the most of life with his wife, my Aunt Pauline, and overcame with grace and determination the hardship of losing a limb. Uncle Bill died just before the turn of the 21st century but is survived today by his son Eric Russell, his granddaughter Shannon Wilk, and his Great Granddaughter Emma Wilk.

Peggy Ann Gray Shannon. A second ancestor who had to deal with serious personal hardship was Peggy Ann Gray (1829-1899), the Grandmother of my Grandmother Nola Shannon Gower. In 1864 her husband David Reid Shannon died in Louisiana while fighting for the confederacy in the Civil War. He left her as a widow with 7 children: Mary Ann (16), William (14), James (12), Richard (11), Sarah (9), Margaret (2), and Sam (5). What an incredible hardship, to be left with 7 children and no husband, in Wartime, far from home. I cannot imagine a more desperate situation for a young mother. Select this link for more about the life story of David Reid Shannon. Thankfully Peggy's father and brothers eventually came to her rescue. They traveled over 400 dangerous miles from northeastern Mississippi during the height of the Civil War to their daughter and sister in rural southern Louisiana. They gathered up Peggy and her children and moved them another 400+ miles to Stone County, Arkansas where they started a new life. Peggy's story is not only about her strength and courage amidst great adversity. It is also about the way it brought out the best in her family who responded to her plight.

Henry William Cooper
1852-1906

Henry William Cooper. Perhaps the most amazing story of personal adversity among our ancestors concerns a distant cousin of my mother Maida Gower Shepard. Henry William Cooper (1852-1906) was born and raised in Newnata, Stone County, Arkansas, the same community where my mother was born in 1924. Henry was born without the use of his legs. It was obviously a disability that made life extremely difficult for him and his family. 

Though he went through life without the use of his legs, he became proficient using his hands. He had a workshop where he made chairs, baskets, brooms, dolls and puppets. The old picture at the left shows him playing the fiddle and operating dancing dolls he had made himself. He also made a cart on which he could get around, using wooden blocks to propel himself. (Thanks to the Stone County History Museum in Mountain View, Ark. for this old photo.)

At 25 Henry married Margaret Parlee Anderson and with her bore and raised a family of 9 children.

When people write about our ancestor Henry Cooper they mention his similarity to the famous French Artist Toulouce Lautrec (1864-1901), a contemporary of Cooper. Lautrec was without the full use of his legs and, like our cousin Cooper, compensated for his infirmity by being extraordinarily creative.

Here then are three remarkable people in our family tree who overcame great hardships. They responded to their adversity with determination, fortitude and hard work. They are people whose DNA we share, and who inspire us to be as resilient as they were.
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Steve Shepard
(he/him/his) 

A Forgotten Immigration

Much of my Shepard family research in recent years has focused on the descendants of James Sheppard (1775-1843) and his wife Hannah Gatchell Sheppard (1784-1839) from Kirkwood, Ohio. I wrote in a blog post a few years ago that James and Hannah Sheppard had over 100 grandchildren. As a result, they likely have several thousand descendants in the US today, over two centuries later. 

Massachusetts Bay Colony
Puritan Immigrants

Recently I have discovered that a whole other Shepard migration from England to Massachusetts took place in the 17th century by a large number of folks who spelled their last name SHEPARD, just as many of us do today. One of the unique things about these particular Shepard folks is that they were Puritans, which influenced the way they named their children. 

Two of the earliest Shepard immigrants from England to Massachusetts were Deacon Ralph Shepard (1603-1693) and his wife Thankslord Perkins (1609-1693). Other given names among these early immigrants were: 

• Thankful Shepard (1651-1692), Ralph and Thankslord's daughter
• Mary Thankful Dill (1676-1723), a granddaughter of theirs
• Thankful Knowles Shepard (1745-1764), daughter of a well-known Massachusetts Ship Master
• Samuel Lord Shepard (b.1885)

Clearly the New England Shepards were partial to Biblical names. They gave their kids names such as Charity, Joshua, Aaron, Moses, Solomon, and Hannah, as well as lesser-known Bible names like Hepzibah, Mehitable, Theophilus, Angelica and John Baptist.

But my favorite among all these pious monikers is this particular name: "O Lord Another William Shepherd" (1744-1801). Yes, there was an actual person with that name. Imagine going through life with a name like that. I am beginning to wonder if his parents Tom and Betsy Shepherd had a sense of humor and gave their son this name as a humorous gesture. "O Lord Another" was born in Grange, a small town in rural eastern Scotland in 1744 to Thomas Edward Shepherd and Betsy Sellars. He immigrated to Anson County, North Carolina and served in the American Revolution. One record shows that he applied for a pension for serving in the War. He died in Anson County in 1801.

O Lord Another's name suggests that William Shepard was a very common name for folks among our ancestors. Here's an interesting fact: in my family tree today there are 24 different men with the first name William and the last name Shepard, Shepherd, Shephard or Sheppard. All four last name spellings were common among our ancestors. 

Old family photo of William
Henry Harrison Sheppard

The oldest William Shepard I can find in our family tree is my 7th Great Granduncle William Shepherd (1682-1759), born in St Michael's Parish, Barbados. He was part of the Sheppard migration to Maryland in the early 18th century via the Carribean Island of Barbados. The most recent William Shepard in our family is our grandson William Quincy Shepard, born in San Francisco in 2012. 

Among the other William Shepards in our family tree is William Henry Harrison Sheppard (1840-1862) (pictured at left) named after the 9th President of the U.S.

In the mid 18th century when "O Lord Another William Shepherd" was born in Scotland, William Shepard was already in common use among our ancestors. That affection for the name William Shepard continues to modern times. In 1977 we gave our son the name Nathan William Shepard. My father was Eugene William Shepard (1921-2003). His father was simply William Shepard (1888-1976). His father was William Elmer Shepard (1862-1915), and his father was William Shepard (1835-1862). And so it goes.

The history of the name William Shepard in our family is varied. One would be hard pressed, however, to find a Shepard ancestor with a more colorful name than "O Lord Another William Shepherd."
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Steve Shepard (he/him/his)