Tracing my Irish Kelley ancestry and the related 17th and 18th Century history in British America, England, and Ireland

“Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.”

—St. Patrick

These meditative words of St. Patrick seem appropriate in my quest to trace my Irish-American bloodline, as my father had desired to be laid to rest next to his beloved grandmother (provider of these Irish roots) in Fostoria, Ohio, instead of next to his wife of 55 years. And so, the story branches back in time with this final wish of John ‘to be’ connected in eternal spirit with Anna Belle (the photos above are John c. 1950 and Anna Belle c. 1900), whose Irish 3rd great-grandfather sowed seeds in British America that became rooted two generations before the Revolution.

The lives of our ancestors are more fully understood when the history of their times expands their stories. This is even more important when going farther back in time when records might be missing, and questions regarding their being become harder to answer.

This ancestral history begins with the Irish family name Kelley (Irish Gaelic: O Ceallaigh), which has an ancient origin meaning ‘warrior’ (war or contention) that goes back to Ceallach, the celebrated 9th century chieftain who led the sept, or Irish clan. Kelley translates as a descendent of Ceallach and also means ‘bright-headed’ (keen, confident, and alert). This was the maiden name of Anna Belle’s mother, Minerva (Kelley) German (1838-1916).

Minerva’s father, Thomas Kelley (1800-1887), had established the family in Northwest Ohio in 1831, when they moved to Washington Township (which he had the honor of naming) in Hancock County (Fostoria, Ohio, would be founded in 1854, and spread into Hancock, Seneca and Wood Counties). Thomas had made his first move west in 1811 with his father, Charles (1754-1847) and their family into the Connecticut Western Reserve, settling on a farm four miles from Wooster, Ohio. Charles, his wife Jemima (Crownover), and their first son Ezekiel had made their first move west prior to the first U.S. Census in 1790, when they settled among the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. They had lived in the Garrison Forest in Owings Mills, Maryland, where the first Kelleys would settle in the 1730s.

Minerva (Kelley) German, 1838-1916 — She was the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Kelley and was one of a family of seven children. Minerva was united in marriage to Christian German in Fremont, Ohio, where she had accompanied her parents to reside a short time before. Their marriage was solemnized in the fall of 1862.

In 1707, James Kelley II (my 5th great-grandfather) was born in Macroom, County Cork, Ireland; according to family history on Ancestry.com, James came to the American Colonies in 1733. He was on a ship originally destined for the port of New York, but due to a violent storm off the coast of New England, the ship diverted to the port of Baltimore in the British Colony of Maryland. No records have been found of ship manifests that verify his arrival in 1733. Baltimore County Families, 1659-1759, authored by Robert William Barnes, lists James Kelly as being “in Baltimore County by 1737.” He would marry Prudence Logsdon in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 2, 1735.

Another source, FamilySearch.com, suggests the possibility that James may have been born in the colonies, which if correct means that his father, James, was the first Kelley to land in British Colonial America: “When “James Kelley I was born in 1687, in Kinneigh, County Cork, Ireland, his father, Joseph Patrick Kelley, was 29 and his mother, Ellen Mary McSwinney, was 25. He married Mary Elizabeth Dye in about 1704, in British Colonial America (meaning James II, born in 1707, could have been born in America and not Ireland unless Mary Elizabeth had made her way back to Ireland by that year). James and Mary Elizabeth were the parents of at least 6 sons. He died in 1750, in Baltimore, Maryland, British Colonial America, at the age of 63.” James Kelley II would settle in the Garrison Forest of Owings Mills, about 20 miles northwest of Baltimore, where he would die in 1779 during the American Revolution.

The opportune lure of a new beginning, plentiful land, and religious tolerance may have all been reasons the Kelley branch of my lineage came to British America. It is not known what religion the Kelley family professed in Ireland; it is known that James Kelley II would exchange Episcopalian marriage vows in colonial British America. The history of Ireland before they landed in America was one of conflict, inequality, and intolerance. England was establishing control in ways that were perilously absurd to the majority of Irish peasants. Irish colonizers arrived from England and Scotland who were Protestant, seeking fertile land, and an important strategic imperative to protect the Irish nation, and thus England, from the encroaching Roman Catholic countries France and Spain. They saw the Irish population as being a mongrel breed of Catholic peasants who were brutish and uncivilized. A Protestant Ascendancy began in the 1690s, and the English elite benefited as property rights of Catholics were trampled. Aristocratic gains were fostered by commemorating severe Protestant losses suffered during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, in which a Catholic uprising attempted to end discrimination, gain more self-governance, and get back their lands which had been turned into plantations by earlier English colonizers.

“It is not possible at present to provide a definitive account of the various factors and influences that combined to constitute Protestant identity in early modern Ireland, but the impact of their historical experiences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their commitment to the British monarchy were key features, which were cultivated and sustained by commemoration throughout the period 1660-1800,” wrote James Kelly in his article “‘The Glorious and Immortal Memory’: Commemoration and Protestant Identity in Ireland 1660-1800”. Kelly continues: “The bulk of those who constituted the ‘Protestant interest’ in late early modern Ireland were the descendants of settlers who arrived in the kingdom between 1550 and 1660. As a consequence, they were products of the defiantly Protestant identity forged in Britain in the sixteenth century, when the dominant issue in European history was religious conflict, and Catholics and Protestants locked horns in a struggle for ideological and dynastic supremacy.”

The Kelley family history and their property rights in Macroom, County Cork, Munster Province remain a mystery. As James Kelley II was married in St. Paul’s Parish in Baltimore County, he likely was one of the Protestant settlers in Maryland who soon were to be a majority in a Catholic proprietorship. His family in Ireland may have been dissenting Protestants (Presbyterians), who refused to accept the Anglican Church of England and the monarchy of Charles I. “Presbyterians who arrived from Scotland after 1600 comprised the bulk of Dissenters whereas smaller groups who owed their origin largely to the arrival of Cromwellian forces stagnated or declined after 1700,” according to Andrew Holmes in The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II: The Long Eighteenth Century c. 1689-c. 1828. The Kelley’s could also have been Royalists fighting the English Parliament in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Or, least likely, they could have been Roman Catholics. “Dissenters were part of a protestant minority in predominantly Catholic Ireland, yet Presbyterians were excluded from full participation in public life by the Church of Ireland ruling elite (the Church of England and the Church of Ireland would eventually be united by The Act of Union in 1800). This fueled political dissent that was, in turn, informed by New Light Presbyterianism that rejected subscription to theological formularies…” Holmes continues.

The English Civil War (1642-1651) through the Seven Years War (1756-1763) played havoc with Marylander’s liberty of conscience. The 17th Century conflict affected England, Ireland, Scotland, and British America as Royalists attempting to preserve the monarchial monopoly of Charles I to tax and wage war as an absolutist right were fighting Parliamentarians seeking more sovereign rights for the people. It was a time of antithetical ideas as multitudinous pamphleteers wrote about reason, the nature of man, and the evangelical teachings of the Bible. As seen by Protestant and Puritan subjects, Anglican Bishops served the interests of the king and the Church of England, while Jesus and his teachings served the interests of his followers. “That the English wrapped up every idea and attitude in religious language and used precedents from Scripture as their best authority gives the period the aura of a struggle about obsolete causes. But these causes were double, and the ideas hidden by the pious language were, as is foolishly said, ‘ahead of their time,’ meaning pregnant for the future. The sects and leaders classed as Puritans, Presbyterians, and Independents, were social and political reformers. They differed mainly in the degree of their radicalism,” wrote Jacques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. Many Englanders, Scots, and British Americans saw the Church of England and its Anglican gentry as little different from the Roman Catholic Church; the church Henry VIII broke with because of the Pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce.

In England during the 17th Century, wealth was being spread more equally among the gentry, yeoman, and the expanding merchant class. Agriculture was being transformed. Since medieval times it had been a feudalistic and intermediary means for the many who lived in the countryside and depended on their noble landlords for their way of life. A growing urban population, especially in London, compelled country landlords to enclose their properties to allow for pasture farming, which led to the Midland Revolt. Rising food and land prices allowed those who were profiting to buy more consumer goods. Children of the gentry and yeoman classes could now afford to attend Oxford or Cambridge, and if one wanted to enter the legal world the Inns of Court were “in fact more socially prestigious than the universities.” Upward mobility led this new generation of English citizenry to believe that they held more of a stake in the realm of finance, politics, and property rights. “Perhaps naturally, many members of the gentry and middling sort were drawn to Calvinism, taking their growing wealth as evidence of their predestined salvation. Not all Puritans were middling folk, nor were all middling folk Puritans — far from it — but their worldviews had many points of similarity. Many believed, quite naturally, that God favored the saved with success in this life. Health and wealth were therefore easy to take as signs of one’s own salvation,” wrote Jonathan Healey in The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689.

The absolutist posture of the Stuart Royalists was being questioned by the common folk and their Parlimentarian representatives in the House of Commons, and thus England’s elite began debating the social position of this new model of polity. “The growing wealth of those in society’s middle attracted comments, mostly negative, from their social superiors. The Earl of Northhampton, for one, worried about the proliferation of schools aimed at those outside the traditional elite: there was nothing, he said, ‘so hurtful to the commonwealth as the multitude of free schools’, which turned people away from soldiery and apprenticeships and instead led them to ‘go up and down breeding new opinions,'” wrote Healey.

Democratic thought among the masses was evolving in England, which was a threat to the more privileged. A growing middle class that sought a better education and a better life meant that the landed aristocracy, represented by The House of Lords, would lose political power. The House of Commons would be more than just freemen, who “had to own a minimum amount of property” to be considered such, and thus be “given a voice in Parliament to legitimize the rule of the king” — the Commons would bring forth the voice of the rabble who were fighting to rise up. As Jane Calvert and Anthony Lake write in their article, “From Necessity, Not Choice: Lessons in Democracy from Maryland’s Past”, “in such a highly stratified society, the masses of people were poor, uneducated, and politically ignorant. The ordinary working man was excluded from the political process. He was a political non-entity, in bondage to a life of hard labor and dependence on his social betters, there to be ruled, not to rule themselves. Consequently, democracy — the rule of the common man — was unthinkable. It was considered the rule of the rabble, the rule of a class with neither the knowledge nor the ability to make political decisions. In other words, democracy was considered little better than anarchy.”

In the New World across the Atlantic, religious toleration formed the first democratic spirit of those Old World souls seeking its shores. The Roman Catholic Calvert family led by the Lords Baltimore founded the proprietary colony of Maryland in 1634 establishing a policy based on liberty of conscience that tolerated the practice of many Christian religions including Catholicism.

Maryland was named after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I, and daughter of King Henry IV of France. “The title Baron of Baltimore in the Kingdom of Ireland was created in 1625, and conferred by James I (King of England and Ireland) on George Calvert, the first Baron. This was seven years before the grant of the Maryland Charter, and some years before the arrival hither of the first colonists. The title became extinct in 1771, upon the death of Frederick, the sixth Baron, five years before the declaration of the independence of the United States. It was in existence therefore for a little less than one hundred and fifty years, and its duration was nearly coincident with that of the colonial period of this commonwealth,” stated Clayton Colman Hall in his lectures “The Lords Baltimore and the Maryland Palatinate” at The John Hopkins University in 1902.

James VI and I (top left) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns from 24 March 1603 until his death in 1625. Charles I was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He married Henrietta Maria of France on 13 June 1625. She was the mother of his sons Charles II and James II and VII. George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English peer and politician. He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I.

The Lords Baltimore “deliberately tried to create a society different from England’s, a society where religion was a private matter… This was a matter of both principle and necessity: the Calverts wanted their colony to be a refuge for fellow Catholics, but they also needed to attract as many settlers as possible if Maryland was going to be a success. The Calverts could afford to alienate neither prospective Protestant settlers nor the English government by favoring the Catholic Church. In any case, their own experience with religious discrimination led the proprietary family to support the principle of liberty of conscience,” wrote Beatriz Betancourt Hardy in her article “Roman Catholics, Not Papists: Catholic Identity in Maryland, 1689-1776” for Maryland Historical Magazine.

From the Province of Maryland’s founding in 1634 (and also in Virginia), proprietary and political partisanship was a means for survival in this new frontier in which “colonists cultivated tobacco for the English market and corn for themselves. The profits of tobacco attracted thousands of immigrants who dispossessed and killed natives and then cleared the forests to make hundreds of new farms and plantations,” wrote historian Alan Taylor in American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804. “Maryland’s status as a safe haven played an instrumental role in the early forced immigration of the Irish to the colonies. In the 17th century, many Irish brought to the colonies were either indentured servants or prisoners-of-war from Oliver Cromwell’s conquering of Ireland. Because they were typically Catholic, the more tolerant Chesapeake colonies were often their initial destination,” according to PreservationMaryland.org.

