Author: Shepherd, Henry Savile
Biography:
SHEPHERD, Henry Savile (1802-32: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born at Coxside, Plymouth, on 28 Oct. 1802, the second son and youngest of five children of Savile William Shepherd, merchant and ship owner, and his wife Elizabeth Browning, who had married at Greenwich in 1794. As Dissenters his parents, members of Batter Street, Presbyterian, Plymouth, registered his birth at Dr. Williams’ Library, which was then at Redcross Street, Cripplegate, London. Nothing is known of his education. On his father’s death in 1808, the ships (at least six coastal vessels which traded London-Plymouth-Bristol), warehouses in Southside Street, and the Mansion House and estate at Coxside were sold. The business had operated for eighty years but Henry and his elder brother William presumably had little interest in or aptitude for it. The family (consisting of widow, two sons, and sole surviving daughter) later moved to Ilfracombe. Henry died near Taunton on 2 Oct. 1832. William died of consumption at Northfield, Ilfracombe, in June 1835. Elizabeth Shepherd died later that year in October, aged 62, leaving her estate to her married daughter Harriet Elizabeth Wren. Henry’s religious poems were edited after his death by the Rev. Joseph Garton of Millbrook Chapel, Devon, but with no memoir and erroneously giving the father’s name as William Savile Shepherd. (ancestry.co.uk 19 Aug. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 19 Aug. 2021; Kentish Weekly Post 13 June 1794; Sherborne Mercury 22 Oct. 1832; GM Nov. 1832, 484; Western Times 6 June 1835; North Devon Journal 12 Nov. 1835; Exeter Flying Post 2 May 1822) AA