Meanders through Shephard Family History

 From the last post, we found how my great-grandfather's family wound up in Howard, South Dakota where my grandfather was born. But how does the son of a corn farmer in the 1880s meet and fall in love with a young woman who lived about 40 miles away. What chance encounter could they have had? My grandmother's father, James Cox also came to South Dakota as it opened up in the early 1880s, He took up residence in Alexandria, in neighboring Hanson County. I'm sure he knew many of the farmers in the area because his occupation listed on the 1880 census in Illinois was Miller. I'm sure he saw the frontier as a way to start a new life being one of the first millers in a land opening up for farming. In 1900, the Coxes moved to Howard. Elroy and Madeline were married in Howard in 1908. So did they meet earlier? Probably not, they probably met after the move for the first time and had a normal courtship. Though I cannot find a tie through their occupations, it was agriculture th...

 I'm intrigued about what moved my 2nd great-grandfather, Levi M Shephard from his farm in Minnesota to Miner, South Dakota. I have no direct information about the reasons, so this is all speculation based upon what was going on in the US leading up to the move. Levi was born in Buffalo, New York in 1828. He met his wife in or near McHenry, Illinois and married in 1849 so something caused his family to move to Illinois between 1828 and 1849. Perhaps the family was caught up in the depression caused by the Panic of 1837 and departed to farm in Illinois as the industries in Buffalo were likely hit hard during the depression. By 1857, he and his growing family had moved to Fillmore County, Minnesota where he is listed as a farmer in the territorial census of that year. In the 1820s, the US government had signed a treaty with the Dakota Indians and over a course of years took control of most of the land in Minnesota and opened it up for farming and the timber industry. It would seem th...

My meanders begin in Colonial America; Hartford, Connecticut to be exact. Thomas Spencer, my 9th great-grandfather is one of the town's founders. (See foundersofhartford.org ). I have noted the history of the settlement during the lifetime of my ancestor.  Reverend Thomas Hooker was a Puritan and was forced from England by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1633, he sailed from Holland to the colonies to escape further persecution, settling in Cambridge. He formed a church with an assistant, Samuel Stone, who had been born in Hartford, a hamlet north of London. In 1635, he decided that the Boston area was too crowded and left for Connecticut with about 100 people from his congregation and some cattle. They started a settlement to the north of the Dutch outpost, House of Hope, from New Amsterdam. Connecticut derives from the Algonquin word, quinnetukut , which means "long, tidal river". Hartford means "deer crossing", so it is thought that Samuel Stone suggested th...