“Lord Baltimore’s Palatinate of Maryland, with its first settlement … should have attracted an influx of Irish immigrants because of the Irish associations of the Calverts as English planters in County Longford and because of the religious toleration for Christians which prevailed in the colony until the Revolution of 1689, save for a few years during brief Puritan supremacy. However, comparatively few Irish men came to Maryland in the early period because of vague hopes of a happier future in Ireland under the Stuarts and because English manorial lords in Maryland seemed to prefer English laborers and indentured servants to Irish servants, despite the Protestantism or the Puritanism of the former. Apparently, nationalism was a more important factor than creed with the English Catholics in Maryland, who realized after all that they were ever on the defensive,” wrote Richard J. Purcell, PH.D., in his article “Irish Colonists in Colonial Maryland” for An Irish Quarterly Review.

Along the Chesapeake Bay, the changes that were occurring in England led to a period known as “The Plundering Time,” (also known as Claiborne and Ingle’s Rebellion), which almost put an end to the Province of Maryland‘s future because of disputes over land, and political and religious partisanship. Choosing sides disturbed either the liberalism of Protestant settlers who felt politically threatened by an orderly Roman Catholic minority, who just wanted freedom of worship; or the peace of mind of Catholic settlers who felt alienated and threatened in their colonial refuge that for close to 125 years seemed to hold “greater appeal for Protestant dissenters, such as Quakers and Puritans who disagreed with the Church of England … Maryland’s real problem was figuring out how its religiously diverse people, a mix of England’s religious outsiders and members of the Church of England, could live with each other in harmony and order,” wrote Thomas Kidd in his article “The Founding of Maryland” for the Bill of Rights Institute. After the Parliamentary privateers led by Claiborne and Ingles were put down by colonial forces led by Maryland Governor Lord Baltimore in 1647, freedom of conscience was codified by the Colonial Assembly of Maryland in 1649 as “A Law of Maryland Concerning Religion”, which became known as the Maryland Toleration Act. The law stated that “…no person or persons … professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be anyways troubled, Molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province…”

In this engraving, Cecil Calvert presents his 1649 Act Concerning Religion to the ancient Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, while libertarians throughout history, including William Penn, look on. (James Barry, 1793). The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, (right) was the first law in North America requiring religious tolerance for Christians. It was passed on April 21, 1649, by the assembly of the Maryland colony, in St. Mary’s City in St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

“Between 1649 and 1660, England had no king, and became a commonwealth, and people took seriously the idea of a commonwealth, everyone in the same boat as everyone else, and it also got a little easier to pretend that there existed such a thing as the people, and that they were the sovereign rulers of … themselves. In England, new sects thrived, from Baptists to Quakers. The Diggers advocated communal ownership of land. The Levellers argued for political equality. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, the colonies grew, and the colonists came to see themselves as the people, too. Not to mention, much of British America was itself the product of religious and political rebellion, each colony its own experiment in the rule of the people and freedom of speech,” wrote Jill Lepore in her excellent history of the United States, These Truths.

Sectarianism was also rampant in Macroom and County Cork as Kelley’s ancestors were caught up in the Eleven Years War (1641-1653) between an Irish Catholic Confederation and a Cromwellian English Parliamentarian force, who were soon to conquer Ireland. Wars were being waged by the English Commonwealth in three kingdoms: England, Ireland, and Scotland. Ireland suffered horrific casualties — “618,000 deaths from fighting and disease out of a total pre-war population of c. 1.5 million, or 41 percent of the population … Cromwell and his supporters considered Irish Roman Catholics as little better than savages, barbarian in their lifestyle and habits, and capable of appalling atrocities against Protestant settlers. They were sub-human and dangerous, and were to be treated accordingly,” wrote Noel M. Griffin in his article “How many died during Cromwell’s campaign?” for History Ireland.

Three years after the Battle of Macroom (May 10, 1650) in which several hundred Irish Confederates were killed during a cavalry charge, the Commonwealth granted Macroom Castle to Admiral William Penn, the father of Pennsylvania’s founding father, William Penn. Young William lived there from 1656-1660, and it was within these walls that his religious mindset was converted. “A traveling Quaker preacher, Thomas Loe, was invited by Admiral Penn to address his household in Macroom in 1657, and both Penn senior and junior appear to have been deeply impressed by him.” 25 years later Penn wrote his Frame of Government for Pennsylvania. In the preface, Penn writes, “Government seems to me a part of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institution and end…And government is free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion…As governments are made and moved by men, so by them, they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad. If it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”

The Gateway and tower are all that remain of Macroom Castle, which was granted to Admiral William Penn, (father of the founder of Pennsylvania) by Oliver Cromwell. The boyhood home of William Penn (a young William Penn in armor above right, date unknown) stands on the western margin of the town of Macroom and its windows look away into the distance, where a rugged land lies at the foot of the mountains. (Irish Examiner/Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University)

How the Cromwellian conquest may have affected the Kelley family in County Cork can only be seen in the context of the catastrophic casualties that the Irish people encountered. Ancestry records have established that Joseph Patrick Kelley, was born in Macroom in 1658, but before Joseph Patrick, the lineage is uncertain. Èol Kelley (born c. 1638) may have been Joseph Patrick’s father according to a singular source, Mara Toby Horowitz, MD. An interesting name, Èol is the poetic form of Aeolus (Αἴολος) in a sense “moving, swift, to turn”, in Greek mythology he is the god of the winds. The Irish Confederate Wars between 1641 and 1653 were definitely a tempest and much would need to be restored.

Back in the New World, the Battle of Severn may have been the “last battle of the English Civil War,” suggested author Radmila May in her article “The Battle of Great Severn.” It was fought in the settlement of Providence (Annapolis since 1694) on March 25, 1655, when Puritans, who were supporters of the Commonwealth of England, defeated the Catholic and Royalist men, led by the religiously tolerant Protestant governor, William Stone, who supported the lord proprietor, the 2nd Baron Baltimore, Cecil Calvert. Stone was imprisoned for several years and “the Puritan revolt lasted until 1658, when the Calvert family regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act.”

The Stuart Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660 occurred because the English people were growing tired of the austere Cromwellian religious policies that were enforced by the army, according to English historian Godfrey Davis. Parliament offered to let Charles reign as successor to his beheaded father, Charles I if he would agree to tolerate freedom of worship and provide a general amnesty. “Constitutionally, it was as if the last nineteen years had never happened,” wrote historian Tim Harris.

In Ireland, a “massive scramble for land” was “characteristic of the Restoration Period, wrote Kevin McKenny in his article “Charles II’s Irish Cavaliers: the 1649 Officers and the Restoration Land Settlement” for Irish Historical Studies. “In November 1660 the newly restored king published a declaration for the settlement of Ireland. The substance of this document was that the ‘adventurers’ of the 1640s and the Cromwellian soldiers were to keep what they had got; the Irish Protestants who had actively supported the royalist cause (especially between 1648 and 1650) and who had not yet obtained compensation for this service were to receive their arrears in pay; Irish Catholics who had been deprived of their lands merely on the grounds of their religion were to be restored to what they had lost. From the clash of these interest groups came the molding forces behind what is known as the ‘Restoration settlement…’”

Nevertheless, whatever religious persuasion they were in Ireland, “the Americas were a more common destination for the Protestants rather than the Catholics, considering the expensive transatlantic voyage,” wrote Howell citing Robert E. Kennedy’s The Irish: Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility.

To be continued by Mark A. Shephard

Clan McCallum of Kirkhill, Scotland takes root in antebellum Pennsylvania, to help create and fight for a better America

The McCallum clan of Kirkhill, Inverness-shire in the Scottish Highlands first took root in America in the 1820s when brothers Andrew and William arrived in the United States.

An 1891 history, Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians chronicled the history: “In 1830 William McCallum “commenced the manufacture of ingrain carpets” in Germantown, Pa., (Market Square, Germantown, Pennsylvania, c. 1820, by William Britton, seen above) and “having decided to make the manufacture of carpets his business McCallum sent for his brother Andrew (in 1831), who was at that time engaged in the Mississippi trade, and with whom he had arranged to become a partner.”

“They called it Glen Echo Mills for the echo in the glen in which the buildings stood, and it quickly became one of the largest carpet factories in the world. During the Civil War, as demand for carpeting plummeted, Glen Echo was retooled to meet the Union Army’s desperate need for wool blankets. Over the next half-century, the old water-driven mill was expanded and built up to the Glen Echo Mills complex,” Adam E. Levine and Stephen A. Marino chronicled in Carpenter’s Run and Carpenter’s Woods: A Brief History.

“Workshop of the World — Philadelphia” further explains the history of the enterprise. “The company that built the New Glen Echo Mills on four and a half acres of land at Wayne Junction Station in 1885 originated in 1830…on Carpenter Lane in northern Germantown. The mill…had been built in 1812 to make cloth for soldiers’ uniforms. In it were constructed the first Jacquard machines in this country, built by two Scots who were McCallum’s first employees.”

The McCallum brothers likely came to America because back in the Scottish Highlands life for rural residents and farmers had been going through troubling changes since the 1746 Battle of Culloden because of successive legislation passed in London seeking to break up the clan system and incorporate the rebellious enclave into Greater Britain. “The London Government had succeeded in turning the surviving chiefs, whether Jacobite or Whig, into mere landed proprietors, some, though by no means all of whom no longer felt the same sense of responsibility for their clansmen and dependants as formerly, but, in difficult times, were more concerned with making their estates pay. The easiest method of doing this, most of them found, was to turn them over to sheep farming,” Sir Fitzroy Maclean wrote in Scotland: A Concise History.

“Many farming tenants were evicted and offered tenancies in crofting communities, with their former possessions converted into large-scale sheep farms. The crofts were too small to support the occupants forcing them to work in other industries, such as fishing, quarrying, or kelping,” wrote Eric Richards, in The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords, and Rural Turmoil. Andrew and William’s brother, Alexander (my 3rd great-grandfather, b. 1787), became a distiller.

According to the John Grey Centre, “The eviction of Highlanders from their homes peaked in the 1840s and early 1850s as the Highland economy had collapsed, while the population still rose. When the earnings from kelp production and black cattle dried up, the landlords saw sheep as a more profitable alternative. The introduction of sheep meant the removal of people, known as ‘the Clearances’. Combined with the prospect of starvation faced by much of the crofting population when the potato crop failed in the late 1830s and again in the late 1840s, emigration seemed the only option.” 

In the late 1830s or early 1840, Hugh McCallum and his brother Henry, sons of Alexander, followed in their uncles’ steps to the United States, Hugh joining their carpeting, oil cloths, and mattings enterprise—one day to become part owner. Henry petitioned to become a naturalized citizen of the United States in Philadelphia on October 8, 1844, and at that time five years of residence in the United States was required before being able to file a final petition for naturalization. He would eventually work as a carpet dealer.

Andrew McCallum died in 1859, and William became the sole proprietor. Four years later, when Hugh McCallum (above), Orlando Crease, and A.J. Sloan joined the firm, it became known as McCallum and Company. During the Civil War, the company made army blankets; for a decade after the war, ingrain carpets were its usual product. In 1875, the company began making power-loomed Wilton and Brussels carpets. By 1885, its growth and need for more space had caused the company to relocate to Wayne Junction, where it built the New Glen Echo Mills. Above is an 1880 survey.

The manufacturing and business possibilities in Germantown and Philadelphia shone like a beacon across the Atlantic to Hugh’s brothers and sisters. In 1846, two more of Alexander’s sons, William Douglass and Alexander arrived in Philadelphia with their older sister Margaret on the Barque William and James, which had departed from Glasgow. The brothers would become Union cavalry officers during the Civil War.

With five of Alexander’s children now seeking better lives in Pennsylvania, life in the Highlands for their mother, Mary (Wardlaw), became unmanageable when Alexander met his maker in 1849. He would later be honored with a headstone inscribed “sometime farmer and distiller at Drumriach, Aird”, which was later erected by his sons and daughters in Philadelphia. Mary would emigrate to America and settle in Pittsburgh, as would her daughters Mary Wardlaw (b. 1826), and Elizabeth (b. 1832), who would marry John Newbold Shephard (my father’s namesake and 2nd great-grandfather). I have not found any immigration records for the three women as of yet.

