Person:Thomas Shepard (9)

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Shepard was born in Towcester, Northamptonshire. His devout mother died when he was four and he lived a difficult life under his stepmother. His father died when he reached ten, at which point he lived with his grandparents and later an older brother, whom he held in high and grateful regard. A schoolmaster ignited in him a scholarly interest, which ultimately led to entry into Emmanuel College in Cambridge University at the age of fifteen. He accounts in his autobiography that he lived a dissatisfied and dissolute life, which led him to pray out in a nearby field, at which point he underwent the beginnings of a conversion experience.

In 1627 he became assistant schoolmaster at Earls Colne Grammar School in Earls Colne, Essex. He became a minister whose sermons and Puritan ways drew the ire of Church of England Archbishop William Laud, and he was forbidden to preach. Following the death of his elder son, he left England in 1635 with his wife and younger son on a difficult voyage on the ship Defence for Massachusetts in colonial America where he became minister of one of the leading churches in the colonies, the First Church in Cambridge (Congregational, currently UCC), Massachusetts and also of Harvard University, then a very new school charged with training men for the Christian ministry in the Puritan colonies of New England. From 1637 to 1638, during the Antinomian Controversy, he sat with the other colonial ministers during both the civil and church trials of Anne Hutchinson, and was a very vocal critic of hers during the latter. His wife died shortly after his arrival in New England, as did his second wife and other children, though he framed these experiences, if not without difficulty, into the perspective of his theology.

Along with John Allin and John Eliot, he was involved in preaching to the native peoples on New England.Cite error 4; Invalid call; no input specified

Shepard died of quinsy, a Peritonsillar abscess, which is a complication of tonsillitis at the age of 44.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Roberts, Gary Boyd. Ancestors of American Presidents. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009).

   Ancestor of John Quincy Adams

2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England: Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1860-1862)
   4:76.
3. ↑ Thomas Shepard, in Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011)
   6:273-81.

   BIRTH: Towcester, Northamptonshire, 5 Nov 1604 [sic, see comment], s/o William Shepard
   DEATH: "August the 25th 1649, in the 44th year of his age"
   MARRIAGE (1)Buttercrambe, Yorkshire 23 Jul 1632 Margaret Touteville, (2) by 1638 Joanna Hooker, (3) 8 Sep 1647 Margaret Borodell.
   [Note: Anderson cites God's Plot and Young's First Planters. God's Plot gives the birth in 1605, but Young appears to get the date wrong even though quoting from the Autobiography, and then complains in a footnote that the date is a year too early!]

4. ↑ Baldwin, Thomas W. Vital Records of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Year of 1850. (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1914-15)
   Vol. 2, p. 735.

   SHEPARD, Tho[mas], pastor of the Church of Christ, bur. Aug. 28, 1649.

5. ↑ Shepard, Thomas, and Nehemiah Adams. Autobiography of Thomas Shepard: The Celebrated Minister of Cambridge, N.E. (Boston: Pierce and Parker, 1832)
   p. 15-16.

   "In the yeare of Christ 1605 upon the 5 day of November, called the Powder treason day, & that very houre of the day wherin the Parlament should have bin blown up by Popish priests, I was then borne ... My father's name was William Shepard ... & being a prentice to on[e] Mr. Bland a groser he marryed on[e] of his daughters, ... the Town where I was born, viz. Towcester in Northamptonshire, ..."

6. ↑ ^6.0 6.1 Mather, Cotton; Lucius F. (Lucius Franklin) Robinson; and Thomas Robbins. Magnalia Christi americana, or, The ecclesiastical history of New-England: from its first planting in the year 1620, unto the year of Our Lord 1638, in seven books. (London: Printed for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns, 1702)
   p. 88.

   "He died, August 25. 1649. when he was Forty Three Years, and Nine Months old; and left behind him of Three Wives, which he successively married, three Sons, who have since been the Shepherds of three several Churches in this County."
   [Birth about November, 1605]

7. ↑ Thomas Sheperd, in Church of England, and Ancestry.com (comp.). Northamptonshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1532–1812 [database]. (Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014).

   baptized 9 Nov 1605 in Towcester, Northumberland
   father: Willm Sheperd