By the 1850 United States Census, 19-year-old Alexander McCallum had found room and board with the Vanhouton family in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood (five miles from Germantown), which at the time was home to mills, factories, and shipyards near the Delaware River. Like most urban areas in Northern cities, Kensington had grown quickly; its population more than tripled between 1820 and 1840, from 7,000 to 22,000 residents. Alexander found work as a molder in Kensington (and may have worked at Franklin Iron Works, pictured below), which according to Workshop of the World — Philadelphia, “was known as the original hub of working-class Philadelphia, with both native and immigrant workers living close to their work sites or working at home. Early nineteenth-century industry in the area was diverse; it included glass factories and potteries, wagon and machine works, and a chemical factory.”

Franklin Iron Works, Franklin Str. between Second and Front Sts. Kensington Philadelphia. [1842 graphic advertisement]: J. T. Sutton & Co. take this method of informing their friends and the public that they have been making an extensive addition to their foundry and are now prepared to make any sized casting that may be called for. They have also increased their already large stock of tools by the addition of several planning machines, lathes, and an upright boring mill that can bore the largest size low and high-pressure steam and blowing cylinders with it, that may be offered. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

In 1855, Vanhouton’s wife, Louisa, gave birth to a son, and the couple named him Alexander. Very likely McCallum took a shine to the boy, and nine years later, in January 1864, may have received a devasting letter with the news that Alexander had died from diphtheria, this at a time McCallum was dealing with the mental and physical devastation of what he was witnessing as a cavalry officer in the days preceding Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign. 

The United States was attracting many immigrants, with 4,242,000 arriving from overseas in the 1840s and ’50s. Cities were growing at a rapid pace, bolstered by the influx of foreigners and the migration of many Americans who had become disenchanted with their lives on small farms. “In 1820, there were but five cities in the country with more than 25,000 people, and only one—New York—with over 100,000. Thirty years later, there were twenty-six cities with populations over 25,000, and six that exceeded 100,000”, according to the Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States.

In Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize in History winning What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, he posits: “Those who sought out such an unsafe environment put themselves at no small risk of life and health…The death rate in the cities was not only higher than in the countryside but also higher than the urban birth rate. Only a constant influx of new arrivals kept the urban population from falling. American cities compared unfavorably with European ones; New York’s death rate was nearly twice that of London. In Philadelphia and New York, the life expectancy of newborn babies averaged only twenty-four years during the 1830s and ’40s, six years less than that of newborn southern slaves. Thomas Jeffereson’s warning that large cities would constitute “great sores” on the body politic seemed well on its way to grim fulfillment…In the face of such conditions, why did the cities continue to attract newcomers? In some ways, the urban standard of living seemed preferable. Urban wages compared favorably, on average, with the earnings of farm laborers. Migrants found most city jobs less arduous than the heavy physical labor of pre-mechanized agriculture…For those with middle-class incomes, a carpet on the floor symbolized their achievement. Unmarried people, whether middle or working class, could live conveniently in urban boardinghouses. (Boardinghouses met a real need: With hours of labor long, employed people had to come home to a prepared meal.)”

Alexander still worked as a molder in the 1860 Census, and his room and board with the Vanhouten family at 120 Girard Avenue would continue through the 1870 census, with the War Between the States interrupting his working life in Philadelphia. His younger brother John, the last of Alexander and Mary’s children born in 1834, would join him as a boarder in the Vanhouten household, and in the 1860 census, he is listed as a machinist.

Some of the McCallum siblings headed west as Andrew had in the late 1820s to be a Mississippi trader. Railroads were beginning to impact the economy, and the McCallum family likely realized this catalyst early on. The journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in 1837 took about three-and-a-half days by railroad cars and canal packets. Before St. Louis became known as the ‘Gateway to the West’ that title had been Pittsburgh’s in the early 1800s, and Glen Echo Mills looked toward Pittsburgh (and points westward) as a growing city that would provide a good market base for their carpets.

In an essay, “Main Line of Public Works” by Charlene Mires, published in the Encylopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the transportation between the cities is explained: “During the 1820s, seeking to compete with New York and Baltimore in tapping western markets, business, and political leaders in Philadelphia pushed for a state-funded canal to link Philadelphia with Pittsburgh. The result, an innovative yet peculiar patchwork of canals and railways known as the Main Line of Public Works, succeeded in moving freight and passengers across the mountainous middle of Pennsylvania. The 395-mile system reduced travel time and spurred the growth of towns and market activity along the line, but it proved costly to operate and plunged the state into debt. Within three decades, more powerful locomotives rendered the Main Line of Public Works obsolete.”

Drawing of the Lancaster Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad Depot, Pioneer Line (Philadelphia to Pittsburgh) in 1842 (Courtesy of the PA State Archives)

In the 1850 census, William McCallum, 21, working as a clerk, boarded with the Samuel Burbridge family in Allegheny County’s 4th Ward. Burbridge was a carpenter and likely could have been installing Glen Echo Mills products. William may have been keeping the books in Pittsburgh for his older brothers back in Philadelphia. By the 1860 census, matriarch Mary Wardlaw McCallum, 60, was listed as the head of the household in Allegheny County, and sons William and Henry were working for Glen Echo Mills. Daughters Mary, Catherine, and Elizabeth, listed as “L. Sheppard” next to her husband, John N. Shephard, whom she had married in 1857, and worked as a druggist, completed the household.

“Because of the multiple and cumulative effects of the railroads supplementing canals, the years from 1843 to the Civil War have sometimes been called America’s economic ‘take-off,'” Daniel Walker Howe wrote in What Hath God Wrought. “Whether this is an apt term depends on what one means by it. The U.S. economy before railroads was neither static, anti-entrepreneurial, nor isolated from the rest of the world. What the railroads changed was not American hopes but the material conditions for fulfilling them. Railroads did not produce a “market revolution” any more than canals did; instead, they introduced a new phase in a long-range process of economic development. The American economy expanded more or less constantly from 1820 (that is, from before the introduction of the railroads) to the Civil War except for the depression of 1837-1842, not only in the aggregate but also per capita; returns to capital over that period constituted a remarkably long-term bull market,” Howe postulates.

Philadelphia was quickly becoming “the workshop of the world”, as manufacturing and industry continued to grow exponentially up until the Civil War, and then adapted to the needs of the Union in its long conflict with the Confederacy. “As it approached an era of prominence, industrial Philadelphia appeared to be, as one carpet weaver put it, ‘the paradise of the skilled workman.’ Wages were high, and if work was cyclical, job opportunities were growing…When secession and war split the nation, the city was deeply divided. Its old elite had extensive Southern connections, and a substantial fraction of its factory output flowed to Southern merchants. Once the course towards combat was set, rebel sympathies and general misgivings were forced into private spaces, as Philadelphia mobilized both its people and its industries in the Union cause. As J. Matthew Gallman notes in his recent study of Civil War Philadelphia (Mastering Wartime:  A Social History of Philadelphia during the Civil War), due to its ‘extremely diverse array of shops and manufactories…the City of Brotherly Love [was] particularly well prepared to adjust to rapidly shifting wartime demands.’ As in succeeding wars, the city’s metalworking plants became arsenals and its textile mills fed the Quartermaster Corps’ vast needs,” wrote Philip B. Scranton, Ph.D., in his essay “Philadelphia’s Industrial History: A Context and Overview.”

In 1858 New York Statesman William H. Seward had predicted an “irrepressible conflict” that would explode when the socioeconomic establishments of the free and slave states became incompatible. Free labor and slave labor could not exist in the same Republic. “It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.” Seward asserted that the choice must be decided “even at the cost of civil war.” Disunion resulted, and 2.75 million American soldiers would march in the “irrepressible conflict” to save their Americas for differing reasons—a sense of duty, patriotism, adventure, romanticism, and conscription—620,000 of whom would give their lives.

Working as a molder in Kensington, Alexander McCallum may have been involved in initial transformations to support the war effort, but on September 10, 1861, he mustered in as a first lieutenant for a three-year term with the 8th Regiment, Pennsylvania Cavalry (89th Volunteers). The regiment was initially intended to be a rifle regiment but was soon changed to cavalry. McCallum was promoted to Captain of Company E on March 17, 1862.

The call to duty for the male population of Philadelphia became a patriotic obsession once the battle lines became apparent when southern states started seceding. “Almost 100,000 Philadelphians served in the Union Army between 1861 and 1865, which was about three-quarters of the city’s male population. Many of these troops were raised right from the outset; April of 1861 saw the creation of eight infantry regiments. 1862 saw an even greater rush of volunteers, so much so that they postponed a draft for the city. The majority of these soldiers were native-born citizens and from the city’s immigrant population…”, according to the article “Philadelphia during the Civil War.

According to the History of Washington County, Pennsylvania: With Biographical Sketches, Volume 1, William Douglass McCallum, Alexander’s older brother, was living in Washington county (just south of Pittsburgh), when on April 1, 1864, he mustered into Company H, 14th Pennsylvania Light Cavalry as a first lieutenant. The 14th Regiment (159th Volunteers) was organized in October and November 1862 in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania. According to Wikipedia’s 14th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment page, “most of its fighting happened in the last half of 1863 and full year 1864. The regiment fought mainly in West Virginia and Virginia, often as part of a brigade or division commanded by Brigadier General William W. Averell and later Brigadier General William Powell.

We don’t know if William McCallum took the advice of this recruiting poster, “LAST CHANCE for CAVALRY! DON’T WAIT and be DRAFTED! He
mustered into Company H on April 1, 1864, and was discharged by special order on March 18, 1865. 

Captain Alexander McCallum and the 8th Regiment, Pennsylvania Cavalry followed the Army of the Potomac as it made its way toward Richmond. He is quoted in the book The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863 by Eric J. Wittenberg. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville, “the 8th Pennsylvania found themselves surrounded by Confederate infantry — flankers of Stonewall Jackson’s column — congregated on the Plank Road, and well-hidden and positioned in the surrounding woods on May 1. After the war, Second Lieutenant James Edward Carpenter wrote that late in the day on May 2, he, Capt. McCallum and the 8th Regiment were ordered to report to Gen. Oliver Howard of the 11th Corps whose Confederate-surrounded position was located on the Plank Road, near the Old Wilderness Church. Seeing no other options the horsemen obeyed their commander’s order to charge, and Cap’t. Alexander McCallum, who was leading Company E turned to his battalion commander, Captain Wickersham, and said ‘I think this is the last of 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry,’ to which Wickersham responded, ‘I think so too, but let us go down with our colors flying.’ The 8th Pennsylvania survived its ordeal, but with severe losses — ’37 men dead and 80 horses killed in the action,’ according to Carpenter.”

‘Charge, The 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Chancellorsville’ by Don Troiani

Alexander lived up to the McCallum clan motto, In ardua tendit (He aims at difficult things), on that bloody day in May. After the war, he went back to his old life in Philadelphia as the 1870 census makes clear, whereas his brother William has no 1870 census record that can be found. The brothers never married, and it is not known if they suffered from PTSD. “The Civil War killed and injured over a million Americans, roughly a third of all those who served. This grim tally, however, doesn’t include the conflict’s psychic wounds. Military and medical officials in the 1860s had little grasp of how war can scar minds as well as bodies. Mental ills were also a source of shame, especially for soldiers bred on Victorian notions of manliness and courage,” wrote Tony Horowitz in his article “Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD?” for Smithsonian Magazine.

Cap’t. Alexander McCallum, my 2nd great-granduncle, died in 1872 at the age of 41 and is buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. William died in 1876, and his headstone rests next to those of his brother, Alexander, and sister, Elizabeth, in the Shephard family plot in the cemetery.

By Mark A. Shephard

Previously: Outsider ancestor enjoys a ride in time with his Scottish Clan McCallum from Kirkhill, Inverness to Pennsylvania, and other new frontiers

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Pursuit of the Holy Grail and an Empire of Liberty

Related: The Panic of 1837 and the Shephard family’s move to a new life and tide in Pittsburgh amid expanding Antebellum Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the westward-bound United States

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum families: Wrath, Righteousness, and the Pursuit of Truth in Antebellum America and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the 1860s

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Panic of 1837 and the Shephard family’s move to a new life and tide in Pittsburgh amid expanding Antebellum Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the westward-bound United States

Pittsburgh (seen above in 1849) and its antebellum fortunes, would undergo substantial changes in the several decades before the Civil War. Manifest Destiny had proffered the perfect confluence at the point where the southern flow of the Allegheny River and the northern flow of the Monongahela River formed the Ohio River and the Gateway to the West for itinerant riverboatmen and steamboatmen who labored to grow the commercial hub and its near-monopoly on western trade. “The booming steamboat industry helped maintain Pittsburgh’s role as a key ‘Gateway to the West’ from the 1830s through the 1860s,” wrote Katelyn Howard for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2014. By 1849, over 2,000 steamboats were anchored annually along Pittsburgh’s wharf. Iron ore had proved to be abundant regionally, rapidly expanding industrial growth and production of the native metallic mineral — Pittsburgh becoming a Forge of the Union during the Civil War.

The Panic of 1837, a complex financial crisis rooted in the monetary policies of Andrew Jackson’s administration combined with a credit contraction precipitated by English investors withdrawing their money from the United States’ ongoing development, brought about the onset of seven years of hardship and suffering for many of its citizens.

The panic caused many businesses to fail. New York City was especially hard hit. On November 28, 1837, John Shephard III signed a deed granting property in NYC to his brother Samuel. John (born on June 12, 1808, in Great Ponton, Lincolnshire, England) arrived in NYC in 1817 when he was eight years old under the guardianship of his oldest brother Samuel (b. 1798). The brothers settled into a thriving Brooklyn waterfront scene near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which had been established in 1801. 

The brothers’ father, Thomas, had been jailed because of his indebtedness as a Lincolnshire farmer. An 1816 advertisement in the London Gazette read: “By order of the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors—the several petitions of…; Thomas Shephard, late of Great Ponton, in the County of Lincoln, Farmer; …, but now prisoners for debt confined in His Majesty’s ‘gaol’ of Lincoln, in the County of Lincoln, will be heard before his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the said County, either at a General Sessions of the Peace or at an adjournment of a General Sessions of the Peace, which shall be first holden next after the expiration of twenty days at the least from the date of this advertisement; and that schedules annexed to the said petitions, containing a list of the creditors of the said prisoners, are filed in the Office of the said Court, No. 59, Millbank-Street, Westminster, to which the creditors of the said prisoners may refer.” Thomas and his wife Alice (Haddon) had ten children in 16 years, and their indebtedness most likely was the reason that some of their children emigrated to the United States.

Thermuthis (Jones) and John Shephard III both came to the United States in 1817. They were married in Grace Church, New York City by Bishop Upfold on December 8, 1829. Shephard had arrived in New York City when he was nine years old — his older brothers Samuel, 19, and Thomas, 17, assuming parental responsibilities for him and their two younger sisters, Mary and Katherine, on their journey from the village of Great Ponton in Lincolnshire to the bustling Brooklyn waterfront, where they would settle into the teeming Williamsburg Neighborhood, adjacent to the busy Brooklyn Navy Yard.

After selling their property in Brooklyn to Samuel, John, his wife, Thermuthis (whom he had married in 1829), and their three sons, Thomas Haddon, John Newbold, and Richard, moved west to take a chance in Pittsburgh’s transitioning economy, and growing community, which had attained a population of just over 21,000. 

The growth of western cities such as Pittsburgh would have prompted some brave souls to take action to improve their lives no matter how hard their lot had become because of the Panic of 1837. The “iron city” might have seemed a practical harbinger for future economic success to young men like John Shephard III. He may have read newspapers that would have informed him that his former country had decided to invest less in the United States and more at home, bringing about a speculative state of mind with regard to his family’s future. “Go West, young man!” — and take a chance.

Historian Steven E. Woodworth writes in Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War that “British investors had been bullish on America during the early 1830s, investing so lavishly that the inflow of their gold effectively doubled the U.S. money supply. At the same time, U.S. bankers had recklessly expanded credit, with banknotes in circulation jumping from $95 million to $140 million during the middle years of the decade. With the easy credit provided by scores of eager investors, a number of state governments foolishly borrowed dizzying sums to finance lavish programs of transportation improvements — railroads, canals, and the like. Midway through the decade, the Bank of England became alarmed at the ongoing export of capital and changed its policies so as to make investing in Britain more attractive. The resulting diversion in the flow of British investment capital might at first seem an insignificant cause for the massive financial crash America suffered in 1837, but credit bubbles, such as the one that had formed in the United States during the first half of the 1830s, are notoriously skittish. Like a slight vibration on a snow-covered mountainside, even a small tremor in the money supply can trigger an avalanche that carries away everything in its path. So it was with the U.S. economy of the 1830s, as the withdrawal of British investments triggered an inexorable credit contraction that historians would come to call the Panic of 1837.”

Whether or not Shephard read what visitors had written about Pittsburgh as early as 1816 — “A hovering cloud of vapor obscures the view” — his father’s bankruptcy likely influenced his mindset regarding the pursuit of a yeoman lifestyle while he was a young man seeking to make his mark in the world. How John ultimately responded to the belief of Thomas Jefferson “that great cities were pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man” would take him close to a quarter of a century to formulate in his own mind. Jefferson believed so strongly in an agricultural state that he “favored legislation to maintain the United States as a nation of planters and small farmers,” wrote J. Cutler Andrews in A Century of Urbanization in Pennsylvania, 1840-1940. As he became Americanized, Shephard would have been well aware of the allure of Jeffersonian democracy and would eventually move east to Luzerne County, Pa., to farm the land; but that was in the future. As he entered his fourth decade, Shephard and his family settled into Antebellum Pittsburgh, which supported frontier farmers who needed “products made of iron, such as nails, horseshoes, and farm implements… Iron foundries and blacksmith shops proliferated.” 

Steam locomotion by railroads in the 1830s and 1840s was playing an important new role in the United States. Port cities were quickly being connected by rail, and new lines to the interior would have allowed the Shephard family to make their move from NYC to Pittsburgh via Philadelphia on the Camden and Amboy Railroad — completed in 1834 — and the new Pioneer Fast Line westward in conjunction with canal packets — the Pennsylvania part of the journey taking three-and-a-half days.

Opened in 1832, the Pennsylvania Canal, with its system of “packet” boats, steam engines, horsepower, and Portage Railroad, lured passengers with the promise of “Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, through in 3-1/2 days. Credit: Railroaders Memorial Museum, Altoona, PA

Thermuthis and John welcomed a baby girl, Emma Lydia Morton, into their lives on July 15, 1842. Two more sons, Theodore Thomas and Henry Clay, and another daughter, Elizabeth “Bessie” would complete the Shephard family in the 1840s. By the 1850 United States Census, John was listed as a baker and confectioner, owner of Shephard’s Steam Cracker Bakery at 317 Liberty Street; the census listed business and property valued at $15,000 (worth over $505,000 in 2021). “Our crackers are baked upon the OVEN BOTTOM, and are superior to any baked or by any other process,” ran one advertisement. As the country was expanding rapidly westward, Shephard’s steam crackers were surely accompanying pioneers.

Ten years before the Civil War began, John and Thermuthis were both 42, their oldest son Thomas Haddon was 19, son John Newbold, 17, son Richard, 14, daughter Emma, 7, son Theodore, 5, daughter Bessie, 4, son Henry, 1. The household [ID 73] also consisted of Anne Kelly, 18, & Patrick Campbell, 19, (both born in Ireland and probably domestic servants).

Whether or not the Shephard family suffered hardships after the Great Fire of Pittsburgh on April 10, 1845, burned one-third of the city, destroyed 1,200 businesses, and left 12,000 people homeless, they and their fellow Pittsburghers endured and rebounded strongly. Real estate values soared, and the greater growth of the industry was galvanized by the recovery.

Detail from View of the Great Fire of Pittsburgh, 1846, a painting by witness William Coventry Wall

Shephard became a prominent and very active member of the Christ Methodist Episcopal Church. The Second Great Awakening had renewed the Protestant spirit to be born again and erase sin from the land in order to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ; one in five Americans was attending Sunday services in the 1840s. His wife, Thermuthis, likely played an important role within the congregation, and most assuredly at home. Sermons across the land emphasized morality, and preachers were tasking the fairer sex with instilling proper values in their menfolk. “No other avenue of self-expression besides religion at once offered women social approbation, the encouragement of male leaders (ministers), and, most importantly, the community of their peers,” wrote historian Nancy Cott in The Bonds of Womanhood. From the time it was founded in 1784, MEC leaders had preached against the evils of slavery and ruled that owning slaves was forbidden within the church.

Pittsburgh became a destination for “freedom seekers” during the antebellum period. “By the 1830s, Pittsburgh had a growing reputation as a fierce, militant abolitionist community…The community investment included forming organizations to not only aid the cause of abolition and freedom but also to assist in the cause of education, employment, homelessness, and other humanitarian needs of the newly free and destitute,” according to the Senator John Heinz History Center project From Slavery to Freedom.

The ensuing debate in his church and throughout the nation over the “peculiar institution” was antithetical to the “gag rules” Congress had imposed on itself from 1836 through 1844, when former President John Quincy Adams, serving as a representative of Massachusett’s 8th District, led a group of congressmen in overturning the odious taboo. The reading of more than 130,000 abolition petitions signed by more than 2 million Americans could, and would, proceed in the House chamber, thus enraging Southern representatives, who would fight the matter tooth and nail. 

The division sowed further — a reckoning that would split Protestant churches (including Shephard’s) and upset the two-party system that President Martin Van Buren had envisioned and thought would preserve democracy as a civilized conversation between common people and the aristocracy — now Democrats and Whigs would be cleaved North and South. “The national party that he wanted to create was a democratic (small d) party that embodied true Americanism as determined by the majority of the people. Its opposition was a much smaller, but still powerful, aristocratic party comprised of wealthy elitists and special interests. The goal, from Van Buren’s perspective, was to ensure that the democratic party remained the permanent voice of the people and that it drowned out the noise produced by the minority party, which was only interested in furthering its own selfish interests,” wrote Mark Cheathem in an editorial for the Tennessean. 

Political viewpoints in Pittsburgh were pressed by the editorial views of Neville Craig, editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette, who “became an active member of the Antimasonic Party in the 1830s. Craig’s hatred of the Masons put him at odds with Henry Clay as a presidential candidate. In 1842, the paper opposed Clay’s presidential run because Clay was a Mason and a slaveholder. While a strong protectionist with his anti-Clay position, Neville Craig became at odds with the Pittsburgh industrialists who were Clay supporters. In 1844, a group of Pittsburgh industrialists…helped implement a change in the Gazette’s editorial approach. From 1844 on, the paper became an advocate of Henry Clay and his ‘American System’ of protectionism. Henry Clay’s Whig Party stood for American industrialization and American greatness. This demonstrated the extensive political power of the Pig Iron Aristocracy in western Pennsylvania. In the Clay-Polk presidential election, Polk won handily nationally, but Whig Henry Clay carried Allegheny County. The local Democrats claimed the Pig Iron Aristocrats assured the Democrat Irish were working on Election Day. Still, the Whig victory would augur the great political alliance of management and labor in the future Republican Party. During the formation of the Republican Party, Pittsburgh was a Whig stronghold and its leaders were known as ‘Iron Whigs,’” wrote Historian Quentin R. Skrabec in his book How Pittsburgh’s East Enders Forged American Industry. 

Neville Burgoyne Craig was a journalist, politician, historian, and lawyer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He edited the Pittsburgh Gazette newspaper from 1829 to 1841 and served a term in the state legislature.

The Senate-leading “Great Compromiser” Clay, a slaveholder from Kentucky, realized that the risks of annexing Texas at the time—War with Mexico, the spread of slavery—outweighed the benefits. Clay wanted to grow and expand the United States with his “American System.” “This ‘System’ consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other ‘internal improvements’ to develop profitable markets for agriculture,” wrote Robert C. Byrd, in The Senate, 1789-1989: Classic Speeches, 1830-1993. 

At the same time, Manifest Destiny matters related to slavery were on the minds of the American populace. The country was expanding quickly with the arrival of Europe’s tired, poor, and huddled masses “yearning to breathe free” as Emma Lazarus would later write in her 1883 poem “The New Colossus”. Throngs of new immigrants and Americans were thinking about bettering their lives west of the Mississippi River on the approximately 827,000 square miles of new territories that the U.S. had acquired from France in 1803 — the Louisiana Purchase of 1.5 million dollars — and began digesting the opinions and rhetoric of the 1844 presidential candidates about the possible annexation of the Republic of Texas. “Texas had been brewing as a problem since 1835, when a band of slave-owning American settlers, attracted by Mexico’s generous immigration policies and the ample land available for growing cotton, rose in rebellion in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. The Texians (as they called themselves) invoked the American Revolution to justify their actions, but their objections to Mexican rule extended beyond representation, taxes, and trade. In 1830 Mexico attempted to restrict immigration into Texas and limit slaveholding. The laws were utterly unenforceable, and probably just as many in the region were as upset about Mexico’s attempt to collect revenue and increase central authority as they were about the fate of their slaves. But the survival of the ‘peculiar institution’ made for a perfect call to arms. The nation was, in the words of a Texas newspaper, attempting to ‘give liberty to our slaves, and to make slaves of ourselves,’” wrote Historian Amy S. Greenberg in A Wicked War.

The Lone Star Republic had been on the minds of Americans since the Siege of the Alamo and Texians declared themselves a republic in March of 1836. “So although Americans felt a strong kinship with the white population of Texas, and most Texians, under siege by Mexico and falling into ever greater debt, were desperate to join the Union, year after year annexation remained unconsummated,” wrote Greenberg. Whig candidate Henry Clay waffled on the issue, but ultimately opposed the annexation of Texas, as did his presumed opponent, Democrat Martin Van Buren, who posited that annexation could “do us more real lasting injury as a nation than the acquisition of such a territory, valuable as it undoubtedly is, could possibly repair.” 

Clay “maintained a ‘moderate’ stance on slavery: He saw the institution as immoral, a bane on American society, but insisted that it was so entrenched in Southern culture that calls for abolition were extreme, impractical and a threat to the integrity of the Union,” wrote Gilbert King in the Smithsonian Magazine. His running mate in 1844 was staunch abolitionist Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey — “the Christian Statesman.” To the chagrin of his fellow Whigs, Clay resisted the advice they offered and published a letter that urged readers that “annexation and war with Mexico are identical. I regard all wars as great calamities…and honorable peace as the wisest and truest policy of this country.” Clay may have faired better in the election if he had maintained a policy of silence regarding Texas.

The Democrats held their convention in Baltimore as had the Whigs — both in May. Their first order of business, presented by Senator Robert J. Walker, an annexationist, was to pass a resolution that the nominee must receive two-thirds of delegate votes to be nominated. Lacking the support of Southern and expansionist Democrats, early favorite Van Buren could not muster the needed votes and continued to lose support as the balloting continued. Former Michigan Governor Lewis Cass, former Vice-President Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, and Pennsylvania Senator James Buchanan were also unable to gain enough support through eight ballots. Thanks to the nomination of Massachusett’s George Bancroft, the eighth ballot also offered the choice of former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tennessee Governor James Knox Polk, a slaveholding protege of populist President Andrew Jackson, who was a true believer in the principles of Jacksonian Democracy — “affirming territorial expansion, upholding the rights of the common man, and opposing the urban elite and their sources of power — their banks, factories, and social institutions,” wrote Greenberg. On the next ballot, Polk received the nomination.

Incumbent Whig President John Tyler wanted to be elected in his own right. Nicknamed “His Accidency” by his critics, Tyler had been the first vice-president to assume the presidency when his predecessor, William Henry Harrison, died of pneumonia a month after assuming office in 1841. The Whigs, led by Clay, would in due time expel Tyler from the party because of his tendency to use the veto to kill the legislation, which they had passed, and Tyler, a states-rights ideologue, thought was unconstitutional. “Tyler was ready to compromise on the banking question, but Clay would not budge. He would not accept Tyler’s “exchequer system,” and Tyler vetoed Clay’s bill to establish a National Bank with branches in several states. A similar bank bill was passed by Congress. But again, on states’ rights grounds, Tyler vetoed it,” wrote Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey in The Presidents of the United States of America. Tyler needed an issue to run on, and so he made annexation his reelection cause in order to prevent England’s presumed diplomatic efforts to emancipate the slaves in Texas. His followers held a convention of their own and nominated him as a third-party candidate, but he had been rejected by the Whigs and vilified by the Democrats, so his hopes were dashed.

Soon after the party conventions, the U.S. Senate voted against Texas annexation, but the lame-duck Tyler succeeded in convincing Congress to pass an amended bill by simple majorities, which laid the groundwork for his successor. After Polk’s nomination and his party’s blatantly expansionist platform became public, Tyler withdrew from the race on August 20, 1844. Jackson had written him a letter stating that “he would at least have the pleasure of taking Clay down with him. Tyler and Polk might split the vote and hand Clay the White House, but in a two-candidate race, Clay would have no chance,” wrote William Freehling, Emeritus Professor of the Humanities at the University of Kentucky.

Young Hickory “vowed to serve just one term as President and restated not only his commitment to the annexation of Texas but also to obtaining clear title (from the British) to all of the Northwest between the latitude of 42° south and 54°40’ north —present-day Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and much of British Columbia — allowing his supporters to use the campaign slogan, ‘Fifty-four Forty or Fight.’ Polk balanced the idea of a new slave state (Texas) entering the union with the possibility of a new free state (Oregon) joining as well,” wrote John C. Pinheiro, professor of history at Aquinas College.

“As the population west of Pittsburgh surged, down-river cities, such as Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, began to challenge Pittsburgh as supply points near the frontier,” wrote William Dietrich II in the Pittsburgh Quarterly. Shephard’s oldest son Thomas Haddon would eventually follow the new commercial opportunities westward, leaving Pittsburgh with his wife and son, heading down the Ohio River to Cairo, Ill., and then up the Mississippi River to Davenport, Iowa, where they would head west to Iowa City, their new home by the 1850s. In the 1860 United States Census, Thomas, 30, is listed as a merchant in Iowa City. Two years later he accepted an appointment as major in a battalion of horse soldiers. Manifest destiny prior to and during the Civil War meant that Americans were also serving to protect their expansion into new Western frontiers, as opposed to the Dakota Sioux and other tribes, who were fighting to preserve their natural domains from the trespassing outsiders. 

The freedom of settlers to own land conflicted with Native Americans’ spiritual vision of nature. Historian Caroline Fraser explains this history in Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. “Western territories were a particular focus of the Free Soil movement of the 1840s and ‘50s, which joined farmers eager to colonize new lands with abolitionists intent on keeping new states free from slavery. Their rallying cry was, ‘Why not vote yourself a farm?,’ a goad to politicians who abhorred giving land to the poor, arguing that such charity was ‘demeaning.’” The Homestead Act of May 1862 would follow, as President Abraham Lincoln favored “cutting up the wild lands into parcels, so that every poor man may have a home.”

By Mark A. Shephard

Related: The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Pursuit of the Holy Grail and an Empire of Liberty

Clan McCallum of Kirkhill, Scotland takes root in antebellum Pennsylvania, to help create and fight for a better America

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum families: Wrath, Righteousness, and the Pursuit of Truth in Antebellum America and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the 1860s

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum families: Wrath, Righteousness, and the Pursuit of Truth in Antebellum America and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the 1860s

“The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully,” declared Abraham Lincoln during his Second Inaugural Address, knowing that both sides in the conflict between the North and the South read the same bible. “The Almighty has his own purposes.” Lincoln’s rhetoric was informed by Matthew, chapter 18, verse 7.

Matthew 18:7

“Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” 

Abraham Lincoln had become the ‘legatus’, or person delegated to preserve the Union, vindicate democracy, and end slavery. His legacy would, of course, mean different things to different citizens in the Reconstruction Era, though undoubtedly a young Percival Wardlaw Shephard growing up in Pittsburgh at this time would have been told by his mother Elizabeth (McCallum) that her mother’s Scottish maiden name, Wardlaw, meant watcher of the hill — distinguished in meaning as had been Lincoln’s chief goal, preservation of the Union, which he did by watching out for its best interests. Percival would have heard the stories from his Uncles Alexander and William Douglass McCallum, who watched many hills as U.S. Cavalry officers.

The changes and new freedoms that were wrought out by the leadership of Lincoln and the sacrifices of many Americans came with the realization that benefits and burdens were to be part and parcel. “Liberty to all,” Lincoln said, is America’s “apple of gold.” Attaining independence had called for revolution, however, attaining “liberty and justice for all” would prove to be an elusive battle, as slavery had been an offensive foundation on which to build a blessed capitalistic enterprise; a bad apple with a big worm in it, as it was.

Antebellum America held diverging opinions about freedom with regard to the “peculiar institution” that had been part of its fabric since 1619. The argument that slavery was a “positive good” was the position taken by South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun in 1837. He was not alone in thinking that Abolitionists’ moral principles were misguided and that slavery was a “natural” institution going back to the ancient world of Aristotle, the philosopher who wrote that “…the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.” Calhoun assumed an opposite moral position in his speech on the US Senate floor when he declared: “But I take higher ground. I hold that, in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by colour, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject, where the honour and interests of those I represent are involved.” Agricultural profits were justifiably important to Southern plantation owners, but as Daniel Walker Howe states in What Hath God Wrought: “The notion of paternalism provided a framework for discussing slavery different from both naked self-interest and the violation of natural rights. Slaveowners, in response to moral criticism, sought to explain their relationship to ‘their people’ as one of caring for those who could not look after themselves.”  

Mercantilism suited Southern planters well. Yet the distribution of wealth served only a select few. As the demand for “King Cotton” increased so did the political power of the planters who relied on involuntary servitude to provide it. Southern landowners who owned African Americans viewed them as their agrarian trumps. Upward mobility was difficult for the majority of Southerners; those who did not own large plantations, slaves, or grow cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, or grains. 

North of the Mason-Dixon line, industrialization, manufacturing, and immigration were transforming the economy. The Shephard family had moved west from New York, N.Y., to Pittsburgh, Pa., a city that by the second year of the Civil War had grown by leaps and bounds since Calhoun’s “positive good” argument 25 years earlier. Percival Wardlaw Shephard arrived in his mother Elizabeth’s arms two weeks after the Battle of Shiloh (also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing) on April 6-7, 1862, and into a divided Allegheny County, where the people of Pittsburgh held varying beliefs about slavery. A City Divided: Debates Over Slavery in Antebellum Pittsburgh, (a thesis by Cody A. Wells) proposes that Pittsburgh  had become a “microcosm for the diverse antebellum North.” Southern trade was important to Pittsburgh businessmen who used the Ohio River to ship goods. “This left many businessmen and entrepreneurs in the growing industrial city sympathetic to the struggles of southern slaveholders,” wrote Wells. Pennsylvania had passed gradual emancipation legislation in the era of the Founding Fathers — the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1780 — but slavery in the state was not deemed illegal at that time, as slaveowners were allowed to keep the slaves they already owned. However, the Pennsylvania law — the first of its kind among Northern states — and other gradual abolition acts in the northern states, began to transform northern societies as newly freed slaves began to settle in urban areas and entered the labor market. 

William Swan Plumer (1802-1880), left, was an American clergyman, theologian, and author who was recognized as an intellectual leader of the Presbyterian Church in the 1800s. In 1862, he resigned as pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Allegheny (Pittsburgh, Pa.) over a controversy within the congregation, and his refusal to ask ‘God’s blessing upon the Government of our country in its efforts to suppress the rebellion.’ John Newbold Shephard (1832-1900) was one of the congregants who left the church prior to Plumer’s resignation on September 19, 1862.

Percival’s parents, John Newbold Shephard and Elizabeth (McCallum) had united with the Central Presbyterian Church, then under the pastoral care of the Rev. William Plumer, D.D., who had been named pastor on January 17, 1855, soon after it was organized by the Allegheny Presbytery, and who when war broke out believed that men of God did not have the responsibility to support the men who waged it. He had been asked by some congregation members to pray for the success of the Union and its warriors. “Plumer avoided politics entirely in the pulpit and in his writings. Although a native of the North, he lived much of his life in the South and felt the Union’s division keenly, and personally. Babies he baptized now raised rifles to kill each other. Central Presbyterian, like many other churches north and south, got caught up in the war fever. Pastors in Allegheny and nearby Pittsburgh thundered imprecatory prayers against the enemy and prayed that the Federal armies would find success in battle. The pastor of Central Presbyterian Church, however, remained notably silent in the chorus of prayers for the Christian soldiers of the United States. Plumer refused to ask for ‘God’s blessing upon the Government of our country in its efforts to suppress the rebellion.’ He also chose not to ‘give thanks to God for the victories which God has granted our armies’ during Lord’s Day worship.” wrote Miles Smith IV in his article “The Providence and Promises of God: The Life and Work of William Swan Plumer”. A minority of the congregation, including John and Elizabeth Shephard, left the church (they joined First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh), and on September 19, 1862, Plumer resigned. Soon thereafter, a letter he wrote was read to the congregation referencing James 1:20 towards the end: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

James 1:20

“For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

By Mark A. Shephard

Previously: Outsider ancestor enjoys a ride in time with his Scottish Clan McCallum from Kirkhill, Inverness to Pennsylvania, and other new frontiers

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Pursuit of the Holy Grail and an Empire of Liberty

Clan McCallum of Kirkhill, Scotland takes root in antebellum Pennsylvania, to help create and fight for a better America

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Panic of 1837, and a New Start in Pittsburgh, Pa., manifest changes good and bad in the life and times of Antebellum Allegheny County

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

For more about the Plumer controversy, read an account of the disagreement published in the Pittsburg Chronicle on June 12, 1862.

Lawrence M. Mead reassesses freedom in his article “Burdens of Freedom” for National Affairs.

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Pursuit of the Holy Grail and an Empire of Liberty

We born souls all bear our inherited pasts for better or worse, some of us taking advantage of strong roots and working hard to grow and protect our fortunate domains of democracy and freedom. The family of man begins with one’s own ancestry. Those distant relatives whose life stories have been passed down, preserved, and searched out are the links that make one’s place in the world that much more edifying. 

Two of my American families established roots in the United States during the antebellum period — the Shephard family, who emigrated from Lincolnshire, England, and the McCallum family, who came from Inverness-shire, Scotland. A marriage resulted in Pittsburgh, and in 1862, the first child of John Newbold Shephard and Elizabeth McCallum was christened Percival Wardlaw Shephard.

Percival Wardlaw Shephard and his son Alexander McCallum Shephard (my father’s father) pose together circa 1913-14.

By this time the Civil War had brought hellfire and damnation to the young nation. The two families, like many of their fellow compatriots, had members who stepped forward to become noble servants and vigilant ‘knights’ in the cause of “the Empire of Liberty”, three serving as U.S. Cavalry officers — two of Percival’s uncles on the McCallum side, and one on the Shephard side. 

The name Perceval goes back to the 14th century. Sir Perceval was a knight in Arthurian legend who won sight of the Holy Grail. The pursuit of an “Empire of Liberty” and those who have served its cause of spreading freedom across our land and others was as important as Sir Perceval and his fellow knights’ quest for the Holy Grail — “an object or goal that is sought after for its great significance” as Merriam-Webster defines the idealistic treasure. The legend passed down that the revered Holy Grail had been used as a chalice by Jesus at the Last Supper, and he had served wine to his apostles and drank from the cup “on behalf of His people to save them from their sin.”

Mark 10:38 recorded Jesus’ understanding that his apostles did not comprehend his teachings regarding the importance of serving mankind, and thus the Holy Grail has come to represent the savior’s “cup of divine wrath” explains Ligonier Ministries. “In the Old Testament, the image of the cup can symbolize God’s blessing; however, in the majority of instances, the cup represents the Lord’s judgment and wrath on wickedness.”

Mark 10:38

Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

A baptism by fire that was anything but civil would, unfortunately, await those who served their chosen side in America during the Civil War. The Kingdom of God played a significant role in the thinking of many that humanity should behave as they interpreted their comprehension of the Good Book. “The American Civil War was not primarily a war over the Bible,” writes James P. Byrd in the epilogue of his book A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War, “but for many Americans, it was a biblical war.” Regarding the North and the South, President Lincoln spoke in his Second Inaugural Address (1865) of how “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

By Mark A. Shephard

Outsider ancestor enjoys a ride in time with his Scottish Clan McCallum from Kirkhill, Inverness to Pennsylvania, and other new frontiers

Clan McCallum of Kirkhill, Scotland takes root in antebellum Pennsylvania, to help create and fight for a better America

The Panic of 1837 and the Shephard family’s move to a new life and tide in Pittsburgh amid expanding Antebellum Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the westward-bound United States

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum families: Wrath, Righteousness, and the Pursuit of Truth in Antebellum America and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the 1860s

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

About the Holy Grail Tapestries

Outsider ancestor enjoys a ride in time with his Scottish Clan McCallum from Kirkhill, Inverness to Pennsylvania and other new frontiers

The time-traveling character in the exciting historical and romantic drama Outlander series, Claire Elizabeth (Beauchamp) Randall/Fraser/Grey, is carried back to the Scottish Highlands in 1743, where she shares a similar joy that would be addressed by a famous 18th Century Scot 40 years later.

“The joy of my heart is to ‘study men, their manners, and their ways,’ and for this darling object I cheerfully sacrifice every other consideration.” So wrote Robert Burns —considered by many to be the national bard of Scotland — in a 1783 letter to schoolmaster John Murdoch.

For those of us who enjoy studying the lives of men and women, the chorus of Burns’ song-poem “Auld Lang Syne” has a spiritually relevant conclusion: “That thou canst never once reflect.” It is not easy to forget and ignore the past — especially one’s own and one’s kin — and if you have been transported as an outlander to a bygone time and place, where answers to your questions may never be revealed, it is best to take heed of the bard’s words.

Robert Burns is considered the national poet of Scotland. Rabbie was born in Alloway in South Ayrshire on January 25, 1759, to poor tenant farmers, William and Agnes Brown Burnes. The beloved Burns, who lived a short life of 37 years, was also a tenant farmer. He played an integral part “in the ‘invention’ of Scottish national identity in the Romantic period and beyond, from the ‘romanticization’ of the Highlands, which he toured in 1787, to the making of national symbols out of whisky and haggis,” wrote History Extra in an article entitled “7 facts about Robert Burns, Scotland’s national bard.” Rabbie Burns died on July 21, 1796, in Dumfries, where he had worked as an excise collector. “His poetry recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regional experience, traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religious practice,” according to PoetryFoundation.org.

Having been to Scotland and the Highlands with the Ohio University School of Visual Communication, and later with my family, I have been engrossed in the Outlander series. I now want to go back as far as possible in my quest to discover the history, genealogy, and lore associated with my Scottish roots.

My Scottish DNA may only be 6.25 percent or thereabouts, but I don’t want to be an outlander when it comes to learning about my second great-grandmother, Elizabeth (McCallum) Shephard, and her clan.

Elizabeth McCallum was born on December 13, 1832, to Mary (Wardlaw) and Alexander McCallum in Kirkhill, a parish, in the Mainland district of the county of Inverness, six miles west of Inverness, Scotland. Betsy, as the Scottish Births and Baptisms recorded, was the second-to-last of 11 children born to Mary and Alexander, who were 40 and 44 respectively at the time of her birth.

Betsy grew up in the Aird, or “High Place” (translated from the Scottish Gaelic), an area of Inverness-shire to the west of the city of Inverness. Situated “to the south of the River Beauly and the Beauly Firth, and to the north of Glenurquhart and the northern end of Loch Ness,” the area gives its name to a Highland Council ward — “Aird and Loch Ness”.

The Kirkhill, Inverness-shire, Scotland Genealogy Family Search page written in September 1841  describes the place as consisting of the two united parishes of Wardlaw and Farnua. “Kirkhill derives its name from the situation of its church on a hill; its Gaelic name refers to the dedication of its church to the Virgin Mary. Wardlaw is a corruption of the Gaelic Bar-tla, that is, “kindly summit.” Farnua or Fearnaie, as it is called in Gaelic, is probably derived from the word fearn, signifying “allar,” because the parish did and still does abound with allar trees. The name of the united parishes in Gaelic is Cnoemhoir, or “Mary’s hill.” In the neighborhood, it is called, by way of eminence, the Hill: hence the English translation of it, Kirkhill.”

The Wardlaw Mausoleum in Kirkhill, Inverness-shire, Scotland

The Wardlaw Mausoleum, set in the Wardlaw Graveyard at the top of Wardlaw Road in Kirkhill, just eight miles west of Inverness, has become a popular destination because of the Outlander franchise. Built-in 1634 for members of the Lovat Fraser families, the church graveyard had for ages been considered the final resting place of the Fox, Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, a Scottish Jacobite and Chief of Clan Fraser of Lovat — and Jamie Fraser’s grandfather in the Outlander Series. He had been convicted of high treason against the crown of Great Britain and beheaded on Tower Hill on April 9, 1747, because of his role in the Jacobite rising of 1745. It had been standard practice to inter the remains of those executed on Tower Hill in the chapel attached to the Tower of London, and for over 250 years the family legend regarding Fraser was that his remains had been secretly removed and returned to the Wardlaw Mausoleum, which he had renovated in 1722. It was thought that Fraser had dictated his own lead-covered coffin’s plaque, which reads: “In this coffin are laid the remains of Simon Lord Fraser of Lovat who, after twenty years in His own Land and abroad with the greatest distinction and renown, at the risk of his own life, restored and preserved his race, clan and household from the tyranny of the Athol and the treacherous plotting of the Mackenzies of Tarbat. To preserve an ancient house is not the greatest credit. Nor is there any honour for the enemy who despoiled it. Although that enemy was strong in his plotting and unrelenting warfare, yet Simon who was also skillful and cunning defeated him in war.” The family’s traditional story was thrown for a loop in 2018 when the remains in the coffin were analyzed and proven to be those of a young woman and not those of Fraser.

One family’s legacy is another’s treasure, as legends such as the Chief of Clan Fraser of Lovat become part of community lore. 40 years after the Fox was executed for changing his mind as to which house should lead Great Britain (he had supported the House of Hanover but after converting to Catholicism backed the Stuart claim to the throne), Alexander McCallum, the father of Elizabeth was born in Kirkhill on July 27, 1787. McCallum became a “sometime farmer and distiller at Drumriach, Aird.” His death in Inverness when Betsy was 16, and her awareness that several of her siblings and her father’s younger siblings had emigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia likely figured in her decision to leave the Highlands and move to America.

The Malcolm/MacCallum clan motto is “In ardua tendit” which means “He has attempted difficult things”. Elizabeth and her relatives did just that, as they braved the Atlantic, came ashore in a strange land, and built new enterprises in their new frontier. Her uncles William and Andrew had emigrated to the United States in the 1820s, and by 1831 had begun to build up what became Glen Echo Mills, a manufacturer of “carpeting, oil cloths, mattings, etc.”, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth’s older brother Hugh had also emigrated and settled in Philadelphia County where he would eventually join the enterprise and become part owner. Hugh became a naturalized citizen on September 19, 1848.

Hugh McCallum (1819-1891)

Elizabeth may have emigrated to the United States as early as 1850, as recorded on the 1910 United States Census. An Elizabeth Collum, 25 (born in 1832), departed Great Britain on the New York American Line-Ship, Cornelius Grinnell, and arrived in New York City in 1857, the same year she married John Newbold Shephard, probably in Pittsburgh, where his family had settled. She may have first gone to Pittsburgh with her older brother Henry, who had petitioned for naturalization in 1844 in Philadelphia, and was a carpet dealer in Pittsburgh for his uncles’ firm.

The New York American Line-Ship, Cornelius Grinnell

By the time the 1860 United States Census was taken in Pittsburgh, Elizabeth’s mother, Mary (Wardlaw) McCallum had left Scotland and moved to America to be with her children. Son Henry and son-in-law John Newbold Shephard, who worked as a druggist at the time, were the only two who worked. Mary’s son William, and her daughters, Catherine and Mary also lived in the 4th Ward, Allegheny City household in June 1860.

Two of Elizabeth’s brothers, William Douglass (1822-1876), and Alexander (1831-1872) would serve the Union as U.S. Cavalry officers. They had arrived in Philadelphia on the Barque William and James, which they boarded with their older sister Margaret (1818-1904) in Glasgow in 1846. Poverty in Scotland was always one of the main reasons for seeking out a better life in a new land, and this may have been the case for the McCallum siblings since their father’s passing even though family connections probably played a major role in their decisions to move to America.

William found his way to Washington County, Penn., and on April 1, 1864, mustered into Company H of the 14th Regiment, Pennsylvania Cavalry (159th Volunteers). First Lieutenant McCallum and the 14th Regiment fought mainly in West Virginia and the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign in Virginia.

Alexander mustered into the 8th Regiment, Pennsylvania Cavalry (89th Volunteers) as a first lieutenant on September 10, 1861, in Chester County, Penn., signing up for a three-year term. On March 7, 1862, 1st Lt. McCallum was promoted to Captain of Company E. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville, the 8th Pennsylvania found themselves surrounded by Confederate infantry — flankers of Stonewall Jackson’s column — congregated on the Plank Road, and well-hidden and positioned in the surrounding woods on May 1. After the war, Second Lieutenant James Edward Carpenter wrote that late in the day on May 2, he, Capt. McCallum and the 8th Regiment were ordered to report to Gen. Oliver Howard of the 11th Corps whose Confederate-surrounded position was located on the Plank Road, near the Old Wilderness Church. Seeing no other options the horsemen obeyed their commander’s order to charge, and Cap’t. Alexander McCallum, who was leading Company E turned to his battalion commander, Captain Wickersham, and said “I think this is the last of 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry,” to which Wickersham responded, “I think so too, but let us go down with our colors flying.” The 8th Pennsylvania survived its ordeal, but with severe losses — “37 men dead and 80 horses killed in the action,” according to Carpenter in the book, The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863 by Eric J. Wittenberg.

8th Pennsylvania Cavalry 89th Regiment Pennsylvanian Volunteers, Battle of Chancellorsville, May, 2nd, 1863.

The warrior brothers’ sister, Elizabeth, had six children with John Newbold Shephard (my father‘s namesake), all born in Pittsburgh except Burdett, who was born in Cairo, Ill., at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, on February 28, 1867, likely on a family vacation to visit her brother-in-law, Thomas Haddon Shephard and his family, who had moved to Iowa City, Iowa, from Pittsburgh before the war. Thomas served with the Union Army during the Indian Wars. The Dakota War of 1862, an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux had broken out on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. On October 21, 1862, Shephard was appointed major of the first battalion in the regiment garrisoned at Davenport, Iowa. Major Shephard spent the better part of 1863 chasing Sioux across Iowa to Sioux City and then being ordered to Fort Randall on the upper Missouri River as second in command “to take command “of the combined forces and assume the offensive against the Indians, a large body of whom were at that time encamped near the fort. Upon the approach of this additional reinforcement, the Indians broke up their encampment and fled toward the north.”

The McCallum and Shephard men seemed to have learned good horse skills in Inverness-shire and Lincolnshire (England) where Thomas and John’s father, John Shephard III, had been born. William, Alexander, and Thomas would likely have agreed with Abraham Lincoln, who reasoned, “I can make a General in five minutes, but a good horse is hard to replace.”

Elizabeth and John’s daughter, Thermuthis Burdett (Davis) was named after his mother, Thermuthis (Jones). Their other daughter, Jessie (Campbell), [b. May 20, 1871], and son, Percival Wardlaw (my great-grandfather) [b. April 20, 1862] were the fortunate siblings who lived to adulthood.

After Elizabeth’s husband John died in 1900, she enjoyed time at her winter home in Boerne, Texas, close to where both of her daughters had settled after leaving Pittsburgh to find their new frontiers. Elizabeth (McCallum) Shephard died in 1918 at the age of 86. She was laid to rest in the Shephard family plot in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Cemetery.

By Mark A. Shephard

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum Families: The Pursuit of the Holy Grail and an Empire of Liberty

Clan McCallum of Kirkhill, Scotland takes root in antebellum Pennsylvania, to help create and fight for a better America

The Panic of 1837 and the Shephard family’s move to a new life and tide in Pittsburgh amid expanding Antebellum Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the westward-bound United States

The Legacy of the Shephard and McCallum families: Wrath, Righteousness, and the Pursuit of Truth in Antebellum America and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the 1860s

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The life and times of an Ohio pioneer’s son, Albert Polk Kelley, who fought for a free Union and strove for Manifest Destiny

Named after Democrat James K. Polk, who in 1844 defeated Whig Henry Clay to become the 11th President of the United States, Albert Polk Kelley was the youngest of my third great-grandparents’ seven children.

Albert’s father Thomas Kelley (1800-1887), one of Ohio’s early pioneers, was a “stanch Democrat having cast his first vote for Andrew Jackson,” wrote Michael A. Leeson in 1886, in his biographical sketch for a History of Seneca County, Ohio: Containing a History of the County, Its Townships, Towns, Villages … Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; Biographies; History of the Northwest Territory; History of Ohio; Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, Etc., Etc.

Thomas Kelley (1800-1887)

Catherine Sara (Lorah) Kelley, 35, gave birth to Albert on June 22, 1845, more than likely in Washington Township, Hancock County, Ohio, the township that Thomas, who was 45 when Albert was born, had the honor of naming in 1831, (according to a History of Hancock County, Ohio: Containing a History of the County, Its Townships, Towns … Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men, Biographies, History of the Northwest Territory, History of Ohio, Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, Etc) when he, his wife and three children moved from Wooster in Wayne County to the rural area near what would become the town and railroad hub of Fostoria, Ohio (located at the convergence of Hancock, Seneca and Wood counties.

The 1844 United States presidential election turned on the dividing issues of slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas, and the dark horse candidate Polk defeated Clay by strongly supporting westward expansion.

Polk’s website chronicles the election: “As the presidential election of 1844 approached, the Democratic party was split over the issue of Texas. The presumptive nominee, former president Martin Van Buren, came out publicly against annexation despite growing public support. Many in the party believed the only way to defeat the Whig candidate, Henry Clay, was to strongly support Western expansion. At a raucous Democratic convention in Baltimore, it took nine votes to choose a nominee. When the dust settled, James Polk’s name sat atop the ticket. Western expansion loomed large over the 1844 presidential campaign. The Democratic party platform advocated for the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of the Oregon Territory. However, critics worried that aggressive territorial expansion would lead to war with England or Mexico and disrupt the balance of power between free and slave-owning states. Despite losing his home state of Tennessee, Polk was elected the 11th President of the United States. In that role, he turned his party’s vision of a continental nation spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean into reality.”

As Albert grew into his teenage years as a farmer’s son in Northwest Ohio, during the antebellum years he was surely being influenced by his father’s politics, in addition to the sentiments of other family and community members. His older brother, Charles Crownover Kelley (1833-1912) had left Hancock County in 1854 and started a new life in Texas Hill Country, less than 10 years after Texas became the 28th state. The two brothers would fight on opposite sides during the Civil War. Charles would serve the Confederate States of America in Texas.

The 72nd Ohio Regiment was raised between October 1861 and February 1862 and left the state under the command of Colonel Ralph P. Buckland, whose name is affixed to the broadside at left. On the right are the National colors of the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Albert served the Union having enlisted with the 72nd Ohio Infantry on December 1, 1863, when he was 18. The regiment served with the Army of the Tennessee. He would be appointed corporal, and muster out on September 11, 1865. After the war, Albert married Helena Presida Richards (1844-1920) on April 30, 1868, in Seneca County, Ohio.

Son John was born in 1869, and by the 1870 United States Census the young family had moved west, where Albert started farming in Spring Creek Township, Saline County, Kansas. The farming venture in Kansas did not last long, and a year or so later the family moved back to Northwest Ohio: the devastating dust storms that Kansas experienced were likely the reason. When the 1880 United States Census was taken, Albert was the proprietor of a sawmill in Carey, Wyandot County, Ohio, and he would engage in manufacturing until 1890.

“To Mr. and Mrs. Albert P. Kelley were born seven children, of whom four survive,” wrote John Steven McGroarty in his California of the South Vol. II. Daughters Valeria Inez (1871-1933) and Jessie Norine (1876-1955) followed their brother John. The baby of the family was Loyal Claire Kelley (1884-1950), who would go on to become the district attorney and then a prominent corporate lawyer in Riverside County, California. He was born in Carey, Ohio, six years before his family migrated to California and settled in Corona, Temescal Township, Riverside County, where his father would farm and ranch his property until no longer able.

Albert’s wife Helena died when she was 75, three days before the 1920 United States Census was taken in Corona, in which he was listed as a retired rancher. My third great-uncle, Albert Polk Kelley, died on March 30, 1928, in Corona, California, at the age of 82, passing on the Kelley family legacy to his descendants.

By Mark A. Shephard

Related: Ohio Pioneer Thomas Kelley’s daughter, Sydna Jane, becomes the Civil War widow of Philip Faulhaber, who was killed during the Vicksburg Campaign

The life and times of an Ohio Pioneer’s son, Charles Crownover Kelley, after his move from Fostoria, Ohio, to the Texas Hill Country among German Freethinkers in 1854

The Legacy of Anna Belle (German) Shephard and her Ohio Pioneer Grandfather, Thomas Kelley

The life and times of an Ohio Pioneer’s son, Charles Crownover Kelley, after his move from Fostoria, Ohio, to the Texas Hill Country among German Freethinkers in 1854

One of Ohio Pioneer Thomas Kelley’s sons, Charles Crownover Kelley, decided to leave Northwest Ohio, and head south to Texas 18 years after the Battle of the Alamo was fought during the winter of 1836.

Born November 29, 1833, in Fostoria, Ohio, to Kelley, 33, and his wife Catherine (Lorah), 23, Charles’ middle name honored his grandmother, Jemima Crownover. In 1854, at the age of 21, Charles moved south to Texas. At the beginning of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate forces and served with honor until the close. Charles married Lydia Jane Tedford on January 31, 1861, in Kerr County, Texas, and their first son, Thomas Milton, was born in their new home of Comfort, Texas, less than six weeks later. Charles and Lydia were parents to four sons (including Thomas) and three daughters, born between 1861 and 1882.

Charles Kelley had German-American bloodlines through his mother’s ancestors, and so when he had decided to start a new life in Texas Hill Country he probably knew that the town of Comfort had been established in 1854 by German immigrants, who were Freethinkers. A plaque in Comfort honors The Founding Freethinkers (Deutsche Freidenker) and helps in understanding the Freethinkers state of mind and the deep societal divisions in Kelley’s Texas community up to and after the state’s secession from the Union in 1861. It reads: “From 1845 to 1861 large numbers of German Freethinkers emigrated to the Texas Hill Country. Freethinkers were predominantly German intellectuals who advocated reason and democracy over religious and political autocracy. Many had been active in the 1848 German Revolution and sought freedom in America. The Freethinkers established numerous Central Texas colonies including Bettina, Castell, Cypress Creek, Luckenbach, Sisterdale, and Tusculum (Boerne). Settlements that conducted intellectual forums in Latin became known as “Latin Colonies.” Within a few years of the founding of Comfort in 1854, half the Hill Country Freethinker population was living in the area. Freethinkers valued their newfound freedoms of speech, assembly, and separation of religion and government. Instead of religious dogma, Freethinkers believed in individual philosophy. They advocated equal rights for all persons, and their moral values were dominated by respect for life and nature. Many were active in political issues of the day including the rejection of secession and abolition of slavery. Intellectual pursuits were shared with agriculture and other crafts of physical labor. Secular education and organizations (Vereins) provided social and cultural fulfillment. Existence was peaceful and their influence rapidly expanded. Loyalty to the Union during the Civil War had cost many their freedoms and lives. Some Freethinkers relocated to nearby urban areas or other states, and a few returned to Europe. The arrival of the railroad in Comfort in 1887 and other outside factors largely influenced the construction of the first church in 1892. Freethinker origins continue to influence the spirit of the community and surrounding areas.”

A Washington Times article by Joe Holley describes the setting in 1860, when by then “some 30,000 German immigrants were living in Texas, making up 5 percent of the population. Many were small farmers who had fled endless wars and conscription in the Old Country, while others were highly educated Freethinkers who had immigrated to Texas after a failed democratic revolution in Germany in 1848. The Freethinkers helped found Comfort and Sisterdale, Hill Country communities free of organized religion, dedicated to civil liberties, and committed to science and education.”

The Civil War brought division to the community, and in 1862, the Confederate States of America imposed martial law on Central Texas, due to resistance from the recently settled Freethinkers, who backed the Union, and were opposed to the Civil War.

“Come along you rascal! and fight for our King Cotton,” declaims the Confederate officer at left. “Let me go. I tell you I’m a Union man, and don’t believe in your Southern Confederacy,” responds the gentleman in trouble. “Blast your Union! Them as won’t go in for the war must be made to do it. Go ahead, or we’ll hang you on the next tree,” states the other southern man.

One leader of the German-American Freethinkers was Jacob Kuechler, who was one of the founders of dendrochronology (the study of tree rings), and a surveyor until 1861. Kuechler had been commissioned a captain by Governor Sam Houston to enroll state militia troops for Gillespie County. “He was viewed as a traitor, however, because he only recruited Unionist sympathizers of German descent,” according to a Texas General Land Office historical bio. After Houston was forced out of office in 1861, his successor, Governor Francis Lubbock dismissed Kuechler, who then attempted to guide sixty-one conscientious objectors to Mexico.

Jacob Kuetchler – (1823-1893)

Scottish-born Confederate irregular James Duff and his Duff’s Partisan Rangers pursued,  overtook and massacred 34 of Kuechler’s German compatriots along the Nueces River as they attempted to make their escape, and eventually meet with Union forces. Some were executed after being taken prisoner. Kuechler survived the Nueces massacre. The cruelty shocked the people of Gillespie County and surrounding areas. Two thousand took to the hills to escape Duff’s reign of terror. The German-language Treue der Union Monument (loyalty to the Union), is located in Charle’s hometown of Comfort. It was dedicated on August 10, 1866, to commemorate those who died at the 1862 Nueces massacre.

Private Charles C. Kelley served with Company A of the 33rd Regiment, Texas Cavalry, which was organized in April 1863, by using the 14th (Duff’s) Texas Cavalry Battalion as its nucleus. This unit served in Gano’s and Hardeman’s Brigade, Trans-Mississippi Department, and was active along the lower Rio Grande. In April 1864, it was near Bonham, Texas, and contained 23 officers and 307 men. On June 2, 1865, it was included in the surrender.

After the war, Kelley worked as a wheelwright and farmed his land in Kerr County, Texas. He and Lydia Jane eventually moved and retired to Del Rio, Val Verde County, Texas, sometime prior to the 1900 United States Census. My 3rd great-uncle, Charles Crownover Kelley died on December 2, 1913, in Del Rio, Texas, having lived a long life of 80 years, and was buried there.

A local newspaper printed his obituary: “Death claimed this honored citizen of Val Verde County, at the ranch home of his son Tom Kelley, six miles from Del Rio, last Monday morning, Dec. 2, 1912, at 4 o’clock. The deceased had been an invalid for a long time and for several months had been continually confined to his bed. Besides his wife, the following relatives survive him: Daughters, Mesdames L. U. Vasbinder, H. A. Stein, and J. Sankey. Sons, Tom, Lora, Bert, and Frank Kelley. Sisters, Mesdames, Sidney Faulhaber of New Jersey, Minerva German and Amanda Cory of Ohio, and one brother Albert Kelley of California. The last said rites took place at the Del Rio cemetery at 4 o’clock Tuesday afternoon Dec 3rd. A large concourse of friends being present. His four sons and two sons-in-law acted as pallbearers. The Herald extends true sympathy to the sorrowing ones in their hours of affliction.”

By Mark A. Shephard

Related: Ohio Pioneer Thomas Kelley’s daughter, Sydna Jane, becomes the Civil War widow of Philip Faulhaber, who was killed during the Vicksburg Campaign

The life and times of an Ohio pioneer’s son, Albert Polk Kelley (1845-1928), my third great-uncle, who served the Union and believed in freedom and Manifest Destiny

The Legacy of Anna Belle (German) Shephard and her Ohio Pioneer Grandfather, Thomas Kelley

Ohio Pioneer Thomas Kelley’s daughter, Sydna Jane, becomes the Civil War widow of Philip Faulhaber, who was killed during the Vicksburg Campaign

Pioneers of Washington Township, Hancock Co., Ohio, and later of Fostoria, Ohio, Thomas and Catherine (Lorah) Kelley, (my 3rd great-grandparents) welcomed their second daughter, Sydna Jane, into their frontier life in February 1831 after more than seven years of marriage. It is not known where in Ohio Sydna was born, but as the family moved northwest in 1831 to Washington Township from Wooster in Wayne County, Ohio, where her father’s parents, Charles and Jemima (Crownover) had settled on a farm four miles from Wooster in 1811 (Thomas Kelley’s home where he was “reared and educated from age 11”) Sydna was more than likely born before her family made their move to Hancock County the same year of her birth as she was a winter baby and her father had not yet built the family a cabin in Washington Township.

Kelley had the honor of naming the township and entered 160 acres of land, which he cleared and improved. A History of Hancock County, Ohio, published in 1866 documented that “in the fall of 1831, Thomas Kelley, of Wayne County, Ohio, built his cabin on the northwest quarter of Section 1, entered by him the previous April.” Kelley served two terms as county commissioner.

Sydna’s future husband, Phillip Faulhaber, was born in Canton, Ohio, July 5, 1830, son of Louis and Louisa (Munsinger) Faulhaber, natives of Germany, who came to Seneca County, Ohio, in 1838. Louis Faulhaber died in 1839, and Phillip moved with his mother to Tiffin, Ohio, and was there reared and educated. About 1851 he located in Fostoria, Ohio, and became a clothier. On October 21, 1855, Sydna Jane and Phillip (pictured above) were united in marriage. The couple welcomed three children into the world, Alice, John Lewis, and Catharine Minerva “Kittie” — Minerva being the name of Sydna Jane’s younger sister.

At the breaking out of the war of the Rebellion in 1861, Mr. Faulhaber sold his business, enlisted in the Army on September 16, 1861, was commissioned an officer on 4 October, and raised Company B, 57th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which he went out as captain. Phillip was killed at Chickasaw Bayou leading Company B during skirmishes on December 28, 1862, in the course of the Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The battle of Chickasaw Bayou played out as follows: “On December 26, 1862, three Union divisions, under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, disembarked at Johnson’s Plantation on the Yazoo River to approach the Vicksburg defenses from the northeast while a fourth landed farther upstream on the 27th. On the 27th, the Federals pushed their lines forward through the swamps toward Walnut Hills, which were strongly defended. On the 28th, several futile attempts were made to get around these defenses. On December 29, Sherman ordered a frontal assault which was repulsed with heavy casualties. Sherman then withdrew. This Confederate victory frustrated Grant’s attempts to take Vicksburg by direct approach. Captain Faulhaber’s remains were sent home, and he was buried with honors in Fostoria, Ohio.”

“Mr. Faulhaber was a member of the German Reformed Church, a worthy citizen, esteemed by all who knew him. He was a member of the I. O. O. F. Politically he was a Democrat.” —History of Seneca County, Ohio: Containing a History of the County

By Mark A. Shephard

Related: The life and times of an Ohio Pioneer’s son, Charles Crownover Kelley, after his move from Fostoria, Ohio, to the Texas Hill Country among German Freethinkers in 1854

The life and times of an Ohio pioneer’s son, Albert Polk Kelley, who fought for a free Union and strove for Manifest Destiny

The Legacy of Anna Belle (German) Shephard and her Ohio Pioneer Grandfather, Thomas Kelley

The Legacy of Anna Belle (German) Shephard and her Ohio Pioneer Grandfather, Thomas Kelley

The two most prevalent bloodlines in the United States are Americans with German ancestry and Americans with Irish Ancestry. The US Census Bureau conducted an American Community Survey in 2016, and of those citizens who reported, about 44 million of a population of 323.1 million (14 percent) identified themselves as having German ancestry. In 2017, about 33 million of a population of 325.1 (10.1 percent) declared an Irish lineage.

My great-grandmother, Anna Belle (German) Shephard (1872-1948) is the heterogeneous blend of a first-generation immigrant from Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany — her father Christian German (1835-1925) — and an Irish-American mother, Minerva Kelley (1838-1916), whose great-grandfather James Kelley II, in 1733, came to the American Colonies from Macroom, County Cork, Ireland, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he married the daughter of an English immigrant, Prudence Logsdon. Minerva’s ancestors also include German-Americans and Swiss-Americans who settled in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Anna Belle (German) Shephard – (1872-1948)

The families of Anna Belle’s mother’s ancestors helped to form a diverse portrait of the United States from pre-revolutionary days onward. Especially interesting are the decisions of her grandfather Thomas Kelley’s progeny as to their destinations and purposes in America.

Anna Belle now has a special place in my heart, as my father, John Newbold Shephard, lies at rest next to her grave in Fountain Cemetery in Fostoria, Ohio, the community where Anna Belle’s mother, Minerva (Kelley) German was born on September 24, 1838, the youngest of Thomas and Catherine (Lorah) Kelley’s seven children.

Minerva (Kelley) German – (1838-1916)

Fountain Cemetery is also where my third great-grandfather, and pioneer to Ohio, Thomas Kelley lies at rest. He was born on April 6, 1800, in Huntingdon County, Penn., son of Gemimah (Crownover), 33, and Charles Kelley, 46, the son of James Kelley II. Thomas and his family moved west and settled on a farm four miles from Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, in 1811, where Thomas was reared and educated from age 11.

Thomas Kelley (1800-1887)

In July of 1823, Thomas married Catherine Sara Lorah, whose father, Johannes (John) Lorah, was also one of the earliest pioneers of Wayne County, Ohio, having settled in Green Township prior to 1823.

In 1831, Thomas moved his family to Washington Township, Hancock County (“and entered 160 acres of land, which he cleared and improved”), and had the honor of naming the township. A history of Hancock County, Ohio, published in 1886 documented that: “In the fall of 1831, Thomas Kelley, of Wayne County, Ohio, built his cabin on the northwest quarter of Section 1, entered by him the previous April. The following year (1832), his brothers Ezekiel and Moses, settled in the township, the former on Section 4, and the latter on Section 2. Thomas served two terms as county commissioner, and now resides in Fostoria, but Ezekiel and Moses both died in the township.”

Thomas and Catherine had seven children together: John L. (1827-1848); Amanda (1829-1915), who married Ambrose Corey; Sydna J. (1831-1919), who married Philip Faulhaber; Charles Crownover Kelley (1833-1912), who married Lydia Jane Tedford; Sarah (Kelley) Ball (1836-1910), who married Thaddeus Ball; Minerva (1838-1916), who married Christian German; and Albert Polk Kelley (1845-1928), who married Helena Presida Richards. From Pioneer days through the Civil War, and into the first decades of the 20th Century, some stayed in Northwest Ohio, and some moved south and west.

Kelley and his family lived on their farm in Washington Township until 1856, when he sold their farm, and moved to Fremont, Ohio. His wife Catherine Sara passed away on January 25, 1861, at the age of 51. They had been married 37 years. He then married Emily G. Prebles (daughter of James Prebles and Hettie Culbertson), widow of Levi E. Boren) Kelley on June 26, 1862, in Fremont, Ohio. “Kelley lived in Fremont until 1866 and then moved to Fostoria. From 1866 to his death on December 30, 1887, Kelley was a prominent citizen in Fostoria. In politics, he was a staunch Democrat, having cast his first vote for Andrew Jackson,” published a History of Seneca County, Ohio. Thomas lived a long life of 87 years and was buried in Fostoria, Ohio.

Anna Belle must have been proud of her grandfather Thomas. She probably heard many stories about her ancestors and their endeavors in Fostoria and Northwest Ohio. Her life in the community was first documented in the 1880 United States Census, when she was going to school there as a seven-year-old, and living with her parents, sister Sadie, 13, and brother Charlie, 9.

She married my great-grandfather, Percival Wardlaw Shephard, in Fostoria four days before Christmas in 1893, and together they made it through the Panic of 1893.

Percival Wardlaw Shephard – (1862-1924)

In the 1900 United States Census, Anna Belle is listed as a boarder, along with 12 other people including her husband, Percival, at Justice Precinct 6 in Kendall County, Texas. She followed her husband on his life journey, one that included residences in Boerne, Kendall County, Texas, and Pittsburgh, Penn., where Percival was president, treasurer, and editor of The Index, Pittsburgh’s Illustrated Weekly. Their only son, Alexander McCallum Shephard (my father John’s father), was born in Pittsburgh on October 26, 1903.

“She taught me how to drive her 1940 Plymouth Business Coupe, which when she passed away she gave me,” said her grandson John, who lovingly called her “Oma.” “We would go out to the farms and houses she owned in town and collect rent, and we would play cards on the sunporch and the sleeping porch,” said John.

Anna Belle died on June 8, 1948, in Fostoria, Ohio, at the age of 75. Her obituary was published in the Fostoria Daily Review: Mrs. Anna G. Shephard, 307 N. County Line Street, died Tuesday, 7 p.m., in Fostoria City Hospital where she had been a patient since she suffered a heart attack Saturday night. Mrs. Shephard was born in Fostoria and was the daughter of Christian and Minerva (Kelley) German. She was married to Percival W. Shephard who died in 1924. She is survived by a son, Alexander M. Shephard, Cleveland; two grandsons, John and Thomas Shephard, Cleveland; and two nieces, Mrs. F. R. Bell, Bowling Green, and Mrs. Chester O. Smithson, Findlay. A son, John, died in infancy. A brother, Charles C. German, and a sister, Mrs. Frank M. Barnhart, also are deceased. Mrs. Shephard was a member of the First Methodist church. Burial will be in Fountain Cemetery.

By Mark A. Shephard

Related: The Panic of 1837 and the Shephard family’s move to a new life and tide in Pittsburgh amid expanding Antebellum Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the westward-bound United States

The life and times of an Ohio Pioneer’s son, Charles Crownover Kelley, after his move from Fostoria, Ohio, to the Texas Hill Country among German Freethinkers in 1854

The life and times of an Ohio pioneer’s son, Albert Polk Kelley, who fought for a free Union and strove for Manifest Destiny

Ohio Pioneer Thomas Kelley’s daughter, Sydna Jane, becomes the Civil War widow of Philip Faulhaber, who was killed during the Vicksburg Campaign

John Newbold Shephard works for a better life in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Christian and Minerva (Kelley) German work to grow Fostoria, Ohio, during the Gilded Age